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501 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

October 20, 2008 Monday

Up against a Wall (Street): The financial crisis and Jewish values

BYLINE: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 915 words

HIGHLIGHT: When Jews had no money, no homeland, and were the most persecuted
people on earth, they found security in their families and communities. The
writer hosts a daily national radio show on mastering relationships on 'Oprah
and Friends,' on Sirius and XM Radio. His upcoming book, The Kosher Sutra, will
be published in January. www.shmuley.com.

This Succot marks the 80th birthday of Elie Wiesel, the world's greatest living
Jewish personality and the Holocaust's most famous survivor. For this special
occasion, the organization I founded, This World: The Jewish Values Network,
hosted a celebration for Wiesel at the home of philanthropist Michael
Steinhardt, where Wiesel gave us a class on forgiveness.

Wiesel has always been a hero of mine and I had the great pleasure of hosting
him several times, both at Oxford and at a lecture for Mormon students in Utah.
Wiesel's contribution to humanity has always excited me, not only for the voice
he has given to the six million, but primarily for being the world's foremost
exponent of Jewish values. Wiesel has excited more people about Jewish stories,
Jewish mysticism, Jewish heroes, and Jewish ideas that almost anyone who
preceded him. And he, above all others, has given the lie to that most harmful
of beliefs that Judaism is only for Jews.

The tragedy of modern Jewry is to have produced only one Jew of world stature
whose books on Judaism, rabbis, and Jewish spirituality are read the world over
in every country and in every language. Had we produced nine more of similar
stature, Judaism would today have at least the same spiritual power for world
civilization as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Instead, Jews today have
financial but not spiritual power. We are known as great businessmen but not
great spiritual lights.

DON'T BELIEVE me? Try the following word association with your non-Jewish
friends. Say "day," and they'll say "night." Say "boy," and they'll say "girl."
Say "Jew," and in most cases, they'll say "money." Not because they're
anti-Semitic, but because that's what the word "Jew" conjures up for most
people. That Jews have money, are good at making money, desire money, and are
very generous with their money once they have it.

It was a stereotype that was not particularly helped by a picture on the front
page of The New York Times Business Section last week on the day after Rosh
Hashana that depicted nervous Jewish Wall Street traders outside one of the
largest synagogues in New York checking their Blackberries for the latest market
news on this, one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar. Could anyone
imagine this happening outside St. Peter's in Rome at midnight mass - a bunch of
Catholics nervously checking market fluctuations, or Protestants outside the
National Cathedral on Good Friday, checking to see if their portfolios were up
or down?

Many people in the United States see Wall Street as synonymous with Jews, and
that's why a wave of anti- Semitism has erupted on the Internet in the wake of
Wall Street's collapse. The suggestion that Wall Street is "Jewish" is another
anti-Semitic libel. Still, many Jews do work on Wall Street and the recent
financial turmoil has forced us all to reexamine what constitutes Jewish
security. Jews in the United States have influence well beyond their numbers
because they are financially prosperous and well-organized. But is that what we
wish to be principally known for?

THE COLLAPSE of the American financial markets might, paradoxically, havegiven
the American Jewish community a new idea with which they ought to become
synonymous. Once, when Jews had no money, no homeland, and were the most
persecuted people on earth, they found security in their families and
communities. Whereas other nations mastered power and territory, Jews mastered
relationships and human connections . We had rock-solid marriages that produced
ethical and secure children who went on to form communities of steel. Crusaders
could attack us and Cossacks could assault us, but they could never pry us away
from one another, bonded as we were by ties of nuclear strength. Jewish values,
emphasizing the value of human life ahead of any and all material objects, was
the glue that kept these relationships so sturdy..

I propose that the Jewish community make an effort once again to own the world
relationship. As I have repeatedly argued, the Western world's principal problem
today is not that it does not know how to make money, but rather that it no
longer knows how to sustain a relationship. Divorce affects about half of all
Western families, singles date endlessly without committing, and children look
to celebrities and sports heroes rather than their parents as their principal
source of inspiration. Men do not know how to respect women and women do not
know how to respect themselves. The crisis in the Western world is not
financial, but a crisis of values. Isn't that what all our financial experts
have been saying, that the Wall Street collapse was brought about by greed and
material insatiability? A culture that conditions people to believe happiness
will come from possessions rather than relationships is bound to collapse.

WHY ARE all these families in America collapsing? What happened to family
values? The Jewish community forfeited the conversation about "family values" to
our Christian brothers and sisters - too many of whom, unfortunately, turned it
into a conversation about abortion and gay marriage. Since these were never the
real issues affecting families, the values that men, women, and children so
desperately need were never injected into the culture.

But the good news is it's not too late. We Jews can earn our seat at the table
by bringing the light of Jewish values, especially as it pertains to mastering
relationships, to a world thirsting to know how to start loving again.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: ELIE WIESEL - a great spiritual light in a world that
associates Jews primarily with wealth. RECORD LOSSES on Wall Street have sparked
a wave of anti-Semitism. (Credit: Isaac Harari. Illustrative photo: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

502 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

October 20, 2008 Monday

Letters

BYLINE: Barbara Pfeffer, Emanuel Fischer, Michael Plaskow, Gish Truman Robbins,
William Levy, Leslie Wagner, David Katcoff, Jack Cohen, Vasant Sahasrabuddhe

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1165 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Passing of an era

Sir, - I cannot thank David Horovitz enough for "Hardman's humanity" (October
17). He spoke for all of us who grew up in London's Raleigh Close Synagogue. The
description of Rev. Hardman giving the bar mitzva boy his humash was so perfect
that I chuckled out loud!

I grew up in this community, from 1948 until 1968. My whole family had a very
close personal relationship with the Hardmans. Rev. Hardman was indeed blessed
with all the virtues with which Mr. Horovitz extolled him, enhanced by his
lifelong partner, Josi. With her calm, soft Scottish voice, his wife was at his
side whenever needed. They were an amazing couple.

The Hardmans had to grapple not only with the atrocities of Bergen-Belsen, but
with many personal tragedies over the years. Despite this, or because of it,
"humanity" is the word that comes foremost to mind when talking about them.

Because of their warmth and humanity, it was to Leslie and Josi Hardman that we
turned for help when terrible tidings had to be imparted - not once, but twice -
to the older members of our family.

Those who survived the death camp, and all of us who came into contact with the
Hardmans, are the better for it.

An era has passed. Thank you for leaving us this poignant memory.

BARBARA PFEFFER

Rehovot

Sir, - Rev. Hardman was a mensch in the true Jewish sense, always caring,
helping and supporting. Some years ago, when I met him here, I reminded him of
the BBC broadcast of his first Jewish "service" at Bergen-Belsen after the
liberation.

Two things about it burned into my memory: His beginning, in an emotionally
charged voice, "Nahamu, nahamu ami - troest sich, troest sich mein Volk sogt
unser Gott," and his reciting of the Kaddish prayer. Everyone who listened
surely had tears running down their faces.

Rev. Hardman was surprised to hear that someone could quote him after all these
years - but then, that was the man.

May his memory be a blessing for all of Israel.

EMANUEL FISCHER

Jerusalem

Sir, - In my 43 years as hazan at Woodside Park Synagogue in Finchley, I had the
good fortune, for many of them, to have Rev. Leslie Hardman as a neighboring
minister. In my early years in the ministry he gave me wonderful advice in a
fatherly manner, and friendship which I have always treasured.

A true gentleman indeed.

MICHAEL PLASKOW

Netanya

Away with apathy

Sir, - According to deputy defense minister Matan Vilna'i, our country is facing
one of the most complicated and dangerous periods in its history, confronting at
any one time a guerilla war in Lebanon, a terror war in Judea, Samaria and Gaza,
conventional war with Syria and a possible existential threat from Iran ("'We
are in the midst of preparing the home front for war,'" October 17).

How on earth is a fractious government monopolized by devious, self-seeking
politicians - headed once again by an unelected leader, who most certainly does
not represent the public consensus - supposed to function effectively?

Yet again, another editorial ("In praise of Joe the plumber," same date) slammed
the utter futility of our unwieldy election system and urged change.

Obviously the vast majority of Knesset members are neither idealistically nor
patriotically inclined to put their careers on hold and lead the charge to
legislate for electoral reform - so the onus falls on us Israeli citizens.
Instead of resigning ourselves to apathetic indifference, we must fight for
electoral reform - now.

GISH TRUMAN ROBBINS

Pardesiya

End this idiocy

Sir, - Re "Peres: No progress made in Schalit talks" (October 19): Enough
already. End this. Take a picture of one Palestinian boy warrior prisoner, put
it on the Worldwide Web, and say: This is who we will trade for Schalit. And
walk away from the table.

The government way always leads to another kidnapping and endless blah, blah for
another 1,000 prisoner releases; and heartbreak for the parents of the new IDF
captive.

One for one. Raise the value of their children to yours. This elitist snobbery
only perpetuates the idiocy and gives value to their arguments.

Enough already. End it.

WILLIAM LEVY

Baltimore

In Grant's defense

Sir, - Linda Grant does not need me to defend her, but Lynette Ordman's attack
requires a response ("Sickening views," Letters, October 17).

She claims that Ms. Grant's book The Clothes on Their Backs was shortlisted for
the Booker Prize because "the British establishment is only too keen to promote
another vehicle that reinforces new forms of anti-Jewish sentiment." By the same
logic, the fact that the book did not actually win the Booker prize presumably
shows that the British establishment has seen the error of its ways and is now
firmly pro-Jewish. The prize was, in fact, won by a young Indian writer whose
book covers the vast disparity between rich and poor in India. Clear evidence of
the British establishment's imperialist and colonialist attitude to India?

Ms. Grant's latest book is, among other things, a sensitive and sympathetic
portrait of the effect of Holocaust survival on two brothers and their families
in Britain. She is critical of some aspects of Israeli policy toward the
Palestinians, as are many Israelis. She is also a courageous campaigner against
the anti-Israel policies of many on the Left, fighting the academic and cultural
boycott and the notion of Israel as an apartheid state. Moreover, she does so
from within the hostile environment of British Left politics, rather than from
the relative comfort of Netanya.

LESLIE WAGNER

Jerusalem

A mass of...

Sir, - It was the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 that started the US on the
slippery slope of replacing prudent lending practices with dubious social
engineering mandates. In addition, the government created Fannie Mae and Feddie
Mac, which amassed six trillion dollars of mortgages-disguised-as-welfare, then
trussed them up into complex securitized instruments marketed to gullible banks
worldwide.

The twin evils of lax lending standards and the use of derivatives to hide risk
were also practised by the private sector, but they were initiated and
encouraged by the government.

Thus our desire to be rescued by the government is only fair, since the liberals
in government created this mess in the first place ("We're all liberals now,"
Larry Derfner, October 16).

DAVID KATCOFF

Jericho, Vermont

...shaky structures

Sir, - Re "Panic vs self-interest" (Editorial, October 13): The effects of the
economic crisis are already easy to see in Israel. People are moving out of
their houses and living in simple booths that lack proper walls and roofs. The
UN should be told about how we unfortunates have been reduced to living like
refugees.

JACK COHEN

Netanya

From Hindu to Jew

Sir, - I am a proud Hindu and I really do not know your customs. So please
forgive me if I offend you. I presume it is your New Year, so please accept my
best wishes. I appreciate your determination and courage in maintaining your
freedom against all odds.

I wish very happy and prosperous years ahead for all of you.

VASANT SAHASRABUDDHE

Vadodara, India

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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All Rights Reserved

503 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

October 19, 2008 Sunday

Will Obama beat the Bradley effect?

BYLINE: Dr. WILLIAM K. BARTH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 931 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer served as an appointee of the late Los Angeles mayor Tom
Bradley. His book, On Cultural Rights: The Equality of Nations and the Minority
Legal Tradition, is published by Martinus Nijhoff.

There is extensive media speculation about how the so- called Bradley effect
will influence Sen. Barack Obama's chances of winning the US presidential
election. We must remember that the Bradley effect, properly understood, should
go beyond the relationship between pre-election polling and actual electoral
outcomes.

The Bradley effect involves white voters dishonestly reporting their intentions
to pollsters as regards voting for a black political candidate. Its name derives
from the late Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley's 1982 campaign to become the first
African-American governor since the days of Reconstruction. Pre-election polling
suggested that Bradley would roundly defeat his white opponent, George
Deukmejian, California's then attorney-general. Despite Bradley's consistent
lead in the polls, however, many Californians changed their intentions,
resulting in his losing of the election by a mere 100,000 votes, 1.2 percent of
the total 7.5 million cast.

Similar concerns are being raised about Obama's current lead in the polls over
Sen. John McCain. Given what happened to Bradley, the Bradley-effect, broadly
defined, must surely be taken to mean more than a mere reluctance by white
voters to report their electoral intentions accurately. Bradley endured a number
of racially-inspired campaign attacks, highlighting his ethnic-racial identity,
similar to those used against Obama. That is, Bradley, similarly to other black
political candidates, by virtue of his or her ethnic (racial) identification,
was sometimes accused of being unpatriotic, disruptive or even an enemy of the
state.

Sadly, equating a black political candidate with anti- Americanism, or terrorist
violence, is a tried and tested campaign strategy. In Bradley's first mayoral
campaign in 1969, his political opponent, the late Sam Yorty, successfully
charged that he maintained political associations with militant blacks who had
instigated urban riots, as well as with former communist sympathizers. As a
result, Bradley was defeated. Only in his second attempt (1973) did Bradley
overcome voter distrust of blacks, soundly defeating Yorty and going on to win
reelection four times as mayor of Los Angeles, through to 1993.

The charge used against Bradley and some other black candidates was that they
were of questionable patriotism and condoned the use of violence against whites.
We should recall that, in the 1960s, law and order was the term used by some
white political candidates when combating urban riots (which involved shootings,
arson and looting) in low- income black neighborhoods across the US in cities
such as Newark and Detroit, as well as in Watts, Los Angeles. Some of these
residents were violently protesting against social ills created by century-long
segregation policies.

Incredibly, Obama's political opponents have now resorted to a campaign strategy
remarkably similar to that used against Bradley. For example, during the
primaries, they attempted to identify Obama as an Afro-centric candidate who
placed his own minority group interests above those of the nation. For his part,
McCain has done more than merely profile Obama as a black candidate. His tactics
began innocuously enough. A McCain supporter, conservative commentator Grover
Norquist (The Los Angeles Times), racially identified Obama as "John Kerry with
a tan." Next, McCain moved to characterize Obama as disloyal.

For example, he recently slandered Obama over a tenuous association with William
Ayers, a former member of the anti-Vietnam war movement, Weather Underground.
McCain surrogates also drew attention to Obama's middle name, Hussein, which can
be associated with radical Arabs such as the late Iraqi dictator, Saddam
Hussein. In short, McCain portrays Obama not only as disloyal, but also as
someone who condones the use of violence against Americans.

Of course, McCain has his own history of difficulty with race relations - recall
his awkward attempt to apologize to black voters for his political opposition to
the Martin Luther King Day holiday. McCain's reference to Obama as "that one"
during the second presidential debate only aggravated his already tenuous
standing with black voters and other minority groups, long accustomed to labels
that portray minorities in a dehumanized manner.

To be fair, both white and black commentators from all sides of the political
spectrum have attempted to racially profile Obama. Ralph Nader alleged (Rocky
Mountain News) that Obama was "trying to talk white." There were also Hillary
and Bill Clinton's efforts to stereotype Obama as another Jesse Jackson. Even
some black commentators (Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Jackson) have decried Obama as
not black enough, in an effort to pressure him to support African-American
causes.

For his part, Obama combats the Bradley effect, broadly defined, by exercising
what, in fact, international treaty protections guarantee to all minorities: the
human right to identify, or, alternatively, to transcend identification, with
their own group.

Obama's effort recalls the address by 1960 Democratic presidential candidate
John F. Kennedy, a member of the Roman Catholic minority. During his address to
the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, Kennedy declared that he was not
"the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for
president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on
public matters - and the Church does not speak for me."

On November 4, we will learn whether Obama's strategy to combat the Bradley
effect, by transcending it, has been a successful one.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: BARACK OBAMA greets supporters at a campaign rally in Grand
Rapids, Michigan. (Credit: Adam Bird/Bloomberg News)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

504 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

October 19, 2008 Sunday

A consumer protection revolution

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 692 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Something of a consumers' rights revolution is taking place in Israel. The news
is so good that it's almost hard to believe. And, yet, it's true.

Still, there's a catch. To enjoy the new benefits - these "low hanging fruits"
that will make our lives more pleasant - we have to inform ourselves of their
scope and insist that they be implemented.

What's happened is that existing law has been amended in a dramatically more
favorable direction. For instance, suppliers of goods or services that are paid
for in installments must make clear, verbally and in writing, that customers may
abrogate a deal, under what conditions, and precisely how. This is no longer an
option hinging on a merchant's goodwill but a clear-cut legal obligation.

The change in existing legislation was set in motion by widespread complaints
about the inability of customers to extricate themselves from extended or
open-ended contracts: the purchase of big-ticket appliance items; medical care;
gym membership; cable or satellite TV, as well as newspaper and cell phone
subscriptions. The frequent experience in this country is that it's difficult to
disengage from long-term financial commitments. Once businesses have our credit
card details, we're at their mercy - sometimes billed against our will.

But now, consumers can pull out of such transactions which must be nullified
three days after notification. If the seller fails to honor your request, you,
the consumer, are entitled to a NIS 10,000 compensation; no need to prove
damages in advance.

The same penalty would be awarded if a business fails to prominently display its
returns, exchange or refund policies. If the procedures are displayed but not
adhered to, the identical automatic fine applies.

ONE OF the biggest peeves of Israeli consumers is our inability to cancel
payments on credit or charge cards for goods or services. Unilateral
cancellation is currently impossible because credit card firms demand
confirmation and consent from the supplier, even though said supplier may be
brazenly violating its side of the bargain.

We've all experienced or heard stories of goods not delivered, while payments
continued to be charged. From December 6, however, unilateral cancellation
becomes an option. It will also be available where the supplying company goes
into receivership or is bankrupt.

As of January 1 retailers will no longer be able to claim that certain
advertised sale items are no longer available, a situation with which many
consumers are all too familiar. From the start of 2009, limited supplies of
special-offer items will have to be disclosed and the number of such items (if
over NIS 50 in value) specified a priori.

We've all seen the signs: "Savings of up to 50%!" Well, starting next year,
merchants will be compelled to tell us which items were once, say, NIS 100 and
are now on sale for just NIS 50.

And as of January 10, service-suppliers will be forbidden from continuing to
charge clients even after the contract between the sides has terminated. This
too is a prevalent consumer complaint in our marketplace. The service-provider
will be legally bound to remind clients when the contractual period nears its
end and inquire if they wish to continue.

Check this out: All contract clauses which provide for automatic continuance
past termination dates will be, from hereon, illegal.

Any firm which collects payment via direct bank debit orders will now be obliged
to send a periodic payment statement. Again, violation of the above could lead
to NIS 10,000 in fines.

There are many other significant breaks for the consumers - too numerous to
catalog here. Most of this bonanza was produced by the Knesset Economics
Committee under the aegis of its former chair, MK Gilad Erdan (Likud). This
committee was uncommonly tenacious and diligent, and as a result Israelis are
now offered consumer protections unlike anything that's ever existed in this
country.

So now it's up to us - the consumers. We've been empowered; the tools have been
placed at our disposal. We must now be willing to use them because, rest
assured, there are a lot of companies out there just hoping we've missed the
revolution.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The Jerusalem Post

October 19, 2008 Sunday

New approaches to halt Iran's nuclear program

BYLINE: BENNETT RAMBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 846 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer served in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in the
State Department in the George H.W. Bush administration.

Halting Iran's nuclear program: It is deja vu all over again, but arguably
worse. The Security Council's recent reiteration of lame sanctions against
Teheran, coupled to the mullahs rejection of the West's July incentives package,
leaves the diplomatic effort to halt the enrichment program in tatters. But this
should come as no surprise. The roots lay in a simple point: The West cannot buy
the mullahs off. The time has come to explore another approach, one that
challenges the values that sustain Iran's atomic ambitions.

The aspiration that negotiated incentives could stem Iran's atomic fuel cycle
efforts goes back to fall 2003. At the time, and repeatedly since, the
International Atomic Energy Agency revealed Teheran persistently violated
nuclear safeguards. Washington took a hard line. It called upon the IAEA Board
of Governors to refer the matter to the UN Security Council for the application
of sanctions.

Britain, France and Germany demurred. The Europeans saw a chance not only to
resolve the stalemate through negotiation but - in the case of Berlin and Paris
- to upstage Washington while generating economic benefits for themselves. The
result: In October 2003, the three European powers sent their foreign ministers
to Iran with economic, nuclear and political incentives in hand hoping to buy
Teheran off.

At first blush, the EU-3 scored. On October 21, 2003, Iran agreed "to suspend
all uranium enrichment and processing activities as defined by the IAEA."
Headlines declared, "Iranian deal a victory for European diplomacy." The
adulation proved short-lived. Although it would not be until June 2004 when
Teheran bolted from the agreement, the signs already were present on October 22,
2003 when then president Mohamed Khatami declared, "Iran will never give up this
[enrichment] program."

When Iran's enrichment activities resumed in summer 2004, European pride would
not allow failure. The EU-3 promised yet more bountiful economic and nuclear
carrots. Negotiations proved difficult. By early November, the parties struck a
new deal - or so it seemed. Iran would "suspend" - again - enrichment
activities. Europe would have additional time to put an effective incentives
package together.

All that remained was the blessing of the IAEA Board of Governors. However, back
in Teheran, decision makers balked as they have ever since. Washington's recent
participation in the Geneva talks made no difference. One critical reason then
and no. The West failed to attack the "values" that underpin Iran's ambition.

For the mullahs, one value dominates - preservation of the theocratic regime. In
this view a nuclear Iran provides security, international influence,
self-confidence, prestige, scientific infrastructure, economic modernization and
energy diversity while buttressing popular support.

Iran's values, however, can become the West's sword. Consider a kaleidoscope of
alternatives:

* Co-opt Iran's nuclear enrichment program. Teheran repeatedly declares that
nuclear enrichment promotes the value of energy security. Test the contention by
adopting the mullahs call for international "co-management" and link fidelity to
automatic harsh and certain penalties if Iran balks.

* Sow nuclear fear. Iran, obviously, resides in a dangerous neighborhood. Use
public diplomacy to cultivate popular fear that nuclear plants are radiological
hostages to terrorist malevolence, military attacks and accidents. Reiterate
this question: Do nuclear values outweigh multiple nuclear risks and economic
costs for a country with abundant oil, natural gas and solar energy resources?

* Promote national security foreboding. The mullahs appear to believe that
nuclear weapons, or the breakout capacity to develop them, advance national
security. Impress upon them that the tack will make the regime less secure. Iran
will become an American and Israeli nuclear bulls-eye in this era of preemption.
Reinforce this point with a US/NATO security guarantee to Israel: A nuclear
attack on the Jewish state will result in Iran's extinction.

* Squeeze Iran's economy. The Iranian revolution promised a prosperity that
never matured. Runaway inflation and high unemployment is impacting the
population. Enforced economic isolation (e.g., a cutoff of refined gasoline
which fuels 40 percent of the country's needs) will make these costs worse
thereby undermining the regime's legitimacy.

* Support Iran's democratic opposition. Expand covert assistance to responsible
Iranian dissident groups that seek to contest the clerics' authority.

* Use Baghdad to challenge Teheran. Should Iraq stabilize, use this
Shi'ite-dominated state to challenge Iran's model of political and economic
development to promote regime change.

* Educate Iranians about the Libyan case. Use public diplomacy to repeatedly
remind the Iranian people about Libya's beneficial disavowal of its nuclear
ambitions.

Each measure tests values that sustain the Islamic regime. In different
combinations they provide the means to avoid the most draconian military steps
to halt the nuclear program that lurk in the background.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SUPPORTERS OF the opposition National Council of Resistance of
Iran demonstrate in favor of sanctions on Iran in front of the International
Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna. (Credit: Mark Milstein/ Bloomberg
News)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
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506 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

October 19, 2008 Sunday

The one-state solution, post-Oslo

BYLINE: DAN DIKER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 934 words

HIGHLIGHT: There is no room for any discussion of a threat of a one-state
solution from either the Palestinian or Israeli leaderships. The writer is
director of the Institute of Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for
Public Affairs.

Over the past months, Israeli and Palestinian officials have been urging the
completion of a final agreement on a "two-state solution" as quickly as possible
to avoid a "one-state solution." Israeli officials have spoken of it as a
warning, while Palestinian officials have used it as a threat.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz less then a year ago, "If the day comes
when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style
struggle for equal voting rights [also for the Palestinians in the territories],
then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished."

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni similarly hinted on August 21, 2008, "We decided
that time is against us, that time is against the moderates and that stagnation
is not an option for the Israeli government."

Palestinian Authority chief negotiator Ahmed Qurei also told Palestinian
lawmakers in Ramallah recently that if Israel opposes Palestinian demands, "then
the Palestinian demand for the Palestinian people and its leadership [would be]
one state, a binational state."

Despite the dire warnings by both sides, the threat of a "one-state solution"
has no place in Palestinian Israeli negotiations. Oslo ended the notion of a
one-state solution. It is perhaps Oslo's only success, both for Israelis and
Palestinians.

THE ONE-STATE solution has two historical points of reference, one Israeli and
the other Arab.

The PLO program to create a secular democratic state from the Jordan River to
the Mediterranean Sea is rooted in the 1968 PLO National Charter and was
officially adopted following the eighth Palestinian National Council in 1971. It
replaced earlier ideological formulations that rejected the creation of the
State of Israel and empowered the Arab "right" to reverse that decision that had
been unanimously approved by the United Nations in November 1947.

The Jewish-Israeli historical reference point for a one-state solution came from
the opposite direction, arising in the aftermath of the capture of Gaza from
Egypt and Judea and Samaria from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War. Labor
coalitions led by prime ministers such as Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir and Yitzhak
Rabin advocated territorial compromise west of the Jordan River along the lines
of the security plan drawn up by Yigal Allon. Their fear and concomitant warning
to Israelis was that territorial compromise - not Palestinian statehood - was a
painful but necessary measure to avoid the risk of a binational state in the
event military administration of the territories continued indefinitely.
Alternatively, if the country annexed Gaza and Judea and Samaria, as the
argument went, it would have no choice but to offer citizenship to their Arab
residents, threatening the Jewish character of the state.

There is some irony in the fact that today, 15 years after the Oslo agreements
were signed, talk of the one- state solution has been reinserted into the
diplomatic lexicon. One of the founding strategic goals of the Oslo Accords was
to end any possibility of a one-state solution by recognizing the Palestinians
as a political entity via the PLO with which Israel signed a binding agreement
establishing the Palestinian Authority in 1994. That act legally ended the
military administration of Gaza and the West Bank and resulted in the division
of the disputed West Bank into areas A, B and C. That action also ended the
possibility that Israel could annex all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza and face the
threat of a one-state solution.

MANY OF the legal and diplomatic issues deriving from and following Oslo are
rooted in the dispute over how much territory each party retains, while formally
recognizing that each party has claims to West Bank territory. If - and some say
when - Annapolis fails, there are other options available to create a more
viable pathway to Palestinian society building and perhaps someday peace.
However, under any circumstances today, there is no room for any discussion of a
threat of a one-state solution from either the Palestinian or Israeli
leaderships.

The Fatah leadership of the Palestinian Authority signed on to Oslo and thereby
conceded claims to a binational state. And practically, Fatah will almost
certainly not dissolve the PA and pursue the one-state option. Billions of
dollars from international donors continue to line the pockets of PA leaders and
political elites. Business monopolies and multibillion dollar ventures are
controlled by Fatah and PA leadership and are too rich to concede. Hamas, for
its part, will never accede to a one-state solution as it wants to disconnect
completely from Israel.

FOR ISRAEL, Oslo achieved the objective of territorial compromise short of
statehood as envisioned by Eshkol, Meir and Rabin, and ultimately accepted by
Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon. At the same time, Oslo still maintains
Israel's rights and claims to West Bank land and security requirements for
defensible borders that were central to Allon's security plan for the disputed
territories. These were endorsed in a presidential letter from US President
George W. Bush to Sharon on April 14, 2004.

Israel and the PA may move slowly or briskly along the path of peace. However,
the principle of bilateral negotiations over the future of Jewish communities
and Israeli security presence in the West Bank was agreed to by both sides at
Oslo and therefore eliminates any justification for Palestinian threats of a
one-state solution.

Israeli leaders should also avoid invoking the doomsday scenario of a binational
state as a scare tactic to accelerate a peace agreement. Oslo took that off the
table.

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October 19, 2008 Sunday

Letters

BYLINE: Batya Berlinger, David Rotenberg, Nathan Lopes Cardozo, Sara Roth,
Yaakov Fogelman, Jeff Shames, Rory Schachter, Dolly Tiger-Chinitz

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 889 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

We're not robots...

Sir, - I feel sad for Yaron Yadan ("Religion and secularism - a moral
accounting," October 8). Though he claims to be an expert in Jewish law, there
is something severely lacking in his Jewish education. He seems to have gotten
the impression that we are to be robots, blindly following the Halacha.

Yes, morality is determined by Torah. That means it is objective, and solid. Our
moral values don't change with the times, or adjust according to the latest
trend. The humanism Mr. Yadan describes sounds like "whatever makes sense to me
today is what I'll follow; whatever makes me happy is what's important."

A person accountable only to himself can be critical of his actions, but can
dismiss wrongdoing easily, too. When one recognizes that there is a Big Boss who
will demand an accounting of your doings, one may be a bit more careful.

The second half of the Ten Commandments, from "Thou shall not kill" on, is
seemingly less about obedience to God and more about the proper functioning of
society. It forms the basis for our moral standards, which are elaborated on in
many of the 613 Laws and many rabbinical works. The mishna's Ethics of the
Fathers is filled with advice on how to live a moral and ethical life.

Mr. Yadan should study the festival prayerbook in depth. Although it was
composed 1,000 years ago, the prayers can speak to our times - if given the
chance.

BATYA BERLINGER

Jerusalem

Sir, - To pass off an immature, stunted perception of the depth and range of
Jewish thought and practice - including the reasons for obedience to God, the
existential, psychological, philosophical goals and purpose of it all - as a
serious discussion of secular vs religious moral accounting was an
embarrassment.

DAVID ROTENBERG

Jerusalem

Sir, - Some people have a long way to go before they understand the essence of
Judaism, religion, moral philosophy and even secularism - even when they have
studied these disciplines for many years. Not everyone is able to grasp them. As
Spinoza wrote: All noble things are as difficult as they are rare.

NATHAN LOPES CARDOZO

Jerusalem

...on the face of it

Sir, - Obviously, the best thing to have come out of Yaron Yadan's move to
secularism is that he has taken a close shave. He's one good-looking bloke.

SARA ROTH

Jerusalem

Tradition, tradition

Sir, - Re "Third Temple blues" (Letters, October 7): Eliezer Whartman, generally
a very nice guy, disparages much of Jewish tradition, found in the Torah itself
as well as in halachic treatises such as the Rambam and the Shulchan Aruch,
throughout the ages: the restoration of the Temple and sacrifices; Providential
response to human, especially Jewish, behavior; the mitzva to wipe out Amalek
and other Nazi prototypes; eating kosher, and God's heeding our prayers.

A general Jewish theme, especially on the High Holydays, is God's involvement in
every realm of life - from Eliezer's breakfast to the fate of his descendants.
Our very claim to Israel, to a great extent, rests on our biblical tradition,
much respected by our Christian friends.

YAAKOV FOGELMAN, Editor

A Jerusalem Jewish Voice

Jerusalem

Let the idiots be

Sir, - Although the other leading Israeli papers routinely engage in
sensationalist reporting, I was disappointed at your headline "PFLP threatens to
assassinate Lieberman" (October 15). I am in favor of a free press and against
censorship, but why print the idiotic rantings of every enemy of Israel? Why aid
the enemy's propaganda against us?

JEFF SHAMES

Rehovot

Golda kept her nerve

Sir, - Abraham Rabinovich is to be lauded for his gripping and informative
account of Golda Meir's leadership in the 1973 war ("Golda's meltdown," Yom
Kippur supplement, October 8). One key fact, however, seemed significantly
underemphasized.

Meir's highly controversial decision to resist authorizing an Israel preemptive
action in the early hours of October 6 proved, in hindsight, to be a truly wise
decision. Nixon's willingness to send Israel vast, desperately needed military
supplies in "everything that (could) fly" was predicated on the fact that Israel
was clearly not the aggressor.

The individuals mentioned in the narrative - Elazar, Dayan, Sharon and others -
are, along with Meir, all heroes, whatever errors and poor judgments mark their
complex records.

Still, the title of the piece was misleading. Far from being a "meltdown," in
choosing at grave risk to reject a preemptive strike, Meir kept her nerve in an
hour of maximum peril.

And for that we should all be thankful.

RORY SCHACTER

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Old blood is OK blood

Sir, - Devorah Green complains about Magen David Adom's extremely stringent
rules for blood donors, referencing "Mad Cow Disease" (Letters, October 13). I
have a parallel complaint: the maximum age limit for blood donors.

In Canada, the rules were changed a few years ago. There, with a letter from a
doctor, one can donate blood without any limit on age; in the US as well I was
able to donate blood well past the age of 70, without any ill- effects.

Today's seniors are in good health and there is absolutely no reason to deny
them the mitzva of donating blood if they so desire and are able.

I was sorely disappointed that in spite of producing a doctor's letter, I was
rejected here in Israel because I am over 70. This, too, is a policy that needs
serious rethinking.

DOLLY TIGER-CHINITZ

Jerusalem

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October 17, 2008 Friday

In praise of Joe the plumber

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 721 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

The process of forming a new government in Israel is expected to take several
more weeks - though success is hardly guaranteed. The United States, meanwhile,
will be electing a new president and congress on November 4.

The contrast in how the two political systems choose their leaders underscores
the need to reform the way Israel elects its representatives and to change the
political culture of our campaigns.

In order to win, America's two parties vie for the middle ground because that's
where most voters are. Israelis, by comparison, chose from over 30 mostly
single- issue ideological parties in the February 2006 Knesset race. No party in
history has ever achieved a majority which would enable it to pursue a coherent
agenda. Kadima, which "won" the last elections with 29 seats, cobbled together
yet another government of strange bedfellows.

No one would suggest that the American system is without fault. For one thing,
electing a president takes too long and costs too much. Barack Obama declared
his candidacy in February 2007; John McCain announced in April 2007. Together
the campaigns have raised $1 billion.

America's system also has its quirks, as observers around the world discovered
eight years ago when Al Gore won more popular votes (50,999,897) than George W.
Bush (50,456,002), but lost the election because Bush captured the electoral
college (271-266). The more people a state has, the more clout in the electoral
college, but the paradoxical result is to dilute majority rule.

The US is a representative, not a "pure" democracy. Its constitutional framers
created a system in which power was kept diffuse. Fearing tyranny above all
else, they designed a system that does not permit power to be concentrated in
any single body - not with the president, judiciary or congress (which they
split in two).

Israel's founders, in contrast, fearing various groups would feel
disenfranchised, created an unwieldily hyper- democratic system.

DESPITE being a nation of 300 million people, US voters can personally encounter
presidential candidates with relative ease. Take Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher
from Ohio. He's been thinking about expanding his business, but worries that
Obama's tax plan would rob him of incentives to invest in his company. Joe
challenged Obama face-to-face on the campaign trail: "Your new tax plan is going
to tax me more, isn't it?"

Obama readily acknowledged that he'd be raising Joe's taxes if he earned more
than $250,000 a year. It was the equitable thing to do, Obama argued, to help
people making less. In Israel, there's little chance "Yossi the instalator"
would ever get close enough to a candidate for premier to engage in that kind of
back-and-forth.

During the US campaign, voters have had ample opportunity to watch McCain and
Obama and hear their views. The prospect that one of them would, upon election,
pursue a totally unexpected policy on a fundamental issue is remote. For
instance, Obama would never appoint a jurist to the Supreme Court pledged to
overturning Roe v. Wade and re-criminalizing abortion.

In Israel, by contrast, any number of prime ministers have turned their backs on
cardinal campaign promises.

America's two candidates have debated face-to-face. They met for a third and
final time Wednesday and argued about the economy, negative campaign ads,
judicial appointments character, abortion and taxes. In fact, Joe the Plumber's
name came up - 26 times. "It's pretty surreal, man, my name being mentioned in a
presidential campaign," Wurzelbacher told the AP.

In contrast, during Israel's last Knesset campaign, Kadima's Ehud Olmert simply
refused to debate the Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu and Labor's Amir Peretz.

WE CAN only look on, dejectedly, as Tzipi Livni now tries to build a coalition.
So far she's had to promise Labor's Ehud Barak that he will be "senior deputy
prime minister, second only to the prime minister." She's made an opening offer
to the Shas Party of NIS 1 billion (for child allowances). She needs to woo the
collection of bickering curmudgeons known as the Gil Pensioners Party. And she
needs to mollify the 98 year-old godfather of the United Torah Judaism Party who
doesn't want his followers serving in a government led by a woman.

America has had 230 years to perfect its electoral system. Israel doesn't have
that kind of time.

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October 17, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Roy Runds, Josef Gilboa, Lynette Ordman, Keith Berman, M.M. Van Zuiden

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 875 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

The reason

why Pius XII...

Sir, - Re "Pope vigorously defends Pius XII over his behavior during Holocaust"
(October 10): People with an axe to grind are unfairly singling out the Vatican
under the late Pope Pius XII for its supposed silence regarding the Holocaust.

It is not generally known that the Nazis were as anti- Christian as they were
anti-Semitic. Hitler called Christianity "a Jewish sickness," which he planned
to uproot and replace with Norse paganism when Nazi Germany won the war.

Hundreds of Christian clergymen were murdered in Hitler's death camps. Had the
Pope launched a crusade over Nazi persecution of the Jews, Hitler's legions
would have besieged the Vatican, burnt it to the ground and liquidated as many
Catholic clergy as possible. Was it wrong of the pope to try to protect his
Church with his alleged silence?

Nevertheless, this great man was far less silent about the Holocaust than was
America's Jewish community. Whereas the pope encouraged his clergy to save
almost all of Italy's Jews from the Nazis, American Jews, blindly misled by
president Roosevelt and his anti-Semitic State Department, maintained a
thunderous silence about the fate of their co-religionists in Nazi-dominated
Europe. They did not protest against Roosevelt's rejection of a Swedish proposal
in 1939 that Sweden and America jointly rescue 10,000 Jewish children from
Germany and resettle them in America.

To this day, America's Jews have not been sufficiently vigorous or successful in
urging the administration to ban racist and violently anti-Semitic groups like
the American Nazi Party, Louis Farrakhan's Temple of Islam and the Ku Klux Klan.

ROY RUNDS

Tel Aviv

...behaved

as he did

Sir, - Judging Pius XII is not as difficult as the Church and some Jews would
like to pretend. The pope faced two threats to the Church and to civilization
simultaneously: Bolshevism/Communism one the one hand, Nazism/Fascism on the
other. There is no question which he preferred.

He saw the Communists as the threat and the Fascists as the bulwark against
them. He supported every Catholic Fascist dictator from Franco to Fr. Tiso, the
Slovak priest who destroyed over 70% of Slovakian Jewry before he was halted.
The Church never ceased railing against the Communists, but always found excuses
to ignore Nazi and Fascist atrocities. Mealy-mouthed statements about innocent
suffering could be applied both to the slaughtered Jews and the Germans who died
in the Allied bombings.

Fear of harming Catholics in Fascist countries prevented speaking out clearly,
according to the pope's apologists - an issue that never bothered him when
Catholics in Communist countries were oppressed.

In Croatia, the murderous Franciscan fathers slaughtered Jews in the name of the
Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. There was no serious reaction from the
Church or the pope to their atrocities.

True, he never prevented Catholics from saving Jews, and saved a few himself as
insurance. The Carmelites stand out as perhaps the most compassionate of the
Catholic religious orders. But the pope did stand by as the Nazis marched the
Jews under his windows to their deaths. He feared that the Allies might drop a
bomb on his Holy head.

JOSEF GILBOA

Jaffa

Sickening views

Sir, - I'm not surprised that Linda Grant's book The Clothes on Their Backs is
short-listed for the 2008 Booker prize. The British establishment is only too
keen to promote another vehicle that reinforces new forms of anti- Jewish
sentiment by an ex-journalist of the Guardian.

In the interview ("The nature of suffering," UpFront, October 10), Ms. Grant
calmly asks: "How could the Jews who went through the Holocaust behave like that
towards the Palestinians?" - another example of the all-too-common, horrendous
slander that links the treatment of Palestinians by Jews with the genocide of
Jews in the Holocaust.

The "new anti-Semitism" is currently raging through Europe and no Israeli
newspaper should lend credence to it. Ms. Grant needed to be challenged on her
sickening views.

LYNETTE ORDMAN

Netanya

Fixing the world

Sir, - While we wish Adam L'Adam much success with its Tikkun Olam project, it
is not so unique as your October 10 article suggested ("New humanitarian group
aims to train Jewish leaders to 'fix world'").

Young Judaea's Year Course in Israel, sponsored by Hadassah, is the largest
gap-year program in Israel, with 540 students. In 2009 we are launching our own
Tikkun Olam project with three months in Israel developing leadership skills and
learning how to be a volunteer in the third world; three months in Ghana, and
then three months back in Israel volunteering. While in Ghana the students will
volunteer in educational and health-related fields.

And since we are Zionists, we will also spend time with the fledgling Ghana
Jewish community bringing Israeli songs, dance, music and language to the
community.

For more information contact www.yearcourse.org

KEITH BERMAN

Program Director

Jerusalem

Dismal weather

Sir, - I used to think prominent economists resembled generals, out to win
financial wars. Increasingly, though, they sound more like weather forecasters.

No power to interfere. Just predictions, and often wrong ("US government moves
again to unclog credit lines," October 15).

M.M. VAN ZUIDEN

Jerusalem

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October 17, 2008 Friday

The disappearance of law

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1816 words

HIGHLIGHT: COLUMN ONE

The Arab pogrom in Acre on Yom Kippur was yet another wake-up call. The 200
Israeli Arabs who shattered the windshields of 110 Jewish cars, and burned and
looted dozens of Jewish businesses in the city on the eve of Yom Kippur while
shouting out, "Death to Jews!" "Allah Akbar!" and "We'll kill you if you leave
your homes!" couldn't have made their point any more clearly.

They don't like Jews. They don't want peaceful coexistence with Israel. They
don't recognize the authority of Israel's laws. They don't accept their identity
as Israeli citizens.

If the actual violence wasn't enough to clarify matters, then we have the
invitations for the Arab theater festival that began on Thursday, and its
program.

Acre's Arab leaders decided to organize their festival in response to Mayor
Shimon Lancry's decision to postpone indefinitely Acre's annual Alternative
Theater Festival. Fearing continued violence, Lancry opted over the weekend to
postpone the annual event that was scheduled to take place this week.

The Arabs called their festival, "Acre Is Not Alone." In the invitations
distributed to the Arab residents of the city, the organizers wrote: "We will
not surrender to the emergency laws that were enacted after the settlers' [that
is, the Jewish residents of the city's] attacks. The settlers are trying to
enact an ethnic cleansing of the eastern neighborhoods of the city. We call on
Acre's Arab residents to come to the Old City and break the siege that has been
enacted against the merchants there. We are organizing these activities to
preserve the importance of Acre as a center of Palestinian tourism, culture,
history and geography."

So in short, "Acre is not Alone" has been organized to raise Arab awareness of
Arab suffering at the hands of the Jews in Israel. Its main attractions include
a movie that portrays the Arab riots in October 2000 from the perspective of the
families of the Arab rioters killed by police trying to quell their violence
against Jews; a one- man play fulminating on the victimization of Arabs in
Israel and the Palestinian Authority by Jews; and an "artistic" narration of the
plight of an Arab who left Acre in 1948 as a result of Jewish "aggression," and
died in a UN camp in Lebanon.

It is important to pause for a moment and set out as precisely as possible what
happened in Acre on the eve of Yom Kippur and the following night, after the
holiday ended.

On Wednesday night, when as is customary, after prayers ended Jews milled about
in the streets that were empty of moving cars out of respect for the holiday,
Acre resident Jamal Tawfik drove into the city's predominantly Jewish Ben-Gurion
neighborhood. Jewish residents claim that Tawfik was driving at high speed with
his windows down and music blasting out of his speakers, in a clear provocation
of the Jews. Tawfik denied the allegations.

By all accounts, some Jewish youth approached his car. Some accounts claim that
a handful of teenagers hit the sides of his car. Some accounts claim that some
teenagers pelted his car with stones. All accounts agree that he exited his
vehicle unscathed.

Just after this altercation, a still-unidentified Arab in the Old City broadcast
that a Jewish mob had murdered Tawfik via the loudspeakers of a mosque. More
than 200 Arab residents then descended on the Ben-Gurion neighborhood with axes
and knives. They shattered the windshields of some 110 Jewish-owned cars. They
then moved into the business district and looted and vandalized the Jewish-
owned stores and businesses. Despite multiple calls for help from terrified
Jews, it took the police several hours to appear on the scene. And when they
arrived, they did nothing to end the Arab rampage.

The next evening, after the holiday ended, the Jewish residents started a
spontaneous protest against the Arab riot. Arab rioters returned.

This time, the police, equipped with riot gear, succeeded in separating the
Arabs from the Jews. A group of Jewish protesters, demanding revenge, torched a
handful of Arab-owned apartments in mixed neighborhoods. The Arabs continued
looting Jewish businesses and attacking Jewish cars. Police arrested rioters on
both sides.

In the days that followed, Arab leaders published condemnations of violence "on
both sides," and asked Jewish leaders to join them in their statements. Most
Jewish leaders in the city refused. As Acre's Chief Rabbi Yoseph Yashar told a
reporter, "As long as they speak of the Arab rioters from the eve of Yom Kippur
in the same breath as the acts of vengeance carried out by Jews in response, it
will be very hard to calm matters down."

On the national political level, Kadima and Labor party leaders have embraced
the Arabs' moral equivalence. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi
Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their subordinates have all decried "acts
of violence" and "lawlessness," while refraining from making any special mention
of the fact that the violence was carried out almost entirely by Acre's Arabs.

Olmert went further than his colleagues. During a meeting with anti-Israel
activists from the Arab sector, including the deputy head of the Hamas-linked
northern branch of the Israeli Islamic Movement on Monday, Olmert claimed,
"There can be no doubt that for years the Arab population has suffered from
discrimination that stemmed from a variety of sources."

By making the statement to some of the most extreme anti-Israel voices in
Israeli Arab society, Olmert seemingly justified the lawlessness of their
followers.

The police have reacted to the Arab violence with now customary passivity.
Decrying the police's belated and feckless response to Wednesday night's
violence, Likud MK Yuval Steinitz minced no words: "The public security minister
[Avi Dichter] and the chief of police [David Cohen] must resign. The State of
Israel has become the only country in the Western world where pogroms are
carried out against Jews. Physical assaults are carried out against them and
against their property amid calls of 'Death to the Jews.' A police force that is
incapable of defending Jewish neighborhoods requires a serious overhaul."

WHILE STARTLING, the events in Acre - and the official response to them - are
not new phenomena. Last Yom Kippur, an Arab driver from Shibli in the Galilee
mortally wounded nine-year-old Tal Zino from neighboring Kfar Tavor. The driver
entered the community at top speed on his all- terrain vehicle. Children playing
outside the synagogue ran to evade him. Tal couldn't get out of his way fast
enough. He ran her over.

As Tal's mother, Haya Zino, told Ma'ariv last Friday, that incident was the
first attack against Jews carried out by an Arab operating a heavy motor
vehicle. In her view, the more recent murders of Jews in Jerusalem by Arab
bulldozer operators are simply a continuation of the attack on Kfar Tavor that
killed her daughter.

Two years ago, an Arab mob in Acre violently attacked yeshiva students dancing
in the streets on Simhat Torah. The students were forced to flee to their
yeshiva, where the Arabs then besieged them. Rather than disperse the crowd, the
police simply helped the students escape to their homes through the yeshiva's
backdoor.

And in the riots in Peki'in earlier in October 2007, the police refused to
confront the Arab mob that attacked the Jewish homes in the village. They
allowed a policewoman to be held hostage for several hours and essentially
begged anti-Israeli local leaders to intervene on her behalf.

THE EVER-INCREASING radicalism of Israeli Arabs, who today openly and officially
oppose the existence of the Jewish state, shows the imbecility of the
government's plan to "separate" from the Palestinians by withdrawing from Judea,
Samaria and Jerusalem.

Given that Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Arabs openly identify themselves as one
society, there is no way to separate from the Palestinians.

But the fact that Israeli Arabs are indistinguishable from Palestinian Arabs
does not mean that there is no way to contend with their rejection of Israel. To
the contrary, it points to the only way to contend with both the Palestinian
Arab and the Israeli Arab rejection of Israel: By reestablishing law and order
and respect for the law both within the 1949 armistice lines and in the areas
Israel took control of in 1967.

Here, it is worth pointing out that in their rejection of the authority of
Israel, the Israeli Arab rioters in Acre are little different from the French
Muslim rioters who set their country ablaze in November 2005. In both cases, the
rioters demonstrated their abject contempt and rejection of the state in which
they live, at the same time that their governments were doing everything in
their power to appease them as a suffering minority.

Responding to the violence, French voters elected President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Sarkozy campaigned on a law and order platform. Sadly, since taking office, he
has done little to abide by his campaign pledges in this regard.

In Israel's case, no political leaders have made the connection between law and
order and Israeli Arab or Palestinian Arab irredentism. Indeed, since the Arab
riots in 2000, Israel has simply stopped enforcing its laws in the Arab sector.
This is true not only with regard to violent crimes and treason, but also in
relation to lesser offenses. For instance, polygamy is illegal in Israel. Yet,
over the past decade, the prevalence of polygamy among Israeli Beduin has grown
to unprecedented levels.

Last spring the government announced its intention to contend with the issue by
forming committees and support groups for children of polygamous marriages and
women who are involved in these illegal relationships. No thought was given to
the obvious remedy of arresting the polygamous husbands and trying them for
their crimes.

And this gets to the heart of the matter. While no doubt, historically, Israel
has witnessed discrimination against members of its Arab sector, today, the
chief form of discrimination they suffer is what US President George W. Bush has
referred to as "the soft bigotry of low expectations." This of course causes
both Israeli Jews and Arabs to feel contempt for the law and so increases the
tendency of both Jews and Arabs to take the law into their own hands.

But more important, the pro-Arab discrimination of Israel's political and law
enforcement arms has facilitated the radicalization of Arab Israeli society. Far
from appeasing them, Israel has shown them that they are right to reject its
authority. And their rejection of Israel - like their Palestinian Arab
brethren's rejection of Israel - only increases as Israel seeks to appease them.
By opting not to assert its authority over Arabs in Israel and the Palestinian
Authority, by refraining from punishing their lawlessness and aggression against
Jews, and even rewarding it, Israel guarantees that yet more dangerous attacks
will soon follow.

caroline@carolineglick.com

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October 17, 2008 Friday

Hardman's humanity

BYLINE: DAVID HOROVITZ

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1164 words

HIGHLIGHT: Leslie Hardman's life, to this respectful former congregant, was
lived in the spirit of Hillel's summary of Jewish principles. EDITOR'S NOTES

My childhood rabbi died last week.

For 35 years - from the late 1940s to the early 1980s - Rev. Leslie Hardman was
the rabbi of Hendon United Synagogue, better known as Raleigh Close.

He it was, on the occasion of my bar mitzva, who presented me with the
traditional gift of a Humash and told me, as he told all bar mitzva boys, that
if I read it well, I'd be well-read, and if I kept it carefully, I'd be well-
kept.

A man who managed to convey gravitas, warmth, wisdom and dependability while
also inspiring a goodly degree of awe, Hardman, again as he did with all bar
mitzva boys, completed that welcome message into adulthood by pinching me, not
too hard, on the cheek. It was a gesture of avuncular familiarity and friendship
that seemed to suggest he was confident I could cope with my new burdens.

For his part, Hardman carried the weightiest of burdens for six decades and
more, and it seemed to color his entire orientation as an exemplar and as a
religious guide. How could it not?

As a 32-year-old chaplain in the British Army, stationed first in Holland and
then in Germany, Hardman entered the Nazi death camp Bergen-Belsen the day after
its liberation, in mid-April 1945. He had been told by his commanding officer
that he was needed there: "We have uncovered a concentration camp," he later
recalled the colonel telling him. "It is horrible, ghastly, sickening. Most of
the inmates are your people. You should go there now. They need you."

He found thousands of corpses awaiting burial - and many thousands more on the
very brink of death.

"Towards me came what seemed to be the remnants of a holocaust - a staggering
mass of blackened skin and bones, held together somehow with filthy rags," he
wrote 13 years later in his book The Survivors: The Story of the Belsen Remnant.
"'My God, the dead walk,' I cried aloud, but I did not recognize my voice."

The young chaplain found his voice soon enough, however, and did his
extraordinary best to minister to the survivors - listening and praying and
talking. Some of those who regained their strength and spirit would later hail
his efforts and the inspirational hope that this man of their faith, with the
Magen David on his uniform, brought to them. Others though, many others of that
remnant he encountered, were past healing.

Hardman said Kaddish for the dead, and sought to ensure, even as the broken
bodies were being dumped into mass graves in a camp where typhus was widespread,
that they were buried with a modicum of dignity.

"If all the trees in the world turned into pens, all the waters in the oceans
turned into ink and the heavens turned into paper, it would still be
insufficient material to describe the horrors these people suffered under the
SS," Hardman told the BBC years later, in a quotation widely cited in the
obituaries that have eulogized him in British newspapers these past few days. He
also lamented that "far too many people have got away" with their parts in the
genocide. "They have hardly scratched the surface of the enormity of this evil."

Hardman may have come close in those terrible days to giving up his fealty to a
God who could have countenanced such horror - "some of the words of the prayers
I said at Belsen stuck in my throat," he would acknowledge, while insisting that
"I didn't lose my faith." But he seems ultimately to have been strengthened in
his beliefs - in the Jewish codes of behavior designed to ensure that we
overcome humanity's base instincts, and in the imperative for a strong Jewish
state that would ensure his people were never vulnerable to such instincts
again.

His approach to Judaism was both firm and embracing. He scrapped Raleigh Close's
male-female choir and frowned on congregational chatter during services. But he
also took a relatively liberal view on conversion, supported maverick United
Synagogue rabbinical colleague Louis Jacobs, and would memorably tell our
congregation that while he'd much rather we properly observe Shabbat, if we
didn't, he'd nevertheless prefer we drove to shul and parked a short distance
away, than that we not come at all.

It was Hardman, grave and deliberate from the pulpit, who told our congregation
in closeted northwest London 35 years ago that Israel was fighting for its life
on the most solemn day of the Jewish calendar, Hardman who brought home to us
that our unique sovereign refuge from a repetition of the horrors he had been
fated to confront was now in real danger.

He was profoundly committed to Israel, championed its cause, worried about its
security, had children and then grandchildren here, and visited unfailingly year
in, year out. Indeed, he was last interviewed in The Jerusalem Post on Succot
two years ago, when he and his wife, Josi, who passed away last year, were
visiting to mark their 70th anniversary.

That abiding concern for Israel's well-being was the inevitable consequence of
the shocking exposure, all those decades ago, to the capacity for man to do the
unthinkable to his fellow man. Yet Hardman never allowed his own fundamental
decency to be compromised by those memories.

THE DEATH of this admirable man comes as Israel grapples with the rise of
another would-be genocidal power that has the Jews firmly in its sights, and an
international community again slow to recognize the danger.

His passing also coincides with the renewed evidence of Israel's own perilous,
powder-keg internal reality - the intermittent, minor outbursts of Jew against
Jew violence and, in Acre last week, of Jewish-Muslim confrontation.

Ostensible eyewitness accounts of what started the trouble in Acre would seem to
indicate that it could so easily have been avoided. According to one account I
heard, Jamal Taufik's Yom Kippur driving route elicited angry but nonviolent
objections from a small group of Jewish pedestrians he passed by. Infuriated at
their protest, he sped away with a screech of tires and blaring music, prompting
fears among others nearby that he was bent on some kind of nationalist road rage
attack. This, in turn, led to stone-throwing at his car. And Taufik, in turn,
telephoned a relative with the panicked call that he was being attacked. Cue a
rising spiral of confrontation, where what was needed was restraint.

The impulse to confrontation is all too sadly evident in too many other aspects
of all our daily lives - in mundane encounters in stores, on the roads, in
schools, at work. Along the vast scale, from irritating minor insult to
shattering mass murder, the root is the same: an absent respect for one's fellow
man.

SEARED BY his immersion in the evils of World War II, Leslie Hardman's life, to
this respectful former congregant, was lived in the spirit of Hillel's summary
of Jewish principles: That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow.

In an age where mankind has perfected means of killing more rapid and efficient
than ever before, that message, and those inspirational figures like Hardman who
live by it and disseminate it, are more precious than ever.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: 'SOME OF the words of the prayers I said at Belsen stuck in
my throat... [but] I didn't lose my faith.' Leslie Hardman, and standing beside
Mass Grave 2 at Belsen, April 25, 1945. Some 50,000 people perished in the camp,
including Anne Frank, who died of typhus there just weeks before liberation.
(Credit: Imperial War Museum)

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October 17, 2008 Friday

A time for healing

BYLINE: DAVID KIMCHE

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1113 words

Like so many of my countrymen on Yom Kippur, I made my way to the local
synagogue for the Kol Nidrei service. After the dramatic opening Kol Nidrei
prayer, the cantor repeats three times, in order to underline its importance,
the following passage, whose English translation reads: "And it shall be
forgiven to the whole congregation of the children of Israel, and to the
stranger who sojourneth among them; for all the people act ignorantly."

Forgiveness? We beseech the Lord our God to forgive, but we ourselves don't know
the meaning of the word. Those thoughts came to my mind when I read of the
rioting in Acre.

So, OK, an Arab made a very bad mistake and drove into a Jewish neighborhood on
Yom Kippur, understandably arousing the ire of those living there. He apologized
for his mistake, and came to the Knesset so that the entire population of Israel
should know of his apology. Fine. But forgiveness? "You should be behind bars.
You are lying," was the shouted response of one of the leaders of the religious
MKs, Effi Eitam.

Didn't Effie Eitam go to synagogue for the Kol Nidrei prayers? Didn't he repeat
three times the prayer for forgiveness for the stranger in our midst?

Poverty, high unemployment figures (three times the national average),
discrimination and poor education form the backdrop to the tension that led to
the riots in Acre on Yom Kippur. A similar situation exists in other towns with
mixed populations in Israel. The danger of a recurrence of the violence is ever
present. There are extremist hotheads, Arabs and Jews, who spread rumors one
against the other and who will exploit any excuse to make trouble, just as
happened in Acre.

Our religious leaders should be in the forefront of the effort to strengthen
coexistence and prevent a repeat performance of the ugly scenes we saw in Acre.
Luckily, President Shimon Peres convinced the chief rabbis to accompany him on
his visit to the city last Monday. At least that offset to a certain extent the
disgraceful outburst in the Knesset, and the fact that in Acre, the city's chief
rabbi refused to echo the proclamation of the local Arab leaders seeking to
restore calm to the city.

A FEW years ago one of the leading lawyers in Egypt, a former ambassador in
Moscow, asked to meet with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the Shas spiritual leader and
former chief rabbi. He had asked to visit Yosef in order to better understand
the attitude of a person he considered to be a major factor in Israeli society.
Aryeh Deri organized the meeting.

The Egyptian came to the rabbi's house accompanied by a Palestinian who is now
the foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, and a Jordanian who had been
the commander of the Jordanian Air Force.

"He speaks as if he were a member of 'Peace Now,'" the former Egyptian
ambassador exclaimed of Yosef in utter disbelief after the meeting. His
colleagues concurred, adding their own remarks to relay their astonishment at
what they had heard.

We were standing on the pavement outside the rabbi's home in Jerusalem. For the
past hour we had listened to the rabbi's views on how to solve the conflict
between Israel and the Palestinians. Yosef had lectured his interlocutors on the
need for peace between Israel and her neighbors and on the sanctity of human
life.

"Life is sacred, not land," he stressed repeatedly. He decried the policies of
those who would be willing to spill blood for the sake of so-called sanctity of
land.

Turning to another subject, the rabbi declared: "If I could help the family of
Eli Cohen [the Israeli Mossad agent who was hanged in Damascus in 1965], by
bringing back his remains for a Jewish burial in Israel, I would go personally
to Damascus and plead with the Syrian ruler for the need for peace."

His visitors were visibly impressed by Yosef's moderate views.

That meeting took place several years ago, when Deri still lorded over Shas.
What a difference, then and now! Compare that meeting to the remarks made these
last weeks by Industry and Trade Minister Eli Yishai, who took over the helm of
Shas when Deri was forced to leave. The mere thought that the government might
still reach a peace deal - albeit a "shelf agreement" not for immediate
implementation - with the PA had him up in arms. What a difference between his
extremist, anti-peace attitude and the views that his mentor, Rabbi Ovadia, had
expounded to his Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian guests a few short years
ago.

The Palestinians, it must be said, have much to blame for the move to greater
extremism in Israeli society, an extremism evinced so clearly in the change that
has occurred in Shas. The rise of Hamas, the refusal to recognize Israel as a
Jewish state, the continuing violence and the hate propaganda in the Palestinian
media have all contributed to turning so many Israelis against peace and towards
the belief that no good can come out of any agreement with the Palestinians.

Yet we would expect our religious leaders to act to restrain the move to
extremism in our own population. How many times does Eli Yishai, for instance,
utter the word "peace" when he says his daily prayers?

We have yet to see a strong denunciation by rabbis or by leaders of the
religious parties of the violence committed daily by religious youth in the
territories, alongside the condemnations of the violence committed by the
Palestinians. How refreshing it would be if, for example, Rabbi Yosef were to
take a strong public stand along the lines of the remarks he had made to his
Arab guests a few years ago.

Instead of the shouting match that took place in the Knesset Internal Affairs
Committee when Jamal Taufik came to apologize for driving into a Jewish
neighborhood on Yom Kippur ("I have made a mistake. I want to ask for
forgiveness"), we should have heard a dignified condemnation of the violence
that occurred, committed by Jews and Arabs alike, in the streets of Acre.

OUR NEW government will in all likelihood be installed in the coming days. It
must not ignore the events that have occurred in Acre. We have more than a
million people in our midst who are Palestinian Arabs but who are, nevertheless,
Israeli citizens.

For the past 60 years of the existence of the modern State of Israel they have
been discriminated against; their schools and education system don't match up to
the Israeli norm; the funds allocated for infrastructure in the Arab sector are
minimal; building permits are withheld; and unemployment in the Arab towns is
rampant.

We must not continue to sweep their problems under the carpet and allow their
resentment at the discrimination to fester. If we do, we will have more Acres,
more unrest and more rioting - and we will only have ourselves to blame.

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October 17, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Sara Smith, Toby Willig

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 252 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

LOSE THE INTERNATIONALISM

Re: "Jerusalem is the most important city in the world," October 3.

Had we wanted an "international city," we would have remained in Manhattan. Jews
have a hard enough time clarifying Jerusalem's Jewish status to the world; I
don't need the head of my city proclaiming its "internationalism."

Mayoral candidate Arkadi Gaydamak's idea for Jews and Arabs to live next door to
each other should be shelved for such time when "swords shall be turned into
plowshares" and "the lion shall lie down with the lamb."

Sara Smith

Jerusalem

ARTFUL DEVICE

Jerusalem should be very pleased at the demonstration of confidence by the Art
Jerusalem exhibition of Israeli and international artists, in holding such a
major event in the Russian Compound during Succot. So many sons of Israel were
held captive and tortured in the area by the British prior to the War of
Independence in what is today's Museum of the Underground Prisoners. We need to
know much more about the story of the Russian Compound and its role in the
history of Jerusalem.

We also need to know much more about the valiant efforts even then to keep
Jerusalem united, and the terrible consequences of not having a united city. I
propose that a replica of Mandelbaum Gate, once a checkpoint between the Israeli
and Jordanian sectors of Jerusalem, be reproduced. I am sure that the sight of
the gate and the policemen controlling border crossings will be enough to put to
rest forever the idea that Jerusalem can be divided.

Toby Willig, Jerusalem

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October 17, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Fruma Rosenthal, Daniel Ashkenazy, Yisrael Medad, Kay Weinberger

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 553 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Confusing ends and means

Sir, - Amotz Asa-El compares Shas's financial demands to the financial maneuvers
of the Iranian regime and thus confuses ends and means ("Livni's other Iranian
challenge," October 10). Shas's goal has always been to provide as best it can
for its constituents, mostly the poor of Sephardi descent. That provision has
been Shas's stated goal from its inception, and it makes no pretense to the
contrary. In a democracy, that is its right.

Israel has many parties whose efforts have been directed to a particular
demographic group. Shas is successful, it wins large numbers of mandates and is
thus in a position to make demands and wring as much as it can from the powers
that be. That is the way the game is played in Israel, like it or not. Someone
has to look to this constituency, and Shas does. Mr. Asa-El may not like an
educational system "that discourages cultural enlightenment," but according to
Treasury statistics, 80% of the poor work, and that includes a large number of
Shas voters.

To compare Shas to the murderous Iranian regime, whose sudden generosity to
Iran's poor is merely a cynical means of hanging onto power, is incorrect - and
extremely offensive.

FRUMA ROSENTHAL

Jerusalem

Elect aliya

Sir, - In Canada, unlike in Israel, rather than placing a slip of paper in an
envelope, the act of voting requires placing a mark on the ballot beside the
name of a candidate representing a particular party ("A tale of two booths,"
Rhonda Spivak, October 10).

My Canadian friends: Come on aliya, and you won't have elections on Jewish
holidays.

DANIEL ASHKENAZY

Jerusalem

Ignore the Jewish element

Sir, - Marilyn Henry takes up the cause of the author of Suite Francaise, who
has been termed a "self-hating Jew." Who are we to judge her? she asks.

Born in 1903, Irene Nemirovsky married a Jew at age 23, but three years later
published her first novel with a negative Jewish stereotype: the Jewish banker.
Denied French citizenship in 1938, she converted to Catholicism the next year
and published stories in two anti-Semitic magazines, probably to hide her
family's Jewish origins.

As Ruth Franklin pointed out in The New Republic (January 30), a rather
politically liberal forum, Nemirovsky pandered "to the forces of reaction, to
the fascist right [with] stories of corrupt Jews" and saw herself as so
un-Jewish that she considered it proper to write a personal plea to Marshal
Petain to avoid deportation.

As Henry suggests, to purge our bookshelves of her would be ridiculous. All one
need do is ignore Nemirovsky's Jewishness quotient and simply read her works as
literature ("'Woman of Letters,'" October 10).

YISRAEL MEDAD

Shiloh

Abreast of 'The Archers'

Sir - In his comprehensive review of Linda Grant's new book The Clothes on Their
Backs ("The nature of suffering," October 10) Ori Golan referred to his request
to the author for an update on The Archers, Britain's longest-running radio
drama.

As a self-confessed "Archers addict" - there are millions in the UK but possibly
rather few in Israel - I am happy to let Mr. Golan know that he can listen to
each Archers episode on a daily basis on his computer, via the BBC's Web site
(www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers). If he is unable to tune in, I will be happy to
share the latest news from Ambridge with him any time.

KAY WEINBERGER, Jerusalem

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October 17, 2008 Friday

The '08 crash - early conclusions

BYLINE: AMOTZ ASA-EL

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1020 words

HIGHLIGHT: Middle Israel

At this writing it is too early to say how bad the '08 market crash will get,
how long it will last and how rude the subsequent awakening will prove.

And yet with leading stock markets tumbling 30 percent in recent weeks; major
banks, insurers and investment houses taken over, nationalized or altogether
collapsed; and with Washington's efforts to affect the situation about as
effective as reading a newspaper against the wind, some conclusions can already
be drawn.

First of all, John McCain's candidacy has been clobbered; the market trauma is
too massive, the administration's response too confused and ineffective and the
repercussions to the middle class will have to be harsh. It's become an economic
election, and most voters are likely to attribute this catastrophe to the
Republicans. In fact, chances are high the GOP will pay in more than one term,
even if not the 20 years it spent in opposition following the Great Crash.
Moreover, McCain's economic shallowness, now compounded by his running mate's,
makes it difficult to vote for him even regardless of his affiliation.

Just where a Barack Obama presidency will lead is an entirely different
question. Chances that he will emerge an FDR are low, if not for any other
reason than because the man who ended the Great Depression brought with him some
valuable executive experience as governor of New York and before that as
undersecretary of the navy. He knew to both doubt and work the bureaucracy;
Obama lacks policymaking experience, as even The New Yorker observed in its
unsurprising endorsement last week. And yet in a few weeks he will likely be
tasked with restabilizing and inspiring the global economy. And when that
transition arrives, the Republican Party will do well to ask itself where it
failed - where it failed in crowning George W. Bush, where it failed in failing
to oversee his actions and inactions and where it failed in designating his
successor.

THE SECOND conclusion is that this tsunami will put capitalism on the defensive
for the first time since the fall of communism.

With Britain effectively nationalizing its banks and even the US partly
following suit, the era of unbridled economic freedom as an international bon
ton is now drawing to a close, a quarter of a century after its launch by
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Clearly, the economic pendulum is swinging
back to the Left, as politicians, economists and ordinary people unwittingly
echo the sages' timeless insight that "if not for government authority, people
would swallow each other alive."

Capitalism's many enemies had awaited this moment for decades, following in
despair its successive gains, beginning with Deng Xiaoping's dismantling of
China's socialism, then with the unraveling of the East Bloc and finally with
India's and continental Europe's retreats from their distinctive versions of
socialism.

Now, with George W. Bush himself conceding that only government intervention can
solve the current market crisis, temptation is high to question capitalism's
very validity. Well, that would be ludicrous.

Not only because the alternatives, including all the mild varieties of social
democracy from Keynesianism to the Swedish model, have been tested empirically
and proven untenable, but because what has now transpired is not the result of
capitalism's activation - but of its abuse. And that abuse constitutes the moral
failure that is at the heart of the Second Great Crash.

THERE ARE two levels to the moral failing which has led us where we have
arrived: the financial and the historic.

Financially what began with the manipulation of credit in the American housing
market soon caused a price collapse, as weak lenders failed to repay exorbitant
mortgages, which in turn made them sell their houses all at once, which then
made prices fall and foreclosures abound.

Now it suddenly emerged that assorted financial institutions had been
excessively invested in the housing market - both when compared to their other
investments and in terms of their overall ratio of investments to paid capital.
That is how some of them could not sustain a collapse in the housing markets.

Meanwhile, banks that were excessively invested in securities that were tied to
the housing market also began to teeter and sell assets, but in doing so only
exacerbated the glut, further depressing the markets and reducing their own
liquidity. Beyond there, up in the high-management echelons, executives whose
pay was linked to their success in expanding sales and profits were pushed to
exceed reasonable risk and effectively gamble. This, in a nutshell, is what
happened financially.

Morally, all this added up to a culture of gambling, one that had lost touch
with textbook capitalism, where caution and responsibility are hallmarks.

THE MORAL collapse had its financial turning point in 2004, when the Federal
Reserve ignored clear signs that the housing market was ill, and still left
credit at a ridiculously low rate of 1 percent. With credit so cheap, it is no
wonder that people were tempted to abuse it.

However, the Fed's dereliction that fateful moment was but a detail in a broader
picture whereby America responded with conceit the morning after the end of the
Cold War.

With its ideological, strategic and economic victory swift, unequivocal and
unexpected, America's leaders abandoned themselves to the devices of
self-congratulation. It never crossed their minds that their great nation, too,
might have to correct a thing or two about the way it conducts its own life.
This mind frame was so deeply rooted that it even survived 9/11, a trauma that
in fact made a self-righteous America embark on a world-mending crusade, the
gist of which was: "We know how to run countries, and will now make the rest of
you do as we do." Well, America sure has had remarkable credentials in running
countries, both its and others', but in recent years some things in its own
country had really spun out of control, both financially and morally. Now all
this must be mended regardless of America's designs abroad, but even more so if
it is to remain in the business of mending the world.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Demonstrators on Capitol Hill last week. Catastrophe for the
Republicans. (Credit: AP)

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October 17, 2008 Friday

Aunt Fannie's refrigerator

BYLINE: SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 1253 words

HIGHLIGHT: In the Diaspora

For as long as I've visited my Aunt Fannie and Uncle Danny, meaning as many of
my 53 years as I can remember, I've been fascinated by their refrigerator. There
must be about two cubic inches of air inside it. The rest of the space has been
filled with tuna salad, vegetable croquettes, whipped cream cheese, seltzer,
iceberg lettuce and probably the planet's last remaining cans of Carling Black
Label beer.

Not that you'd immediately notice all the contents. Aunt Fannie specializes in
repackaging any item, whether newly bought or left over, that can be fitted into
a plastic container, which itself probably began life holding margarine on a
supermarket shelf. These containers she then arranges with a jigsaw master's
brilliance, so that the refrigerator holds the maximum amount of edible
sustenance possible.

The reason Aunt Fannie has practiced her particular art is that she and Uncle
Danny lived through the Great Depression. As their nephew, the son of Fannie's
sister Eleanor, I knew that much family history. So while I found amusement in
Aunt Fannie's refrigerator, I also understood it as the physical evidence of the
psychic mark inscribed by the Great Depression. Even into their 80s, my aunt and
uncle could not stop preparing for the next stretch of hard times.

Being a card-carrying baby boomer - which these days means the card from the
AARP you get offered at age 50, even if you're still decades away from being a
"retired person" - I never saw much relevance to my life in the refrigerator's
cautionary tale. I had been through recessions, especially the sharp drop in the
early 1980s. Back then, I watched a newspaper I had previously worked for shut
down, covered factory closings in New England as a cub reporter for The New York
Times and once interviewed the department-store Santa in a blue-collar town who
had kids asking him to bring daddy a job for Christmas. But the kind of sweeping
economic collapse of the Great Depression seemed an impossibility. Hadn't the
United States in the New Deal enacted exactly the sort of protections that would
stop a repeat before it happened?

Well, the experience of being an American these last several weeks has been to
come to wonder just how impossible Great Depression II actually is. I'm not the
sort of person given to panic on money matters, and I've never counted on the
stock market for my income. When the dot-com bust and September 11 combined to
drive down by half the first investment account I'd ever opened, I took a paper
loss for tax purposes and got back in to watch the account grow steadily over
the next seven years.

WHICH BRINGS me, like my American landsmen, to late September and early October
2008, which have been days of awe in a way the sages never imagined. The money I
have in the market, like nearly everybody else's, has lost something like 40
percent of its value in a matter of weeks. I say this not to complain. My
investments have always been money for down the road, for college tuition for my
children, which is still a few years off. Let's just say that never has the
lifetime job security of being a tenured professor, as I am at Columbia
University, seemed so integral.

In the part of my life outside the classroom, I earn my keep as a journalist and
author, and the written-word industry was in a tailspin a year before the
current turbulence. An education column I used to write for The New York Times
no longer exists; the paper a few months ago made the first involuntary layoffs
in its history. An acquaintance who is an award-winning religion reporter got
cut loose after a dozen years by a major newspaper in Florida. A former student
who edits a Jewish magazine just learned it's suspending publication. The New
York Sun, a daily for which several friends wrote and edited, closed last week.

For me and my ilk, clicking on the Dow every five minutes, watching the fever
line plunge into hypothermia territory, there's a lesson, and one altogether
relevant to this election season. I learned in college all about the New Deal
and its reforms of the free market, the way activist government saved capitalism
from itself. For most of my adulthood, though, the popular orthodoxy of American
politics has been that, in Ronald Reagan's phrase, "government is not the
solution; government is the problem." Even Bill Clinton had to fight a
rear-guard action, scaling back and toughening up failed government programs
like welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) in order to preserve the
broader notion of the welfare state.

The biggest help Clinton ever got was from his nemesis, Newt Gingrich.
Overreaching the mandate that swept the conservatives of the "Contract With
America" movement into control of Congress, Gingrich let the federal government
shut down in 1995 rather than pass a budget he considered too large. When
everyday citizens, even those who parroted the anti-Washington pablum, realized
that no federal government meant the local post office and the national parks
were shutting down, the backlash hit the Republicans.

STILL, THE moment of clarity did not last. A nearly religious belief in the
infallibility of the market reigned again during George W. Bush's eight years as
president. Efforts to regulate the latest generation of abstruse investment
products - which were ultimately tied to mortgages peddled to people who could
not remotely afford them - were scoffed at by no less than Alan Greenspan, guru
of the Federal Reserve. As long as somebody else came along to pay even more for
an already wildly overpriced house, the Ponzi game went on.

Now that it has gone haywire, sending collateral damage throughout the US
economy and literally around the world, lo and behold, all but the most
hidebound libertarians are looking to Washington. And nothing Washington has
done, at least as I write these words on October 10, has reversed the tide of
fright and sale. There is a cynical kind of justice, I suppose, in the futility
of a belated turn to the maligned public sector. As other commentators have put
it, the Wall Street mavens and moguls want capitalism when they're making money
and socialism when they're losing it.

The only problem, of course, is that their demise will drag a lot of the rest of
us along. I can only wait for the bottom to be struck, for some kind of
stability to return and for the luster to forever fall off the gospel of the
free market.

I called Aunt Fannie and Uncle Danny the other day to see what they thought of
all the chaos, if it brought back Depression nightmares. They certainly had
enough bad memories. My grandmother, Fannie's mother, sometimes had to scavenge
rotten vegetables from the pushcart market in the East Bronx because her husband
was out of work so long. Uncle Danny's family moved something like 20 times
during the Depression years, skipping out on apartments at the end of the month
or two of free rent that desperate landlords were offering to entice paying
tenants. One of the landlords they stiffed was the cousin of Danny's father.

Interestingly, though, Aunt Fannie and Uncle Danny sounded fairly sanguine on
the phone. Having endured one depression, they had never bought stocks. Their
retirement money was in cash bank accounts or certificates of deposit, eminently
safe products. They never took the kind of financial chances that might have let
them live large, but for their prudent judgment and modest tastes they are
luxuriating in peace of mind amid the maelstrom. They kept the refrigerator
full.

www.samuelfreedman.com

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October 17, 2008 Friday

Borders

BYLINE: NAOMI CHAZAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1035 words

HIGHLIGHT: Critical Currents

The return from the month-long holiday break next week is going to be
particularly traumatic. The collapse of global financial markets, coupled with
the outbreak of Arab-Jewish riots in Acre, demands a drastic shift in
priorities. The temptation to deal primarily with the economic conundrum will
surely be immense, given the effects of the crisis on the country's economy and
the well-being of its citizens. Relegating the issue of intergroup relations to
the sidelines and reducing it to a minor local matter, however, would be a
strategic mistake of the highest order.

The robustness of Israeli society is, above all, a function of its ability to
foster joint living in a multicultural society seriously divided along ethnic,
religious, socioeconomic, ideological and national lines. This is not merely an
internal question; it is integrally linked to the ongoing conflict between
Israel and its neighbors. Without internationally recognized boundaries, the
most virulent forms of prejudice and discrimination threaten to infiltrate into
virtually every corner of the country and into all aspects of the lives of its
citizens.

The absence of borders is, indeed, the source of many of our security and
legitimacy problems. But it has normative and legal implications as well.
Democratic societies are defined by the restraints they place on themselves
through the delineation of accepted rules of the game and through constitutional
protections for all citizens (and especially for minorities). No democracy can
survive, let alone thrive, without such clear-cut behavioral guidelines. These
have been repeatedly violated in recent years. Without the demarcation of
physical boundaries, it is virtually impossible to impose constraints in other
areas. If current trends continue unabated, they may yet prove to be the prelude
to civil war.

The Acre events must be viewed within this broad context of indeterminate
borders and the climate of lawlessness it has fostered. There is a close
connection between instances of recurring clashes between Palestinians and
Israelis and the growing penchant to flout the law, which has become a national
pastime not only in schoolyards and on the roads, but also in the uppermost
echelons of government.

The immediate backdrop to this year's Yom Kippur riots may be found in seemingly
disconnected incidents which highlight the dangers inherent in blurred
boundaries. The series of unbridled attacks by extremist settlers on Palestinian
civilians in recent months, at times leading to open confrontations with IDF
soldiers called in to restore order, provide one example. The unorganized
assaults by individual Palestinians on Jewish civilians at Mercaz Harav, Jaffa
Road and Independence Park in Jerusalem offer further evidence of this same
syndrome. When combined with economic trepidation, growing mutual suspicion, raw
nerves and a heightened rhetoric of intolerance, daily exchanges are inevitably
affected. The absence of official resolve can much too easily assume alarming
populist dimensions.

IN THESE circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the holiday season has been
marred by the worst sort of intercommunal conflagration in a city supposedly far
removed from the center of the conflict. The festering acrimony nurtured by
decades of inaction burst out - once again - into the streets. Unlike the events
of October 2000, however, when Palestinian citizens of Israel were embroiled in
direct confrontations with the police, this time Jews and Arabs clashed openly
with each other while law enforcement agencies desperately attempted to separate
the warring groups. The anomalies of ambiguity on the Israeli-Palestinian front
are penetrating demonstratively into the heart of the country.

This can best be seen in the personal attack on Prof. Ze'ev Sternhell several
weeks ago. When political disagreement devolves into purposeful violence, then
all limits on acceptable behavior in democratic societies are broken. Here,
precisely because Jews attacked a Jew who has consistently cautioned against the
adverse effects of continued occupation, the linkage between the lack of
physical boundaries and the loosening of normative constraints is especially
magnified.

There is a direct line between these - and other - cases of politically driven
unrest and disorder. They all point to a truly terrifying deterioration in
relations not only between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,
but among Israeli citizens themselves.

The roots of this domestic malaise have been apparent for quite some time. They
go back to the systemic discrimination against Arab citizens - individually and
collectively - since the creation of the state. They have been fed by
inequitable allocations of goods and services, by woefully inadequate
educational facilities and by neglected infrastructures. Most significantly,
they have been nurtured by an inability (or and unwillingness) to accept the
fact that 20 percent of the population are Palestinians by nationality and
Israeli by citizenship, with all the rights that this status entails. When the
lack of respect for one group gains credence, it opens the road to disdain for
others in one's midst as well.

What happened in Acre is not an isolated incident. It is an alarm bell that the
country can ignore only at its peril. Any further delay in establishing a firm
border with an independent Palestinian state will tear Israel apart. The
alternative to a negotiated two-state solution and the end of the occupation is
not a one-state solution, but a system of institutionalized inequality which
cannot but unleash increased violence both externally and domestically. The end
result will be the total breakdown of the political, economic and social fabric
of the country.

Borders - physical, ethical, normative and legal - are the backbone of free
societies. Dealing with the economic meltdown may be the most obvious on the
post-holiday checklist. Addressing the resolution of the conflict is by far the
most significant. For all this and more, a strong government is indispensable.
Until an alternative coalition is formed or new elections are called, these
remain the challenges of the lame duck Olmert administration.

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October 17, 2008 Friday

Long love MAPAI

BYLINE: SARAH HONIG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1221 words

HIGHLIGHT: Another Tack

Israel's a weird place. We relish extremes. During our socialist phase - under
the pre-state and early-state hegemony of Mapai (yesteryear's acronym for the
Israel Labor Party) - we voluntarily were the USSR's ideological quasi-outpost,
albeit a democratic-cum-erratic one. Young Israel was tied to Mother Russia by
sentimental bonds, yet was quite unwilling to endure communist hardships.

However, with socialism as their rallying banner, then-ruling elites forced
returning Israelis, for instance, to muck up fridges purchased abroad because
only used goods were allowed in without exorbitant tariffs. Why import fridges?
Because in the heyday of state control (for which many of our headliners and
self-acclaimed experts now profess nostalgia), you had to wait your turn for a
locally-produced appliance. If you couldn't pull the right strings or exploit
useful connections, it could have taken years.

The wait for a telephone was more excruciating. It was a privilege for which you
shelled out plenty, while the well-placed apparatchik pretended to do you a
favor.

Those were the wonderful days in which if you dared bring in a reel-to-reel
audio-recorder, you could count on a begrudging customs officer to unwind the
tape and measure it. Only so many meters of tape could be imported and no more.

Foreign currency controls led to the blossoming of the black market. Life's
hypocrisies were straightforward and predictable. Everyone knew there was a
righteous faade and a thriving subterranean reality. Higher-ups sanctimoniously
preached to hard-working commoners and berated them for breaching class
solidarity. A kid who flaunted a new plaything was denounced as a bourgani
(bourgeois). No youngster quite knew what bourgani meant, but it was a
pejorative.

Self-satisfied socialists addressed each other as haver (comrade) - which was
Bill Clinton's parting epithet for Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin indeed came from
sterling socialist stock (his mother, Rosa Cohen, was a solid rock of the
Histadrut establishment). While Israelis groaned under stringent bureaucratic
restrictions, he kept an illicit bank account in America (even if in the wife's
name). The transgression wasn't so awful in itself. It shouldn't have been made
an offense to begin with. Rabin, though, did nothing to decriminalize it for Mr.
and Ms. Average Israeli, while allowing himself exemption from rules imposed
ruthlessly on others.

THE EXPOSURE of Rabin's lapse contributed to Labor's 1977 defeat. Thereafter
Israel began steadily gravitating to the other extreme. Menachem Begin's
government took hesitant first steps. In time our universities churned out
enough free-marketers of the Friedman-Thatcher-Reagan mold to speed along the
reaction against Marx, Lenin, Borochov, A.D. Gordon et al. New-breed socialist
converts to no- holds-barred capitalism, mind you, weren't averse to continue
adhering to old-left ultra-dovish views and advocate in their infinite wisdom
that Israel forthwith divest itself of all its existentially vital strategic
assets. Apparently a miniature vulnerable nine-mile-wide state - crammed into
what fellow ultra-dove Abba Eban dubbed "the Auschwitz lines" - is good for
business. What's good for business is perforce good for the country.

And so, a new fad was born - subscribed to ironically also by sorts who kept
pompously attesting to their socialist credentials. Helter-skelter we got
uncontrollably globalized and began privatizing everything with frenzy,
including even the Post Office. If once publicly-owned concerns were considered
preferable, now they're objects of revulsion. There's even talk of privatizing
prisons.

If once bosses couldn't fire the worst incompetents on their payroll, today the
most diligent wage-earners feel unsafe. Inscrutable "reorganization" can make
valuable employees redundant overnight.

THAT SAID, one thing remains unalterable: There's an underlying schizophrenic
Israeli inclination to boastfulness, coupled curiously with deep-set
insecurities and inferiority complexes. As equity markets teeter- tottered
worldwide and our bourse nose-dived in panic, spectacular hubris manifested. We
simultaneously shook in our sandals and sang our own praises for doing things
better than Wall Street, for regulating more, for being wiser. Wall Street could
come to Rehov Ahad Ha'am for a lesson or two.

The fact is that we possessed inordinate hubris even in Israel's infancy, when
we subsisted on handouts and barely emerged from severe austerity and food
rationing. Even then, we were know-it-alls, resplendent in progressive
socialism, rejecting decadent Western influences and refusing to admit TV to our
impoverished land, lest our altruistic youth be corrupted.

No way, we now gloat, would we in the land of red tape make mortgages as easily
available as Fannie and Freddie did. Of course, we did manage a bad bubble
ourselves about a quarter of a century ago, when bank share values here were
disastrously inflated. True, our government eventually stepped in and
effectively saved our entire financial system from imploding. Now, crow local
braggarts, the Americans follow in our footsteps, although clearly more clumsily
and less efficiently. They emulate what we did in 1985.

HOW LIKE the supercilious conceit which Ephraim Kishon satirized back in the
1950s, by facetiously proposing a union of equals between Israel and the USA.

The new flag, he envisioned, would feature "two stars instead of 50" and the two
nations would "merge into a political federation, thereby giving birth - instead
of two states, until now unnecessarily and wastefully separated - to a powerful
federated unit named Monolithic Alliance, Previously America and Israel (MAPAI).

"This natural process of union is fully justified by the closeness of the twin
countries, which are separated only by the Mediterranean and the Atlantic... The
area of the federation will extend over 3,632,085 sq. miles, an increase of
45,000% for Israel... It goes without saying that Israel is to guarantee
America's present borders... The armed forces of the two states will also be
completely merged. The joint HQ is to reside in Ramat Gan. Israel's armaments
industry will most certainly put its entire output at the disposal of the Joint
Army... At the personal request of the finance minister, the new HQ will publish
in the very near future a calming statement to the effect that Israeli officers'
pay won't be raised after the union... but the fine for importing low-cost
phonograph records from America will be raised... The new federation is eagerly
tearing down the partitions that so far separated the economies of the two
states."

And a good thing too. Obviously Israelis are savvier. As Kishon clairvoyantly
forecast all those decades ago, our unique-brand old-time socialism is
triumphantly vindicated. Any simpleton can see that America belatedly took a
leaf out of Israel's book and essentially nationalized (for now) private
enterprises, as Israel (with American underwriting) once bailed out its crashing
banks. America mimics us!

Oops, in the intervening years we rushed to privatize all over the place and
uber-Americanize with super- capitalist vengeance. Oops, we better consider a
wee course-correction, a tad of a U-turn to catch up with our other MAPAI half,
so we can both be on the same MAPAI page. Long live MAPAI!

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Dealing room at the Israeli First International Bank in Tel
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October 17, 2008 Friday

To the dustbin of history

BYLINE: Larry Derfner

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 794 words

HIGHLIGHT: RATTLING THE CAGE

If not for the crisis on Wall Street, John McCain would likely be on his way to
the White House now, with Sarah Palin as his heir apparent. They had overtaken
Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the polls early last month on the strength of
Palin's phenomenal debut, and were starting to open up a lead. Then, on
September 15, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the stock market fell 500
points, and the race began to turn back around. Since then, as the economy's
graph has gone down, Obama's has gone up.

With less than three weeks before the election, it would probably take either a
terrorist attack on the US or some ghastly revelation about Obama to save the
White House for the Republicans. The way things are going, they will lose the
presidential election by a wide margin, and the Congressional races by a
landslide.

Barring a catastrophe, that is going to be the story of the 2008 election - the
Republican Party lost it. Not that McCain lost it, or that Palin lost it - and
not that Obama won it, or that the Democratic Party won it, or that the liberals
won it. No, the Republicans lost it. They were rejected overwhelmingly by the
American people - and not because of their style, but because of their politics.
Because of their ideology.

They were rejected because Republican ideology failed completely. At home and
abroad. And they can't say their ideology was never given a chance. They had a
true believer as president, a real cowboy - a free-market zealot, a war hawk, a
social conservative, the whole package. Republican to the bone. More Reagan than
Reagan. The ultimate neocon.

He's had eight years to do his thing - their thing - and look at the results.
George W. Bush used to be a divisive president, but no more; he's turned
basically the whole country against him. The Republicans used to worship him,
now they're trying to pretend he never existed.

The Republicans, running against a black, intellectual, inexperienced, rootless
cosmopolitan Democrat with probably the worst name in American political history
- even without the Hussein - could have overcome the collapse of their foreign
policy ideology and elected McCain/Palin. But with their economic ideology in
ruins, too, they've got nothing left to say for themselves. They're tapped out.

Now even a strange bird like Obama is beating the daylights out of them.

SO, BARRING catastrophe, 2008 is going to be a watershed year for America. The
radical right-wing ideology that's dominated the country since 1980 - a belief
in the infallibility of capitalism and American military power - will be taking
off for the dustbin of history.

This doesn't mean, though, that the pendulum is going to swing way over to the
Left. I'd be very surprised if it did. Obama might like to do another New Deal -
I'd sure like him to - but with the economy in such a hole, he's unlikely to
have much money to help the poor and lower middle class. The only way he'd be
able to get the money for another New Deal is by raising taxes substantially,
but this has become politically impossible in the US.

And between Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Taliban and al-Qaida, he's
not going to be able to rely strictly on negotiations for foreign policy; he's
also going to have to use military power, which he's said he'll do, and he
should be believed because at times, there's going to be no avoiding it.

I don't know where Obama and the Democratic Congress are going to take America,
but I know where they're not going to take it - they're not going to take it
where Bush did. They're not going to fight a class war at home for the rich, and
they're not going to go off on a crusade in the Middle East.

Moreover, I figure Obama's going to trust his brains more than his gut, he'll be
guided more by history than ideology, and he'll want to hear different opinions
instead of just echoes of his own.

I don't know how good a president he's going to be, but I cannot see,
realistically, how he can turn out worse than Dubya.

The good news for the Republicans is that a lot of them realize that the
conservative movement has to change. Writers such as David Brooks, Christopher
Buckley, David Frum and Ross Douthat are daring to suggest that maybe the GOP
isn't getting trounced because McCain's too old, or because of bad campaign
strategy, or the liberal media elite, or the drugged-out perverts in Hollywood -
but rather because the Republicans got things at least partially wrong. Their
ideas didn't entirely work, obviously. So they have to come up with new, less
rigid ideas.

A watershed year this is turning out to be. After nearly 30 years of moving
about as far right as it could go, the pendulum is swinging back toward the
center. Barring a catastrophe, happy days - or happier days, anyway - will be
here again.

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October 17, 2008 Friday

Succot and the great meltdown

BYLINE: JONATHAN ROSENBLUM

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1068 words

HIGHLIGHT: Think Again

All the Jewish holidays are times of rejoicing, but only Succot is specifically
known as "the time of our rejoicing." The special joy of Succot is connected to
the extra measure of closeness to God we feel as we leave our fixed, permanent
dwellings to spend a week in an impermanent structure, with no fixed roof over
our heads.

That miniature exile, explains Rabbi Eliahu Eliezer Dessler, leads to a negation
of the material world (bitul hayesh) and paves the way for a greater closeness
to God. The succa is a reminder of the clouds of glory that protected our
ancestors in a howling wilderness, and helps us feel God's enveloping love.

THE ENTIRE WORLD is currently experiencing its own form of negation of the
material, though few have been heard rejoicing. World stock exchanges are
crashing, and the retirement nests that millions had squirreled away in "safe"
pension plans are disappearing. The only question according to many economists
is whether we are on the cusp of a worldwide recession or depression.

Already the meltdown in financial markets has had major consequences. Two of the
world's leading investment banks have bitten the dust, and the rest are being
reorganized on a completely new footing. The American presidential election,
which was a dead heat three weeks ago, increasingly looks like a Barack Obama
rout, though he has given no indication that he knows anything of economics and
even though one of the causes of the crisis was the pressure placed on banks by
Democratic legislators to offer mortgages to non-creditworthy home purchasers.
(By speaking more frequently and impulsively, McCain has removed any doubts
about his own grasp of economics.) Whatever slim chance remained that President
George W. Bush might act to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions prior to leaving
office have been reduced to zero. The global economy could not bear another such
shock at present.

In my own community, the social safety net based on private philanthropy from
abroad has been removed from under thousands of families, as much of the massive
wealth which supported thousands of hesed organizations has disappeared.

ECONOMISTS WILL STUDY and debate the causes of the meltdown for years. But it is
clear that the crisis has a moral component - in particular the severing of the
relationship between productive activity and wealth. Decades ago, I read that
the economic future of a society can be judged by the ratio of engineers to
lawyers (and, we might add, financiers). For the last 15 years, too many of the
brightest (if not the best) in the United States have been drawn to Wall Street
and affiliated hedge funds. Rather than inventing better widgets or finding a
cure for cancer, they opted for the quickest way to earn millions.

Financial institutions are an indispensable part of the grease that makes a
global economy possible and play an indispensable role in wealth production. But
the only thing that the 20-somethings in big Wall Street firms could take pride
in was the size of their annual bonuses, which were often in the millions and
based almost entirely on short- term profits. Money became the measure of all
things.

No wonder the young hotshots ended up, in the prescient words of a 2007 British
comedy skit, bundling thousands of mortgages pushed upon "unemployed... men in
string vests" sitting on the porches of tumbledown shanties into investment
packages sold to other investment firms around the world in which neither buyer
nor seller had any idea of the value of the mortgages comprising the package. If
the underlying real estate turned out to be worthless, well, the bonuses would
have already been paid and someone else was left holding the bag.

As long as these young men and women were pulling down million dollar bonuses,
they were sure that their success owed directly to their superior brains and
talents. "They were infused," writes David Brooks, "with a sense that they have
it all figured out." But the complex risk-allocation instruments they developed
failed to take into account the markets' herd mentality, and their risk-sharing
swaps only served to link financial institutions around the world in one death
grip, like a drowning swimmer pulling down his would-be rescuer.

Hundreds of thousands who viewed their million dollar bonuses as the just
measure of their talents are now out of jobs. And the fingers of blame are
pointed elsewhere - at dim-witted politicians, failed bosses and all manner of
forces beyond their control.

Not only on Wall Street and other world financial centers was the relationship
between productive activity and the enjoyment of the fruits of such activity
severed. Americans have been living well beyond their means, unwilling to
postpone enjoyment of those things money can buy until that money was earned.
Household debt swelled to 100 percent of GNP in 2006 from 50% in 1980.

IN THE MIDST of the worldwide depression beginning in 1929, Rabbi Elchonon
Wasserman, who would be martyred in the Kovno ghetto, wrote a piece that applies
no less to today's crisis. The problem, he wrote, is not that there is no more
money, but that all trust had broken down. The credit upon which any modern
economy is based had dried up. Those with money refuse to lend it (check the
current interbank overnight lending rates), suppliers will not sell on credit.

Reb Elchonon saw a divine lesson in that loss of trust. He attributed the loss
of trust between people to a loss of emuna (belief) in God.

The succa beckons us to leave behind our false sense of security in the physical
world and to enter into a different realm, a realm filled with the awareness of
God described in the Shmoneh Esrei of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. The move from
our fixed abode to the succa allows us to contemplate the world of spirit, a
world without limit because its source is infinite, a world of peace and unity
in which men are not set against one another in competition over a limited pie.

The Talmud interprets the verse, "I caused the children of Israel to dwell in
booths when I took them out of Egypt," to mean that only by throwing off our
bondage to the physical world do we escape the spiritual depravity of Egypt.

Succot will not return all the trillions that have been lost. But it can help us
recognize that true joy does not come from the things money can buy and that our
ultimate security does not rest in the size of our retirement fund.

Hag sameah.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Investment bankers succumbed to the subprime mortgage crisis
they helped cause when they opted for the quickest way to earn millions.
(Credit: AP)

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October 16, 2008 Thursday

Falsely pragmatic on Iran

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 741 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

In a September 26 editorial, this is how Britain's Guardian judged Israel's
efforts to convince the world that Iran's nuclear program poses an existential
threat to the Jewish state, and that military action might be the lesser of two
evils: "Israel has lost the argument, and we should all breathe a sigh of relief
[that] pragmatism... has prevailed."

Beyond its left-liberal readership, the newspaper's stance reflects a wide swath
of Western thinking.

The problem is that this view confuses pragmatism with appeasement. It is a
"pragmatism" that does not demand the kind of biting sanctions that would force
the mullahs to their knees - precisely in order to obviate the need for a
military strike.

It's a pragmatism that does not mean, for instance, cutting virtually all trade
with the Islamic Republic; or ensuring that no Western airliner lands in
Teheran. These "pragmatists" support engaging Iran because there is profit to be
made under the cover of a diplomatic minuet that pays lip-service to sanctions.

They paint Israelis as unreasonably hawkish, seeing an existential threat where
none exists.

Yet these pragmatists heard President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad deliver the same
September 23 speech to the UN General Assembly as we did.

Is it really pragmatic to look the other way as Ahmadinejad blames "underhanded
Zionists" for stirring up trouble in Georgia and Ossetia? When he places
responsibility for the global financial crisis on "a small but deceitful number
of people called Zionists" who dominate "financial" and "political
decision-making" worldwide?

Are not even these pragmatists discomfited to hear "Zionists" characterized as
an "acquisitive and invasive people"?

Presumably, the pragmatists don't deny that Iran is scrambling to build nuclear
weapons - even if one might quibble over precisely when Teheran will achieve its
goals. Nor would they reasonably dispute that Iran is perfecting its
capabilities to deliver nuclear warheads to Europe, and beyond.

They see, just as we do, that Iran fluctuates between denying the Holocaust
outright, minimizing the number of Jews murdered, and cynically claiming that
even - for argument's sake - if Hitler really killed six million Jews, the
Palestinian Arabs should not have to pay for Europe's sins. In reality, of
course, the sins the Palestinians are paying for are mostly self-inflicted:
intransigence and bellicosity.

The pragmatists know, as we do, that Iranian diplomats have organized terrorist
attacks against Western and Jewish targets; that Iranian intelligence co-directs
Hizbullah; that Iran bankrolls Hamas and provides it with training, funds and
diplomatic cover. And they well know that Hizbullah and Hamas are
standard-bearers for anti-civilian warfare, fanaticism and an unalterable
rejection of Israel's right to exist - within any boundaries.

IN FACT, there's nothing pragmatic about sweeping the Iranian problem under the
rug. Just the opposite. By taking - for all intents and purposes - robust
sanctions off the table, those who profess to being pragmatic are in fact being
shortsighted. The unintended consequence of such false pragmatism is to bolster
the most radical elements within Iran.

And of all the pragmatic countries in Europe talking sanctions while stoking the
Iranian economy, none disappoints more than Germany. We could have sworn we
heard Chancellor Angela Merkel tell the Knesset on March 18 that Berlin felt a
special responsibility for Israel's security, and that it would be disastrous if
Iran were to obtain nuclear weapons. And that "We have to prevent this."

Yet Germany remains Iran's main European trading partner.

Now comes the news that last month, the German ambassador to Iran, Herbert
Honsowitz, in contravention of EU guidelines, sent his military attache to an
Iranian military parade. Honsowitz, ever the pragmatist, is a strong booster of
German-Iranian relations, including trade.

This newspaper takes at face value Ahmadinejad's October 26, 2005 pledge, before
the ominously named World Without Zionism Conference, that "Israel must be wiped
off the map."

We do not beat the drums of war. But if conflict comes, heaven forbid, the
responsibility will fall on those who denigrated the dangers; removed the option
of force from the international negotiating agenda, and undermined sanctions.

It will fall most heavily on those who fueled Iran's economy and were
comfortable being spectators at the parade as the Shihab missiles rolled by.

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October 16, 2008 Thursday

Aliya is like coming out

BYLINE: DAVID BENKOF

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 595 words

HIGHLIGHT: Fabulously Observant

As my aliya next year approaches, I have begun to notice the similarities
between deciding to move to Israel permanently and the other momentous life
decision I've made: coming out as a gay man.

Now, it's true that I've been celibate for eight years, starting a few years
before becoming a "returnee" to Orthodox Judaism. I no longer plan on having
same-sex relations or a male partner ever again. But the fact is coming out is
the other major life choice I've made that has such large ramifications in my
self-image and lifestyle. Even becoming Orthodox wasn't so momentous, because I
had spent most of my life as a fairly observant Conservative Jew.

For example, I made both key decisions in a sudden way after months and even
years of little hints that it was the right thing for me to do. In coming out,
there were lots of small attractions, fantasies and curiosities that added up to
a decision one morning to visit my college's peer counseling center and tell a
gay counselor I thought I was gay.

The decision to make aliya was even more subtle, and sudden.

I LITERALLY woke up one morning about a year ago with a strong desire to move to
Jerusalem. The immediate impetus was a conversation with my rosh yeshiva about
what jobs (all in America) l should and should not consider once I finished my
advanced degree. I realized the next morning that I didn't want any of those
jobs - I wanted to spend the rest of my life in Israel. But that was only the
immediate cause. For months and even years little things had pointed me toward
aliya, without my even noticing (consciously).

A news report about a terrorist attack would have the opposite effect on me than
on most people I knew - it made me wish I was in Eretz Yisrael. Hearing that a
friend from yeshiva had made aliya would arouse in me a sort of jealousy.
Hearing an Israeli song would make me feel what I now recognize as, well,
homesickness.

But I didn't put those hints together until that morning last fall when I woke
up and realized, with little hesitation, that Israel was supposed to be my home
from now on.

The reactions of people I'm close with to both decisions has also been similar.
With each life change, I've heard "Just wait - you're going to change your mind
back" and "Why would you want to do this?" and "Terrific! Good for you."
Finally, I've even found that the same folk song - Cat Stevens's "Father and
Son" - has spoken to me at both transition points in my life. Surely the artist
currently known as Yusuf Islam didn't intend to write a song about both coming
out as gay and moving to Israel, but I find the lyrics have an eerie echo of the
issues faced by someone going through each kind of change.

HERE ARE some of the words as they relate to coming out of the closet:

"It's not time to make a change, just relax take it easy

You're still young...

Find a girl, settle down, if you want to you can marry...

How can I try to explain?

When I do he turns away again.

It's always been the same, same old story.

From the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen...

All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,

It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it."

NOW CONSIDER the lyrics from the same song, with regard to making aliya: "It's
not time to make a change, just relax take it easy

You're still young...

Take your time, think a lot,

Why, think of everything you've got.

For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not...

If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them they know not me.

Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.

I know I have to go."

DavidBenkof@aol.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: ISRAELI AND rainbow flags fly as a participant in last year's
Jerusalem gay pride parade marches down a city street. (Credit: Ahikam
Seri/Bloomberg News)

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October 16, 2008 Thursday

Letters

BYLINE: Massoud Hosseini, David Goshen, Dr. Lily Polliack, Aharon Goldberg,
Mayer Winkler, Roberto Jona, Colin L. Leci, Jack Davis, Jackie Klein

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1193 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Helping Roy

Sir, - I have been reading about the plight of a young Persian boy, nicknamed
Roy, in the Iranian press. In particular, I have read how he was, exceptionally,
granted entry into Israel, despite all the political hostilities surrounding the
two states of Iran and Israel.

I wish to congratulate the staff and esteemed doctors at Tel Hashomer Hospital
for doing all they can to bring peace and normality to this boy's life ("TA
doctors continue trying to help Iranian boy," October 13).

I am sure that all Persians, no matter where they are located, join me in
sincerely expressing our appreciation of all your efforts, and warmly shake
every Israeli's hand.

Well done, all of you.

MASSOUD HOSSEINI

Virginia

Prognosis poor

Sir, - If Egypt is prepared to sacrifice an Egyptian child with cystic fibrosis
to avoid cooperating with Israel in procuring the drug he badly needs - as Barry
Rubin noted in "Why the Middle East is sick" (October 13) - how can we possibly
place Gilad Schalit's fate in Egypt's hands? ("Defense officials: Cease-fire
removes pressure on Hamas to release Schalit," October 15.)

DAVID GOSHEN

Kiryat Ono

Time to let go, no?

Sir, - Re Manfred Gerstenfeld's "Dresden victims and German manipulations"
(October 15): While the number of victims of the Dresden bombing in February
1945 has long been disputed - the official figure standing somewhere between
35,000 and 135,000 - Gerstenfeld failed to mention other, indisputable facts
related to that event, such as that the US Air Force joined the RAF in razing
Dresden to the ground, including the famous cathedral.

Its total destruction reminded me of the destruction of Britain's Coventry
Cathedral by the German Luftwaffe earlier in the war, in November 1940. Since
then Britain has built a new cathedral in Coventry alongside the old destroyed
one, in which two words - 'Father, forgive' - have been inscribed. They indicate
that Germany and Britain have come to understand the need for atonement as a
first step toward reconciliation.

In the case of the Jewish people, here too the Germans, by their policy of
Wiedergutmachung (making good again), have displayed a constant and indisputable
willingness to put right the terrible wrong they did to the Jewish people by the
Holocaust.

Nothing has changed on that score, and so the trouble with Gerstenfeld's article
seems to me to lie in his willingness to highlight, so dramatically, distorted
texts by insignificant revisionist historians.

It is time to let go. It is time to reconcile.

DR. LILY POLLIACK

Jerusalem

Absurd example

Sir, - "I wonder if they will start to arrest Jews who eat and drink during the
month of Ramadan," Knesset member Ahmed Tibi is quoted as saying, absurdly -
showing also his lack of respect for Jews and support for Arab/Muslim rioting.

Jamal Taufik was not arrested for driving on Yom Kippur, but for provocatively
driving in a Jewish neighborhood while playing loud music from his car ("Acre's
Yom Kippur driver arrested as city stays quiet," October 15).

AHARON GOLDBERG

Hatzor Haglilit

Strike this idea!

Sir, - "Universities will not open for new academic year, MKs told" (October 13)
included the words "students also support the idea."

I am a law student at Bar-Ilan University, going into my third year. I am not in
support of this idea, neither is anyone I have spoken to.

We have had strikes for the past two years of my degree, and this is wrong! No
one seems to want to take responsibility. The universities blame the government,
the government blames the universities, and the students blame everyone else.

I'm wondering about the legality of the universities not opening on their
supposed starting date, what with thousands of students - who have already paid
for a third of the year - having a contract with the universities for their
services.

MAYER WINKLER

Givat Shemuel

A worrisome control

Sir, - The reality of an American radar system set up in the Negev is worrying
because such an installation will allow the US to control any defensive Israeli
action against its neighbors. The defense of Israel will consequently be totally
in the hands and subject to the approval of the US military establishment - and
its approval of any action will obviously be granted only if it coincides with
American policy and suits US political interests.

The US will deny this, but assurances are easily issued. It is the facts that
matter.

The US wants to demonstrate that the security of Israel will not be put at
stake? It should liberate Jonathan Pollard, who was, and still is, a victim of
the conflict between the security of Israel and US policy. This should be a
precondition before such a powerful radar station is allowed to operate on
Israeli soil ("X marks the spot," Yaakov Katz, October 3).

ROBERTO JONA

Torino, Italy

Did someone say....

Sir, - Gerard Heumann has performed a great service in pointing out the failures
in the town planning of the capital ("Who designs Jerusalem?" October 13).
Instead of the uniqueness of the city being recognized, the city has become a
free-for-all in which both common sense and esthetics are ignored. In the early
days of the British Mandate, a town plan was drawn up recognizing Jerusalem's
uniqueness; special sites were designated as points of observation of the Old
City.

Today the greatest failure has been to totally ignore the environmental aspects
of letting buildings extend upwards two or more storeys without consideration of
the impact on either adjoining residential buildings or the neighborhood.

For the former, vital daylight has been cut as new buildings get higher; for the
latter, the inevitable extra parking in the adjoining streets has clogged up
what were pleasant residential areas.

COLIN L LECI

Jerusalem

...town planning?

Sir, - One would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to notice the planning,
zoning and environmental eyesore within Jerusalem. The city has been highly
politicized for years, resulting in bad management and poor municipal
leadership, to the detriment of ratepayers' quality of life.

Did we need monstrosities such as the towering Holy Land development; the
exorbitant expense and questionable value of projects such as the light rail and
its bridge; the construction of luxury housing that will create a ghost town and
possible financial disaster; the ugly tower blocks built to house the
ultra-Orthodox which could become future slums, and the continual building
around commercial areas that has led to gridlock?

The city of Jerusalem is drab, dreary and depressing. It will require a new
leader with stature, foresight and intestinal fortitude to correct the
monumental mistakes of the past.

JACK DAVIS

Jerusalem

Money matters

Sir, - I cannot believe that in the October 13 edition of the Post you did not
include the stock market prices of the previous day, nor even the Money Market
currency listing. There has never been a day in recent history where this
information was so important, coming as it did amid the world market crisis and
being the only trading day on the Israeli Stock Exchange in a seven-day period.

More important to your readers than "Who designs Jerusalem?" is "Who can afford
to live in Jerusalem?"

JACKIE KLEIN , Modi'in

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October 16, 2008 Thursday

How home-grown hooliganism threatens Israeli democracy

BYLINE: DOUGLAS BLOOMFIELD

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 820 words

HIGHLIGHT: Washington Watch

American Jewish leaders have been quick and correct to call upon moderate Muslim
leaders in this country to forcefully condemn Islamic terrorism, particularly
against Jews, and mobilize their followers to oppose all such violence.

But when it comes to Jewish violence and terrorism, they are strangely silent,
even when the victims are Jews as well as Palestinians.

The Jewish-Arab violence in Acre was the lead story in the Israeli media for
several days before it broke in the American media. The violence began on Yom
Kippur when an Arab father drove with his son into a predominantly Jewish
neighborhood to pick up his daughter at her fiance's apartment. Some young Jews
felt it offended their religious sensitivities and began stoning the two men.
Word spread to the Arab neighborhoods, where masked youths rampaged into the
Jewish parts of the city. Soon it got out of hand and observers were calling it
dueling pogroms.

The police had to evacuate some Arab families when their homes were torched by
Jewish rioters. Houses, businesses and cars were vandalized, burned and looted
on both sides.

This is not an isolated problem, say IDF and police officials, but part of a
spreading problem of violence by haredim and radical settlers. It's not just in
the West Bank but also in cities like Acre and Jerusalem.

But you wouldn't know about it unless you spent a lot of time on the Internet
reading the Israeli media.

Last month, Prof. Ze'ev Sternhell, a prominent peace activist and critic of the
settler movement, was lightly wounded in a pipe bombing of his home. Leaflets
left at the scene offered a NIS 1.1 million bounty for anyone killing a leader
of Peace Now.

ONLY TWO major US Jewish organizations condemned the bombing - the American
Jewish Committee and the Anti- Defamation League - but they made no mention of
the larger problem nor of at the scene leaflets calling for the murder of peace
activists and declaring "the State of Israel has become our enemy" and its
leaders are "a mob of wicked people, haters of the Torah who want to erase the
laws of God."

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center for Reform
Judaism, wrote to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert urging the government to crack down
on the violence and honor its commitments to freeze settlements and dismantle
illegal West Bank outposts.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations, the
community's leadership umbrella, has not only failed to condemn the Jewish
terrorism and settler violence but it has failed even to acknowledge the problem
in the Daily Alert, a news summary prepared for it by the right-leaning
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

"American Jews simply don't know about [the growing problem of Jewish
terrorism]; they don't read about it in their Jewish media, not in the Daily
Alert, not in the mainstream press which is preoccupied with the financial
crisis and the election campaign, and they don't hear about it from the leading
Jewish organizations," said Ori Nir, spokesman for Americans for Peace Now.

Prime Minister Olmert called a settler rampage in a West Bank village last month
a "pogrom" carried out in response to the stabbing and wounding of a Jewish
child at Yitzhar by an intruder.

ELSEWHERE, HAREDI zealots have formed "modesty patrols" that are likely
something straight out of Iran or Saudi Arabia. Their goal is to stamp out what
one called "breaches of purity and modesty" by fellow Jews. Shops have been
looted, people harassed and stoned, and in one instance vigilantes reportedly
broke into a woman's apartment and beat her for what it considered unacceptable
behavior.

Many haredi religious leaders reportedly approve of such behavior and even
encourage it as defending the faith against secular encroachment.

The Jerusalem Post reports growing concern in Israeli security establishment of
"an acute rise in violence between settlers and Palestinians." Maj.-Gen. Gadi
Shamni told the BBC that there may be only a few hundred hard-core activists in
the radical settler movement, but their numbers are growing and little is being
done by the mainstream settler movement to stop them. He called it "a very grave
phenomenon" and said the vigilantes have the backing of some rabbis and other
leaders.

THEIR QUEST to thwart any peace settlement and hold on to the West Bank was
behind the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and 13 years later the problem has
only gotten worse. My own visits to Jewish communities around the US reveal a
blithe ignorance of the situation.

The growing violence by haredi zealots and vigilante setters against fellow Jews
as well as Arabs threatens to explode in Israel but gets scant attention here.
Yet it could be a greater threat to Israeli democracy than the Islamist zealots.

Olmert has warned that this "evil wind of extremism, of hatred, of malice...
threatens Israeli democracy." And it is being ignored by the American Jewish
establishment.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: JEWISH PROTESTERS chant slogans during a demonstration following
the recent clashes that erupted on Yom Kippur Eve between Israeli Arab and
Jewish residents of Acre, one of Israel's few mixed cities. (Credit: Dan
Balilty/AP Photo)

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October 16, 2008 Thursday

Just another bit of fish wrapping

BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1070 words

HIGHLIGHT: Civil Fights

Does anyone still remember George W. Bush's April 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon?
At the time, it was touted as Israel's main quid pro quo for uprooting 25
settlements, expelling some 10,000 Israelis from their homes and withdrawing the
army from Gaza. Yet today, it is never mentioned - and for good reason: In the
ensuing four years, the Bush and Olmert administrations between them have
systematically eviscerated every "achievement" it allegedly granted Israel.

Take, for instance, its pledge that "the United States will lead efforts,
working together with Jordan, Egypt and others in the international community,
to... prevent the areas from which Israel has withdrawn from posing a threat
that would have to be addressed by any other means."

In reality, Palestinians have fired more than 6,000 rockets and mortar shells
from Gaza since the August 2005 disengagement, more than triple the pre-pullout
volume. The Palestinian Authority, which controlled Gaza until Hamas's June 2007
coup, made no effort to prevent this. Yet far from "leading the effort" against
this threat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice preferred to press Israel for
more concessions, claiming that absent these, the PA could not be expected to
fight terror.

Specifically, she demanded a "safe passage" between Gaza and the West Bank -
which would have enabled rocket technology to spread to the latter - and the
reopening of the Israel-Gaza border, which would have eased terrorist
procurement and infiltration. In November 2005, she bullied Sharon into signing
an agreement that included both provisions, but Olmert, to his credit, froze it
because of the ongoing rocket fire. Nevertheless, she continued pressing these
demands, most recently in her May 2007 "benchmarks" plan.

THE LETTER also pledged that "Israel will retain its right to defend itself
against terrorism, including to take actions against terrorist organizations,"
if Gaza did prove "a threat that would have to be addressed by any other means"
than diplomatic pressure. In reality, Washington pressed Olmert to avoid
anything beyond ineffective, small- scale military operations. But there, it was
pushing against an open door: Olmert wanted a major operation as little as Bush
did.

Thus in theory, Bush's letter offered a multilayered security guarantee: Either
the PA would provide security voluntarily, or the U.S. would "lead the effort"
to force it to do so, or if all else failed, Israel would protect itself
militarily. Instead, Palestinians launched daily attacks from Gaza without
suffering any serious diplomatic or military consequences. And the world will
now expect Israel to accept this as the model for future withdrawals as well.

Equally grave, however, is the evisceration of two key diplomatic achievements.
One was the letter's pledge that the refugee issue must be resolved "through the
establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees
there, rather than in Israel." The US has not reiterated this with the
consistency and clarity necessary to convince the Palestinians that it is
serious. But at least it never officially backtracked.

Olmert, however, single-handedly gutted this achievement by offering to absorb
some 20,000 Palestinian refugees under any deal. And as everyone knows, the
minute you concede the principle, the price is negotiable.

Predictably, therefore, the world is already pressuring Israel to raise the
figure. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, for instance, declared earlier
this month that not only must Tzipi Livni honor Olmert's offer, she might even
have to increase it: "I don't know how many [refugees Israel must accept] -
10,000 or 100,000, I don't know," he said.

The second achievement was the letter's promise that "in light of new realities
on the ground, including already existing major population centers, it is
unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a
full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."

THE BUSH administration began gutting this promise almost immediately, by
objecting vociferously to Israeli construction in these "major population
centers." Clearly, if the settlement blocs were to remain Israeli, there was no
reason to oppose construction within them. Thus by declaring construction within
the blocs no more legitimate than construction elsewhere in the West Bank,
Washington signaled that in fact, it did not believe Israel should retain them.

Last month, however, it made its retraction explicit: Speaking to the
Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, US Consul in Jerusalem Jacob Walles said Rice had
told both sides that negotiations must be based on withdrawal to the 1949 lines.
The State Department subsequently issued a denial, but its denial said merely
that "the US government has not taken a position on borders." In other words,
Washington no longer considers a return to the 1949 lines "unrealistic"; at
best, it has "no position" on borders.

Olmert, however, has gutted this provision no less thoroughly: Last month, he
told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the territorial
price of an agreement would be "very close to a formula of one for one." That
means the border will basically be the 1949 lines: If the Palestinians must
receive equivalent territory inside Israel for any West Bank territory Israel
keeps, any adjustments to these lines will necessarily be minor. Olmert then
repeated this in a Rosh Hashana interview with Yediot Aharonot, saying Israel
"should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in east
Jerusalem," and compensate the Palestinians by "close to a 1:1 ratio" for any
land it does retain.

CLEARLY, THE world will expect any future government to abide by this, since
offers made during one round of negotiations are always the starting point for
the next. Thus not only has Washington abrogated its 2004 promise, but Olmert
has buried any possibility of resuscitating it.

Sharon claimed to have secured three American pledges in exchange for the
disengagement: a free hand in fighting Palestinian terror post-withdrawal,
opposition to resettling Palestinian refugees in Israel and support for
retention of the settlement blocs. And most Israelis considered this trade-off
worthwhile.

Four years later, however, all three have evaporated - just as disengagement
opponents warned that they would. And Bush's letter has become just another bit
of fish wrapping.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: US PRESIDENT George W. Bush welcomes then-prime minister Ariel
Sharon to the White House on April 14, 2004. (Credit: White House via Bloomberg
News)

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October 16, 2008 Thursday

Can Israel approach peace from the bottom up?

BYLINE: NATAN SHARANSKY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 848 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies
at the Shalem Center and the author of Defending Identity.

Last month, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave an explosive farewell interview to
Yediot Aharonot. In it, Olmert, not known for his reticence to criticize
political and ideological opponents, chose to mention only one by name: Moshe
(Bogie) Ya'alon, the former chief of General Staff and my colleague at the
Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, whose much anticipated book, The Long-
Short Road, was published last month. It was fitting that Ya'alon should be
singled out for criticism because the policy approach of these two men could not
be more different.

For Olmert, peace is decidedly a top-down affair. The entire Annapolis process,
like the Oslo process it mimics, is based on strengthening a "moderate"
Palestinian leader in the hope that he will be "strong enough" to make peace.
How to strengthen the Palestinian leader? Among other things, by releasing
prisoners, transferring money and making concessions in negotiations. For him,
the health of the peace process is a function of the dynamics of negotiations.
Are people meeting and talking? Are there summits of world leaders supporting
the process? Are Arab leaders making the right statements?

For Ya'alon, however, peace is a bottom-up affair. He believes that it must
focus on transforming Palestinian society and on bringing Israeli and
Palestinian society closer together. To him, the health of the peace process is
a function of what is happening within Palestinian society. Are Palestinian
security forces fighting terror? Are Palestinian leaders working to improve the
economic and social conditions of Palestinian life? Are Palestinian media
outlets inciting against Israel? Are Palestinian schoolchildren being educated
to accept the legitimacy of Israel?

Israelis can choose to support either of these two approaches. But one thing is
certain: The top-down approach has been tried unsuccessfully by six different
Israeli prime ministers and two different American presidents, working with two
different Palestinian leaders. There is little evidence to suggest that it will
succeed if tried by a seventh prime minister or third president.

A SMARTER idea would be to try Ya'alon's alternative approach, and to link the
peace process - Israeli concessions, transfers of money and authority, etc. - to
a transformation of Palestinian society. This would indeed be a long-short road,
and would no doubt take a number of years to implement. But given the disasters
that have befallen Israelis and Palestinians over the last 15 years, it would be
infinitely better than the alternative.

Would a new US administration accept such an approach? After meeting with both
of the candidates, I have no doubt that regardless of who wins this November, an
Israeli government that would embrace this new approach would win the support of
the White House.

Barack Obama began his public career as a community organizer and argues
persuasively in his books that true change comes from the bottom-up. For his
part, John McCain has repeatedly expressed his view that a reformed Palestinian
society is critical to any successful peace process. Moreover, either candidate
would welcome an approach that would be different than the previous unsuccessful
efforts.

Indeed, the real question is not whether this new approach will be supported in
Washington, but whether it will be supported in Jerusalem. In the past,
initiatives that might have moved the peace process in a constructive new
direction were left stillborn by passive governments.

THE MOST famous instance was after President George W. Bush's historic June 2002
speech in which he argued for a bottom-up approach that called for a Palestinian
state to emerge only after comprehensive reforms would make that state
democratic and peaceful. Rather than seize the opportunity, the Ariel Sharon-led
government of which I was then a part dithered. Within a few months, the State
Department crafted a road map which paid lip service to this new approach but
which was essentially based on the same old tired formulas. In particular, its
call for elections to be held "as soon as possible" in an unreformed Palestinian
society would snuff out any chance for ever reforming that society.

A year later, Sharon embarked on a misguided unilateral disengagement plan,
which initially caught the Americans by surprise and which further undermined
any prospect for Palestinian reform. That mistake was compounded after the
disengagement, when snap elections were foolishly held in Gaza, which not only
killed the prospects for reform but, by bringing Hamas to power, also soured
Israelis on the idea that Palestinian society was capable of being reformed.

I believe that reform is possible and that such a reform will bring us closer to
peace. But it will require the end of illusions of the type offered by those who
argue that peace is only one meeting, one summit, or one concession away. It
will demand policies based on the type of hard-headed pragmatism that Moshe
Ya'alon offers in his book. It will demand that we let the evidence guide our
judgment rather than our judgment guide the evidence.

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October 16, 2008 Thursday

The dream ticket: McCain-Biden

BYLINE: CHARLEY J. LEVINE

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1128 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is a media relations expert based in Jerusalem.

I haven't spent private face time with all four American top candidates, but I
have done so with two of them and think my impressions might be of interest.

It was just over three years ago, and the timing was telling, since both John
McCain and Joe Biden were on the verge of deciding to take the plunge and run
for president. They were still unencumbered of in-the-race constraints, freely
speaking their minds.

The reason for the sit-downs is a monthly interview I conduct of movers and
shakers for a popular national US magazine. I thought these senators were
especially central to the future of US-Israel relations, and I had a sense that
each would be making headlines in the near future; likewise I interviewed Sen.
Joe Lieberman during that same period.

I caught up with McCain in his impressive old Senate Building office. The newer
buildings have so less of an historical presence. He bounded into the room, and
for a few hours, it was just the two of us, plus my best friend from college who
at that time served as the solon's communications director.

McCain was in full command of the facts on every issue I raised. He spoke
lucidly and convincingly without the aid of notes. His eyes twinkled, his
handshake conveyed friendly confidence and his smile was infectious. I even
enjoyed a few example of his famous barbed humor.

WHILE OTHERS still sought to prop up the pretense of an active Bush "road map"
for Middle East peace, the Vietnam hero demonstrated his maverick independence,
proclaiming it essentially dead - this was early 2004. "I don't think anybody
believes there is any viable road map at this moment. A cessation of violence
must take place before any road map can be pursued."

Similarly, he spoke without equivocation in support of Israel's security wall in
the West Bank, saying things rarely heard elsewhere on Capitol Hill: "As long as
there are going to be people who will cross over into Israel and commit acts of
terror, there won't be peace... that's why we have the wall." In the context of
2004, he was prescient indeed.

He called for Yasser Arafat to be reduced to irrelevancy, while emphasizing any
Palestinian state must be linked to Palestinian democracy. "The world is a
better place" as a result of the war in Iraq, this at a time when criticism of
the war was fast peaking. Even before the Israeli POWs of the Lebanon war and
Gilad Schalit, McCain called for "putting a lot more pressure on Syria to
account for those taken prisoner... we know who controls Lebanon, and that is
Syria."

He expressed sharp skepticism that Iran would submit to international pressures
against acquiring nuclear capabilities and, although referring to the 2004
reelection of George Bush, sounded a clarion call even more relevant for the
elections to come four years later: "I worry about the Democratic Party swinging
so far to the left that we might see a repetition of 1972 [Nixon vs. McGovern].
It would be harmful to the country to see an isolationist, protectionist,
xenophobic Democratic nominee for president... in order to appeal to the
Democratic fringe."

I located Biden a few months later on his now famous train commute back home to
nearby Delaware. He is handsome, even debonair, and genuinely friendly. A
regular guy I would instinctively invite to my poker game. Again, full command
of the main issues I raised, derived from decades of dealing with them on
Capitol Hill and on the global stage.

He astutely distinguished between "freedom and democracy" in the Arab world and
he too doubted the efficacy of Palestinian leadership (by then Arafat had died):
"I don't believe Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] has the knowledge or the game plan to
keep the radical Palestinian factions from taking potshots at the Israelis."
This was before Hamas seized Gaza, before the Kassams started raining down.

BIDEN WAS adamant on stopping Iran's atomic quest cold, though others have
charged him with flip-flopping. He had a plan for "isolating the theocrats in
the Middle East, especially in Iran," which he shared with me in compelling
detail. Saluting a positive change to President George W. Bush's approach during
his second term (he believed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had persuaded
the president), he said that Europe was finally "putting more sticks in their
basket, as the US was putting more carrots into ours."

I reminded him of an incident 20 years earlier when he had been questioned as to
American Jewry's alleged dual loyalty reflected by its support of Israel. This
elicited his strongest, most emotive response: "There is no reason for any
American Jew to apologize for his or her commitment to Israel. If there were no
Israel, the US would have to invent one. Israel is a commitment born out of a
moral obligation that is felt by people like me, and my support starts in my
gut, goes up to my heart and then to my brain."

Without taking a breath, he continued, "If I were a Jew, I'd be a Zionist. In
fact, I am a Zionist. I believe that the well-being of the Jewish people around
the world depends on the existence of Israel, and Israel in turn is the beacon
that allows guys like me to make the case to go into the Balkans to save Muslims
from genocide."

As I had to hastily excuse myself due to the approach of Shabbat, he quipped
that "I know all about that stuff. After all, I've been Joe Lieberman's Shabbos
goy for years whenever he has to stay in his office on the Hill on Saturday."

I walked away cumulatively impressed by both McCain and Biden. Which leaves me
to speculate that in a perfect world, a McCain-Biden ticket would have been the
very best conceivable, both for Israel and America. They have wisdom, vision and
all the right values and gut instincts - each of them.

IN ALL reality, Israel probably doesn't have that much to worry about with
either ticket this year. Obama is surrounded by a phalanx of up close and
personal Jewish financial supporters from Chicago who undoubtedly care deeply
about Israel, and now he also has Biden from whom to receive counsel.

Sarah Palin is the kind of lady a Texan like me finds charming and impressive.
Her membership in an Israel- friendly evangelical church and the small Israeli
flag she keeps in her governor's office has not been there for show- off
purposes. Not in Juneau. I was just there and few Alaskans know anything about
Israel, much less about Jews.

Never one to conclude on a wishy-washy note of even- handedness, I must observe
that the race is not ultimately about vice presidents, no matter how wise or
impressive they might be.

It is about the guy who wants the top spot. It is a massive stretch, by that
standard, not to realize that John McCain is far and away the contender best
capable of protecting American self-interest by supporting and strengthening
Israel.

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October 16, 2008 Thursday

We're all liberals now

BYLINE: LARRY DERFNER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1043 words

HIGHLIGHT: What's going on now with governments propping up the economy by
buying up stakes in the banks is not socialism. It's liberalism. Rattling the
Cage

I don't understand all these analyses of why the world stock market crashed and
what needs to be done to fix it - and when I read some of these analyses, I
begin to suspect that some of the analysts really don't understand it, either.

But one thing I do know is that the market - the free market - has hit a very,
very serious ditch and has been spinning its wheels, getting deeper and deeper
into the mud. The universal fear is that if left to its own devices, the market
will keep spinning its way down until it drags the world into a depression the
likes of which hasn't been seen since the 1930s.

What? What are these commies talking about? I thought the free market was God's
own design. I thought the free market doesn't fail - that it has its little ups
and downs, but that it naturally adjusts itself, it inexorably fixes itself, it
automatically finds its own level, and that you have to leave the free market
alone. The worst thing you can do is let government try to fix it, because all
government ever does to the free market, we've been told for decades, is screw
it up.

The above, by the way, isn't supposed to be an opinion, it's supposed to be a
fact. It's part of what's called correct economics.

So what just happened this week? Stock markets around the world suddenly began
streaking back up again, and why? Because the leaders of government decided to
leave the market alone to adjust, to fix, to find its own level? No! The markets
rebounded right after the governments of the world, or at least those in Europe
and - God must be beside Himself now - the United States of America, decided to
buy part ownership of their countries' biggest, most devastated banks.

WHOSE MONEY are these governments using? The public's! The US, led by the
Republican Party - by the Bush administration, for God's sake - is going to take
a quarter-trillion dollars of its taxpayers' money and buy a piece of America's
banks! Governments in Europe, led by England, are going to spend trillions to do
the same on their end.

And what did the free market say to that? "Hurrah!" Whatever happens over the
next few months or years, there is now a consensus in the world, beginning with
the big financiers and businesspeople, that government has to step in and save
the world economy - by force. With the taxpayers' money.

Until a month or so ago, Americans, starting with the Bush administration, along
with true-blue economic conservatives everywhere else, would have called this
"socialism." Today, it seems, everybody is a socialist.

It seems that way, though, only if you believed all that hogwash about the
infallibility of the free market in the first place. Because what's going on now
with governments propping up the economy by buying up stakes in the banks is not
socialism. Socialism is when the state, via the government, owns everything,
from the banks to the candy stores, and there is no private ownership of
anything. No, what's happening now isn't socialism, it's liberalism. Social
democracy. Not a socialist economy but a mixed economy - an economy in which the
great majority of a nation's assets are owned privately, but some - like
utilities, or part of the utilities, or banks, or part of the banks, may be
owned publicly. By the state. By the government.

WHAT'S HAPPENING in the world economy today - with government now being accepted
as the market's only possible savior - does not represent the victory of
socialism or the defeat of capitalism. Instead, it represents the victory of
liberalism and the defeat of fundamentalist capitalism - of the idea that the
free market is the economic equivalent of a just, benevolent God.

The truth is that today, we are all liberals. Even the Republicans. Even George
W. Bush.

This is an earthquake, folks. This is a rejection of the economic doctrine that
has ruled America for nearly 30 years, since the rise of Ronald Reagan. ("Big
government isn't the solution to the problem; big government is the problem.")
For the last decade or so, this doctrine has also ruled Israel. It was imported
from America mainly by Binyamin Netanyahu, whose watchword was privatization -
getting government out of the economy, selling every publicly-owned asset, from
the ports to the ground under our feet, to private investors. For Netanyahu, as
for Reagan, Bush and fundamentalist capitalists everywhere, the idea was that
"government should be run like a business."

But now that the stock market has lost its bearings, business is no longer the
model for how anything should be run. Today, business is listening to
government. Today, capitalist America is learning from social democratic Europe.
It is Europe, which understands the difference between a mixed economy and a
socialist economy, that's leading the way out of this crisis. The hero emerging
out of all this is Britain's Gordon Brown, who didn't hesitate to prop up his
country's banks by buying chunks of them with taxpayer money. His success is a
walloping rebuke to the legacy of Margaret Thatcher, who, with Reagan, turned
economic conservatism into right-wing economic radicalism.

Before Thatcher and Reagan, conservatives were naturally skeptical of government
intervention in the economy, but they didn't preach that government intervention
was all bad. They didn't hold a seemingly religious belief that there's no such
thing as too much economic freedom.

NOW, WATCHING the biggest financial titans in America fall to their knees,
begging for government handouts, no reasonable person believes anymore that
there is no such thing as too much economic freedom.

A new consensus is forming around the idea that the key adjustment to be made in
an economy is not by the market, but by society, which has to find the right
adjustment between economic freedom and government control.

Whatever adjustment is made, though, the result will still be capitalism. In
1989, the world finished with the radical economic idea that freedom was the
problem and government the solution. Now, in 2008, the world has finished with
the radical economic idea that was communism's opposite.

From now on, solutions will be sought in the middle. The mixed economy is back.
After being pronounced dead a long time ago in America - and more recently in
Israel - liberalism lives again.

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October 16, 2008 Thursday

North Korea: Access denied

BYLINE: GWYNNE DYER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 875 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer's latest book, Climate Wars, has just been published in
Australia by Scribe.

Korea is not a tropical country. In the autumn, the leaves turn yellow and red,
and by October the process is pretty far along, especially in North Korea. Which
is why there are grave doubts that Kim Jong-Il is in good health, as Pyongyang
pretends, and indeed some question whether he is alive at all. And despite
Monday's agreement by Washington to take Kim's neo-Stalinist regime off its list
of terrorism sponsors, which persuaded North Korea to let international
inspectors back into its Yongbyon nuclear site, we still don't know where its
nuclear weapons (if they exist) might be hidden.

Kim, the "Dear Leader" and absolute ruler of North Korea since 1994, has not
been seen in public since early September, when he failed to make an appearance
at a military parade marking the regime's 60th anniversary. There was intense
speculation in South Korea that the 66- year-old dictator had suffered a stroke
and undergone surgery, although the source of this rumor was never clear.

THE NORTH Korean regime denied anything was wrong (as it always does), and last
Saturday it finally produced some recent footage of Kim Jong-Il inspecting a
women's military unit. The only problem was that it was an outdoor location with
lots of trees and bushes, and all the leaves were a lush green. Nowhere in Korea
looks like that in mid- October; a horticultural expert at Seoul National
University estimated that the event took place in July or August.

Couldn't they at least have produced some indoor footage of the Dear Leader that
nobody had seen before, so that the deception was not so obvious? Probably not,
since this is a regime where the dictator's activities are on the front page of
the papers every day and lead the television news each evening. His every public
act is documented, but the material is used immediately. They must have searched
long and hard for some footage that would not already have been seen by every
foreign embassy in Pyongyang. Too bad about the leaves.

This confirms that Kim Jong-Il is at least seriously ill. For all we know, he
may be dead, and there may be a fierce succession struggle going on behind the
scenes in Pyongyang. (The Dear Leader inherited power from his father, the
"Great Leader" Kim Il-Sung, who founded the regime in 1948, but none of the
current ruler's children have been publicly groomed for the throne.) Whatever
the state of palace politics in Pyongyang, however, the regime retains the
ability to run circles around the Bush administration in diplomacy.

The most recent confrontation began last month, when North Korea announced that
it intended to restart nuclear activities at Yongbyon because the US had not
kept its promise to remove Pyongyang from its terrorism blacklist. That was part
of the six-country deal signed last November, in which North Korea agreed to end
its nuclear activities in return for badly needed aid.

AS PART of the deal, Washington agreed to remove North Korea from its list of
state sponsors of terrorism - and a lot of the aid could not legally flow to
Pyongyang until that was done. But the Bush administration, as so often before,
overplayed a weak hand: It stalled on removing the terrorism label in the hope
of forcing North Korea to allow American and International Atomic Energy Agency
inspectors freer access to suspected North Korean nuclear sites.

So the North Koreans simply stopped dismantling the Yongbyon nuclear site
(including the plutonium reprocessing plant) and announced that they were
reactivating it. It took the Bush administration, in legacy mode and desperate
for at least one apparent foreign policy success, only a couple of weeks to
yield to Pyongyang's demand. Washington removed North Korea from the terrorism
list on Saturday, and Pyongyang let the inspectors back in on Sunday. But they
can't go wherever they please.

As before, international inspectors only have access to "declared" North Korean
nuclear sites. "Undeclared" sites - ones that Pyongyang forgot to mention - can
only be inspected with the regime's permission, on a case-by-case basis. The
whole play around the terrorism designation was an attempt by Washington to
force Pyongyang to allow wider access, and it has failed miserably. Game, set
and match to North Korea.

THE HARSHEST critic of this outcome is none other than John Bolton,
undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in the first
Bush administration. Washington's climb-down last weekend left all the key
questions unanswered, he complained: "Where are their weapons? Where is the rest
of their plutonium? Where is their uranium enrichment program? What have they
done in terms of outward proliferation? And we got essentially nothing new on
that other than a commitment to keep negotiating."

What's ironic about this is that Washington's tactics in this diplomatic fiasco
are very reminiscent of the style that Bolton favored when he was in office:
bluster and threats, with not much ability to deliver. It didn't work for him,
either.

The rest of the world still doesn't know whether North Korea has usable nuclear
weapons (it tested one in 2006, with unimpressive results), or how many, or
where they might be hidden. Whoever is in charge in Pyongyang is playing a weak
hand very, very well.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: NORTH KOREA'S 'Dear Leader,' Kim Jong Il, takes part in a
ceremony in Pyongyang last October. He has not been seen in public since early
September. (Credit: Korea Pool via Bloomberg News)

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October 15, 2008 Wednesday

Tnuva and the Silicon Affair

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 691 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

A Tel Aviv District Court not only delivered a walloping blow to the dairy
industry giant Tnuva last week, but also sent a warning to other companies which
may have considered themselves above consumer protection laws.

The justice system did not permit Tnuva to gloss over its willful addition in
1994-5 of a silicon compound to its skimmed long-life milk cartons.

The chemical helps reduce frothing and thus facilitates sealing the containers.
But silicon is a suspected carcinogen and forbidden in foods. Tnuva used it
nevertheless to avoid having to install $300,000 worth of alternative equipment,
Judge Amiram Binyamini wrote in his decision. Moreover, Tnuva "catalogued the
silicon as a detergent in a clear effort to obscure an infraction of which it
was aware." Thirteen years after Tnuva's dangerous practice was first exposed it
was slapped with a NIS 55 million fine and required to pay an additional NIS
150,000 to the estate of Tawfiq Rabi, who launched and relentlessly pursued a
class action suit. Sadly, Rabi did not live to relish his victory.

Another NIS 250,000 goes to the Israel Consumers Council, which co-sponsored the
litigation. The bulk of the compensation is earmarked to benefit the public by
lowering prices or increasing milk content in products, financing nutritional
research and distributing milk to the needy.

This is the second phase of penalties for Tnuva arising from the silicon affair.
Four company executives were earlier fined for deliberately misleading consumers
by publishing two large, reassuring newspaper ads after the initial discovery of
the dangerous additive.

THERE IS more here to savor than a big food company getting its comeuppance for
violating the public trust. Israeli consumers have seldom had much success in
bringing class action suits meaning litigation brought by one party on behalf of
a group of people all having the same grievance.

At best, such efforts concluded in out-of-court settlements; often they failed
completely. Not this time, however. Attorney Iyyad Rabi and his now-deceased
client wouldn't back off.

The most important legal innovation was the judge's rejection of Tnuva's
contention that the litigants came to no personal harm and hence could not
demand compensation. Binyamini determined that had Tnuva's customers realized
what the product contained, they wouldn't have bought it. Hence their autonomy
was impeded and the judge ruled litigants weren't obliged to prove actual
illness.

We trust that this decision establishes the precedent that a manufacturer is
liable for misrepresentation. Were consumers required to prove a link between
their consumption of a product and a subsequent medical condition, odds are
powerful firms would escape the wrath of the law time and again. Binyamini's
message is that willful deceit alone will cost them.

CONSUMERS HAVE reason to be gratified: Any conglomerate, no matter how dominant
in the marketplace, which takes consumer health lightly can be held to account.
And it is laudable that the general public will benefit from the results of this
class action; and that care was taken to set aside a portion of the reward to
the heirs of the chief plaintiff, the man who set the legal proceedings in
motion.

We see this victory as a watershed which will encourage further serious class
action suits. This form of litigation is sometimes held in disrepute -
especially in the US, where frivolous damage claims proliferate and where juries
have awarded inordinate sums for dubious claims.

However, the legal circumstances of Israeli consumers are quite different. We
suffer from the opposite problem: not enough class action suits.

The dangers of frivolous litigation are reduced when wronged individuals join
forces with responsible consumer advocate organizations in going up against
mighty corporations.

Consumer groups, we expect, will withhold their support from frivolous
litigation while lending their moral authority and legal expertise where
justified.

Israel has consumer protection laws on its books. What it now needs are tools
for better enforcement and jurists - like Judge Amiram Binyamini - with the guts
to make the law stick.

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October 15, 2008 Wednesday

'Hakhel': Bring the kids

BYLINE: HAIM SABATO

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1259 words

HIGHLIGHT: Symbolic reenactments of the once-in-seven years mitzva of the
assembly all the people take place this week. Translated and adapted from Rabbi
Haim Sabato's Ahavat Torah by Jessica Setbon and Shira Leibowitz Schmidt. Sabato
is the co-founder of the yeshivat hesder in Ma'aleh Adumim and the author of the
novels Dawning of the Day, Adjusting Sights and Aleppo Tales.

At the end of a charming talmudic anecdote, the preeminent Rabbi Yehoshua scolds
two students, "Such a precious pearl you had, and you wanted to keep it from
me?" What was that precious pearl, and why the rebuke?

Earlier R. Yehoshua had asked the students, "What novel interpretations have you
heard in class today?" He had to pull teeth to elicit from the students an
account. Out of deference to their teacher, they responded that it was not their
place to teach him Torah: "We are your students and study at your feet."

R. Yehoshua then queried them, "It is impossible to have a study session without
some novel interpretations. Whose turn was it to teach this Shabbat?"

"It was R. Eleazar ben Azariah's turn."

"And what was his theme?"

"The topic was hakhel, the passage from Deuteronomy which says: 'Read this Torah
before all Israel... Assemble, hakhel all the people - the men, the women and
the little ones.'"

"And what did he say about that verse?"

"He taught: The men came to study; the women came to listen; and the little came
to enable those who brought them to be rewarded for bringing them."

"Such a precious pearl, and you wanted to keep it from me?"

THE MITZVA of hakhel they refer to is described in the Torah portion read last
Shabbat (Deuteronomy 31). The Bible commands hakhel only once in seven years,
and this year is that once-in-seven. Although discontinued after the destruction
of the Temple, it has been revived since 1945 in a symbolic framework at the end
of the seventh or shmita year. Two such ceremonies will take place this week:
today at 4:30 p.m. at Gan Hatekuma in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City,
sponsored by the Temple Institute (www.temple.org.il); tomorrow, Thursday, at
3:30 p.m. at the Western Wall with the participation of past and present chief
rabbis. In its original form, the ceremony is first described thus:

At the end of seven years, at the time of the shmita [sabbatical year] during
the Succot festival, in the place that He will choose, you will read this Torah
before all Israel. Assemble [hakhel] all the people - the men, the women, and
the little ones [taf], and your stranger who is in your cities - so that they
will hear, learn and fear the Lord. And their children [bneihem] who do not know
- they will hear and learn to fear the Lord.

This question - why young children are brought - is not so simple. The Torah
itself specifies the reason for bringing children at the end of the above
passage. The parents must bring "their children who do not know - they will hear
and learn to fear the Lord." It is puzzling why two different terms are used to
refer to children: taf and bneihem. Nachmanides, for example, equates taf with
bneihem, understanding both terms to mean children of an educable age. The
earlier talmudic sages, however, differentiate between the two terms, defining
taf as infants or toddlers and bneihem as preschool age children and older.

Commentators have noted the difficulties raised in R. Eleazer's insightful
comment regarding the bringing of very young children to hakhel to hear the king
read the Torah. If the infants indeed benefit from the hakhel, then why did R.
Eleazar not specify this? On the other hand, if the infants do not benefit from
attending, then why should the adults be rewarded for bringing them?

R. Yehoshua implies that while these very young children may not directly
benefit from it, the true purpose for bringing them is to awaken the parents'
sensitivity to the importance of the Torah reading at hakhel. The reward is
therefore for the thought that even infants deserve a taste of this experience
that embodies the fear of heaven and reinforces love of the law. It is this
intention to educate future generations that is worthy of reward. This is
R.Yehoshua's "precious pearl."

THE MALBIM, writing in the 19th century, resolves this conundrum very
differently. He maintains that it is precisely because infants and toddlers have
not yet begun formal learning that their souls are still malleable - a concept
somewhat similar to the tabula rasa of Locke and Rousseau. Therefore, the mass
assembly at hakhel for spiritual purposes would have an even greater effect on
infants. The Malbim describes, with deep psychological insight, the impression
this event makes on a small child's soul.

This refers to the very small children, and to giving them a taste of Torah.
Since they will not understand the meaning of the words read out, they will not
be distracted by the message. They are not jaded, and are still unspoiled by the
vanities and burdens of this world, thus their imagination is very powerful.
They will not benefit in the manner of adults, who seek to savor every morsel of
Torah. Rather, they will benefit in a more powerful way than the adults, because
this experience will remain in their minds' eye all their lives.

They will directly experience the awesome sight of millions of Jews standing
united for hours, transported beyond commonplace concerns and focused with all
their beings on their sole purpose: to hear the lessons that the king is reading
from the book. They will understand that in a similar way they must listen and
learn from their teachers. As they watch the immense crowds standing in fear and
trembling before the Lord, the reverence that the king inspires will add to that
awesomeness. The indelible impression of what they witnessed in their infancy
will remain with them their entire lives.

This concept motivates many people today to bring their little ones briefly to
exceptionally large prayer services or Torah gathering. Despite, or because of,
the fact that toddlers may not understand a thing, they will be impressed with
the immensity, the focus on Torah and prayer, and the solemnity (as long as they
do not disturb the decorum).

The expression "assemble," hakhel, that has become the name for this mitzva, is
specifically used to describe another event, the giving of the Torah on Mt.
Sinai (Horeb). "The day that you stood before the Lord, your God, at Horeb, when
the Lord said to me, "Assemble [hakhel] the people for Me."

It is mistaken to think that the hakhel of Mt. Sinai and the hakhel once in
seven years are events consigned to the past. In a sense, we recall the
experience of Mt. Sinai every week in the public reading of the Torah. These
assemblies of Jews all over the globe are a kind of miniature hakhel. The weekly
synagogue readings reflect the giving of the Torah and hakhel in several ways.
The source of the directive that the Torah readers in synagogue must stand is
found soon after the giving of the Ten Commandments: "But as for you, stand here
with Me" (Deuteronomy 5:28).

In another reference to Mt. Sinai, Jewish law requires that three people (the
reader, the one called for the reading and an additional person) stand on the
platform while the Torah is read, recalling how Moses was a "mediator"
transferring the Law from God to the children of Israel. The Torah reader must
grasp the Torah scroll during the blessings and reading as if he had just
received it from Mt. Sinai.

The last two mitzvot of the Torah are hakhel and the commandment to write a
Torah scroll. They focus not on private matters, but rather on deepening the
public experience of Torah. The mitzva of writing a scroll of Torah, which
applies to each individual Jew, intensifies the entire Jewish people's
connection to the Torah. The mitzva of hakhel observed in an attenuated form in
Israel this week (and not again for another seven years) recapitulates the
communal experience of receiving the Torah at Sinai.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: 'AT THE end of seven years, at the time of the 'shmita' during
the Succot festival, in the place that He will choose, you will read this Torah
before all Israel. Assemble all the people - the men, the women, and the little
ones, and your stranger who is in your cities - so that they will hear, learn
and fear the Lord.' (Deut. 31) (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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October 15, 2008 Wednesday

Letters

BYLINE: Merton A. Shill, Bernard Smith, M. Missmann, Ralph J. Montonaro, Yamil
Larax, A.M. Goldstein

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1134 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Earned our place?

Sir, - As a former South African and a Jew, I was disturbed to read "S. Africa's
Jews praise president's greetings" (October 10), in which President Kgalema
Motlanthe said the Jews have "earned your place in the South African nation as
equal citizens." It disturbed me even more that the local Jewish community
apparently welcomed this statement.

I didn't know one had to earn one's place in any democratic society to be an
equal citizen. I prefer the formulation in the US Declaration of Independence
about "inalienable rights" to personhood and civil rights - where one's rights
are not conditioned on being judged "worthy" by the government of the day.

Unless I am much mistaken, the SA Constitution now affords all citizens equal
rights simply because they are citizens, without any qualification.

What's next? Is every racial, religious and ethnic group in SA to be evaluated
so it can be determined if they have earned their place in society?

MERTON A. SHILL

Michigan

Palestinian army

Sir, - Demilitarization's record is one of failure. Yet it is the backbone of
every plan to cede Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians. If its record is
insufficient to preclude it as a guarantee in a peace agreement with the
Palestinians, non-compliance with previous accords should.

Article XIV, clause 3 of the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, September 28, 1995, states: "Except for the Palestinian
Police and the Israeli Military forces, no other armed forces shall be
established or operate in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."

The clause prohibits the introduction of Palestinian soldiers into these areas.
Nevertheless, with the collaboration of Israeli governing elements, the
Palestinian Authority has been doing just that.

Your military correspondent Yaakov Katz informs us that Maj.-Gen. Gadi Shamni,
OC Central Command, is allowing a company of PA soldiers to deploy in Hebron,
complementing the 2,000 Palestinian soldiers and police already stationed there
("IDF finalizing new PA deployment in Hebron," October 8). There is no
possibility that Katz, an expert, misused the word soldiers. He employs the term
eight times and specifically differentiates between police and soldiers.

Anyone with a minimum of political acuity will regard the promise of a
"Palestine" devoid of armament and military forces as a subterfuge allowing for
the creation of a state.

A nascent Palestinian army already exists.

BERNARD SMITH

Jerusalem

Haider: Extraordinary

political talent

Sir, - Thank you very much for your balanced "Mercurial Austrian rightist Haider
dead in car crash" (October 12). Let me reply by saying: Haider was an
extraordinary political talent.

In his personal life, he had to struggle with the National-Socialist past of his
parents. I believe he tried his best to succeed in overcoming the difficulties
resulting from that. But sometimes he was caught in his contradictions, which
damped down his qualities. Unfortunately, he used xenophobic and partly even
anti- Semitic phrases that entered Austrian policy 100 years ago, when Karl
Lueger, another charismatic leader and politician, was mayor of Vienna.

At the end of his life, Haider turned more moderate, his idols being the former
German chancellor Helmut Schmidt from the socialist SPD, and the "aristocrat
commoner" Johann, Archduke of Austria (1782-1859). Like him, Haider wanted to be
a political reformer, attentive to the Carinthian people. Like him, however, he
also failed to play an important role in the policy of the capital, Vienna. He
never became a member of the national government. Only some days before his
death, Haider began concluding peace with former adversaries, like FPO leader
Strache, the social-democrat Austrian president, Heinz Fischer, and many others.

Haider without doubt renewed Austrian policy. Opposing the political mainstream,
he tried to establish a more direct and more local politics comparable to other
states of that size. He was a populist in some ways, but his political
convictions were always based on the rules of democracy and - something widely
unknown to the Anglo- American world - brotherliness.

In summary, despite the fact that Haider was unable to reconcile his inner
tensions completely, many are sorrowful over his death and will miss a vibrancy
that colored the political landscape of his country, and of Europe.

M. MISSMANN

Austria

Here's what happened

Sir, - The current economic crisis was caused by what Fox News personality Bill
O'Reilly characterizes as "greedheads" working in and around Wall St. These
greedheads despicably disguised "corruption as freedom" for years while
maliciously manipulating sectors, prices, stocks and securities for their own
benefit, practically destroying the country's economic security, all without
anyone noticing.

Here's the lesson: Never leave the factory gate unguarded. And when you give
someone your hard-earned money because they tell you they have (all) the
answers, they probably don't. And never will ("Where the money went: Conspiracy
theories abound on the Internet," October 13).

RALPH J. MONTONARO

Bradenton, Florida

Bring Lehman Brothers

back from the dead

Sir, - A low-cost way of restoring worldwide confidence in the American banking
system would be to buy Lehman Brothers out of its bankruptcy - a bankruptcy
which the government would not have allowed to happen had it occurred only three
weeks later.

The numbers involved in resurrecting the firm as a viable entity would not take
a large bite out of the three- quarters of a trillion dollars that will be
floating around trying to do some good. It and other such entities would be
government-run until some of their parts could be slowly sold off and others
perhaps liquidated.

Stockholders might get little, if anything, but the good will of investors
around the world, who would appreciate lucid government intervention in US
financial markets, would be sustained.

Disentangling Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy, trying to make it operational
again - and, most importantly, restoring its ties to the financial community -
would be an impressive and, in the long run, really cheap way of restoring
confidence.

YAMIL LARAX

Economist and Lawyer

San Diego

Gem of a photo

Sir, - "What a difference a day makes" (Melanie Greenberg, October 8) was
accompanied by a photo of Hank Greenberg meeting a young John Kennedy in 1946.
Greenberg and Kennedy were identified in the caption, but the two other players,
both of the Boston Red Sox, were not.

At the far left is Hall of Famer Ted Williams, considered one of the best
hitters of all time, and up to now the last one to hit over .400. The other
player is, I believe, Johnny Pesky, whose number the Bosox recently retired.

Future Hall of Famers and a future president make it a gem of a photo.

A.M. GOLDSTEIN

Haifa

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October 15, 2008 Wednesday

Dresden victims and German manipulation

BYLINE: MANFRED GERSTENFELD

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 969 words

HIGHLIGHT: The mainstream German distortion of the Holocaust has increased
dramatically. The research for this article was made possible in part by the
support of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Rabbi
Israel Miller Fund for Shoah Research, Documentation and Education).

At the beginning of October, a commission of experts concluded that in the
Allied bombing of the German city of Dresden in February 1945 at most 25,000
people were killed. This figure is much lower than previous estimates of
scholars, some of which reached 135,000 victims. Neo-Nazis claim that the number
of victims was half a million to a million and speak about a "bombing
Holocaust."

The findings of the historic commission, which was appointed in 2004 by
Dresden's mayor, have far greater importance than the significant issue of
writing history correctly. They are also a weighty tool in the struggle against
the multiple manipulations and distortions of the Holocaust, which is a growing
phenomenon.

Such developments in Germany merit particular attention. One of the most
worrying aspects is the effort of sizable segments of the mainstream to portray
Germans as major victims of World War II rather than as prime perpetrators of
genocide. This revisionism is mainly done through a combination of four methods:
decriminalization of Germans, blaming the Allies for Holocaust equivalence and
Israelis for Holocaust inversion, while claiming that Jews speak too much about
the Holocaust.

The decriminalization method presents the German perpetrators and supporters of
extreme racism and genocide as a small group of Nazis. The implicit claim is
that the great majority of Germans didn't know, hear or see anything of the
crimes being committed by their fellow countrymen.

In the widespread revisionist German narrative, Nazis are represented as some
kind of aliens who took over a decent country. The truth however is that Hitler
and his associates were voted into power democratically in 1933. Thereafter,
even more Germans went over to their side.

The weekly Die Zeit earlier this year drew attention to the perfidy of the
two-part television movie Die Gustloff which tells about the sinking of the ship
of that name in January 1945 by the Russians. It wrote: "The movie shows the 9
000 people on board as innocuous lambs" and mentions that it gives the
impression that there were at most two or three Nazis on board, who are shown as
caricature characters.

THE SECOND manipulation method is to present the actions of the Allies against
Germans as similar in nature to German crimes. In this Holocaust equivalence
framework, the exaggeration of the number of victims of the Dresden bombardment
plays a major role. For instance, in two best- sellers the German historian Jsrg
Friedrich uses Nazi terminology when speaking about Allied bombings of Dresden
and elsewhere.

Historian Susanne Urban writes that Friedrich "uses terms that for decades were
associated with Nazi persecution and the Shoah; thus, cellars and air-raid
shelters in which Germans died are 'crematoria,' and a RAF bomber group is an
Einsatzgruppe, and the destruction of libraries during the bombings constitutes
BYcherverbrennungen. In this way the Shoah is minimized through language."

In his second book, Friedrich depicts Germans as victims and doesn't mention the
persecutions. "The book contains horrifying photos of the effects of the Allied
bombings of Germany. Ruins, burned bodies and ashes everywhere evoke
associations with the Warsaw Ghetto after its liquidation in 1943 and well-known
images from Auschwitz and other extermination camps."

Urban points out that Friedrich declared openly, in several television
interviews in 2002, that "Churchill was the greatest child-slaughterer of all
time. He slaughtered 76,000 children." Friedrich did not mention the 1.5 million
Jewish children murdered by Germans and their allies.

A THIRD method, also widespread in the German mainstream, is diminishing
Germany's guilt by inverting the Holocaust and claiming that Israel is
committing crimes against the Palestinians similar to those of the Nazis. In a
major poll of more than 2,600 Germans undertaken in 2004 by the University of
Bielefeld, 51 percent agreed with the statement: "The way the State of Israel
acts toward the Palestinians is in principle no different from the Nazis'
behavior in the Third Reich toward the Jews." Sixty-eight percent agreed with
the allegation: "Israel undertakes a war of destruction against the
Palestinians."

The fourth manipulation method has two aspects. The first one is accusing the
Jews of speaking too much about the Holocaust. Its second element can only
rarely be publicized. It consists of mentioning the Holocaust as little as
possible. Its public origins can be traced back to the author Martin Walser.
When he received the prestigious Peace Prize of German Publishers in 1998, he
stated that he was fed up with being confronted by Auschwitz. Some 1,200 members
of the German elite gave him a standing ovation.

THESE MANIPULATIONS are all stepping stones toward revising German history. This
will become easier in the future because most survivors of German horrors are
very old. In the revision process the German mainstream avoids the pitfall of
applying a fifth method of distorting history. Holocaust denial or stating that
the number of Holocaust victims was far less than 6 million should be left to
the neo-Nazis, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and many Arabs and other Muslims in the
world.

The mainstream German distortion of history using the above-mentioned methods
has increased dramatically in recent years. It may ultimately become the new
German collective memory as well as official history. To avoid this it should be
exposed as much as possible.

Germany's post-war governments have made major efforts to reeducate Germans
after the war and to avoid most of the major distortions of the Holocaust. Their
aim was to make Germany acceptable again among the nations. If the current major
distortion of past crimes succeeds, it can only lead to one ultimate outcome:
paving the way for future ones.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: BOMBED-OUT DRESDEN. Estimates of the number killed have been
lowered by scholars from 135,000 to 25,000.

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October 15, 2008 Wednesday

A courageous rabbi talks to the Catholic synod

BYLINE: ISI LEIBLER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1140 words

HIGHLIGHT: When he formally addressed the synod, Cohen never explicitly referred
to Pope Pius XII by name, although it was obvious to whom he was relating.
Candidly Speaking.

Haifa Chief Rabbi She'ar Yashuv Cohen recently became the first Jew to address a
synod of bishops at the Vatican. He did so with dignity and diplomacy, and
unlike many Jews engaged in interfaith activity, he courageously raised issues
that would not have endeared him to his audience.

The achievement of constructive goals in our interfaith activities is frequently
undermined by internal handicaps. Many Jewish lay representatives active in the
field are ignorant of their own religious heritage and thus incapable of
presenting an authentic Jewish position. On the other hand, some rabbis are
insufficiently experienced with the world to be able to effectively participate
in interfaith encounters.

Another problem is that many lay Jewish activists are tempted to regard access
to Christian or Muslim groups as an end in itself. They fail to appreciate that
sharing platforms and obtaining photo opportunities can be counterproductive if
it imposes an obligation to remain silent on "sensitive" issues so as not to
"destabilize the relationship."

COHEN WAS not burdened by such handicaps when he addressed Pope Benedict XVI and
a gathering of 253 cardinals, archbishops and bishops. He conveyed to them the
meaning of Torah for Jews and also expressed the hope that after such a long and
painful history of "blood and tears," his presence at such a gathering was a
"signal of hope and love for generations to come." Yet instead of basking in his
glory, he diplomatically but forcefully raised the most sensitive issue on the
Catholic-Jewish agenda.

Over the past half century, the role of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust has
been the subject of bitter controversy. Jewish and other critics have accused
him of failing to speak out against the murder of the Jews. They maintain that
his silence provided international legitimacy to the Nazis. His critics allege
that he was motivated by fear of communism, cowardice and even outright anti-
Semitism. Others who say that they have not yet made up their minds on the
controversy nonetheless criticize the Vatican for denying independent scholars
access to the archives which could shed additional light on the issue.

The prevailing Jewish view is reflected at Yad Vashem by a terse caption under
the image of Pope Pius which states: "Even when reports about the murder of Jews
reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest either verbally or in writing. In
December 1942, he abstained from signing the Allied declaration condemning the
extermination of the Jews. When the Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz,
the pope did not intervene."

The defenders of Pope Pius XII, including the current pope, bitterly refute the
allegation that he was anti- Semitic, insisting that he "worked secretly and
relentlessly trying to save as many Jews as possible." At a solemn Mass in St.
Peter's Basilica on October 8 to mark the 50th anniversary of Pius's death, Pope
Benedict promoted his beatification and rejected all allegations that he had
ever acted improperly, insisting that Pius had done all possible to halt the
murders.

Clearly the Vatican is determined to proceed with the beatification. Although
most Jews remain convinced that Pius was guilty, at the very least of the sin of
silence in the face of evil, some Jewish interfaith leaders have recently tended
to soft-pedal this issue. They fear that continued public expression of the
Jewish position could lead to a breakdown in the positive Jewish-Catholic
relationship initiated during the term of Pope John XXIII and followed by his
successors. Some also insist that we should not be involved in what is
unquestionably an internal matter for the Church to resolve. The International
Jewish Commission on Interdenominational Consultations had already agreed not to
raise the subject when it meets the pope next month - although that may now
change.

IT IS into this maelstrom that Cohen raised this sensitive issue. Many Jews
being honored as he was by the Church would have taken the less hazardous path
of avoiding controversy. But Cohen has a track record of courageously expressing
his views and refusing to bury his head in the sand. Clearly, he has no interest
in meddling in the internal affairs of the Church. But he does have a sense of
history and feels that for the record, even if Catholics proceed on the path to
beatification, Jews are obliged to make their voices heard on such a burning
issue.

Cohen also maintains that if our reconciliation with the Catholic Church is
truly meaningful, it should understand the depth of our feelings on such a
matter and not take offense or permit such expressions to inhibit ongoing good
relations.

It was at a press conference preceding his synod address that Cohen dropped the
bombshell, informing journalists that he may not have accepted the invitation
had he been aware that the meeting of the synod to which he had been invited
coincided with ceremonies honoring Pope Pius XII on the 50th anniversary of his
death. He said that Pope Pius "should not be seen as a model and should not be
beatified because he did not raise his voice against the Holocaust. He did not
speak, either because he was afraid or for other personal reasons."

When he formally addressed the synod, Cohen never explicitly referred to Pope
Pius XII by name, although it was obvious to whom he was relating. In the most
diplomatic manner, he told the synod that most Jews, especially survivors, felt
that the pope had failed to condemn the Holocaust. "He may have helped many of
those suffering in secrecy, but the question is, could he have raised his voice
and would it have helped or not? Only God can answer that. But I have to make it
very clear that we, the rabbis, the leadership of the Jewish people, must take
account of the feelings of the deceased and cannot simply say we forgive or we
forget. It pains us but we cannot endorse that such a leader of the Church now
be honored."

He also urged the synod, as religious leaders, to actively condemn Iranian
President's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's obscene call for Israel's destruction. "The
problem during World War II was that people did not believe what Hitler was
saying. Unfortunately", he said, "we had the Holocaust, and we are pained when
we remember that not enough was done by the leadership of world religions and
other powerful leaders to stop it then. We expect them to do so today. My being
here makes me feel that we can expect your help, and I am sure your message will
be listened to by influential people all over the world."

Rabbi She'ar Yashuv Cohen is a remarkable spiritual leader, a great scholar and
an authentic voice of national religious Jews that is rarely heard. He is
admired and respected by all religious groups, including the haredim. Would that
we were blessed with more rabbis of such caliber and outlook.

ileibler@netvision.net.il

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: RABBI SHE'AR Yashuv Cohen at a meeting of 253 bishops at the
Vatican presided over by Pope Benedict XVI last week. He diplomatically but
forcefully raised the most sensitive issue on the Catholic-Jewish agenda.
(Credit: AP)

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October 13, 2008 Monday

Panic vs self-interest

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 718 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

If only Israelis had the luxury of addressing one crisis at a time - the turmoil
in Acre, for instance, or the failure to form a new government; or signs that
Fatah and Hamas are burying the hatchet, or freeing Gilad Schalit. That's even
harder to do when the worst worldwide financial crisis in generations insists on
monopolizing the headlines.

Israel is not immune to the economic tremors shaking the rest of the world.
After a four-day holiday weekend, the Tel Aviv Stock Market opened an hour late
Sunday to give traders time to take a deep breath. Even so, the market still
suffered its biggest drop since 1997. Though closing steeply down, it managed to
stabilize during the day as sellers discovered - lo and behold! - that there
were still buyers out there.

MUCH HAPPENED while our markets were closed over Yom Kippur. Stocks worldwide
plunged, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling 18 percent. Companies
were hard- pressed to find lenders. Having expended its dwindling political
capital on persuading a reluctant Congress to allocate $700 billion for the
purchase of stocks tied to bad mortgages, the US Treasury seemed to radically
revise its approach: The US government is now poised to, in effect, partially
nationalize certain banks to "unfreeze" the credit markets.

Meanwhile, Iceland practically went bankrupt; its government said it would
protect the deposits of its own citizens, but not those held by foreigners,
including a number of local authorities in London which found themselves out in
the cold.

While Israel enjoyed its trading hiatus, the Federal Reserve, the European
Central Bank and the Bank of England finally managed to coordinate an
interest-rate cut. And British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose popularity is
as low as the market itself, found himself widely applauded for producing a
genuinely systematic plan to address the crisis. Basically, it promises to
guarantee new loans, in addition to providing cash to British banks. This could
serve as a model for other nations.

Speaking in the Rose Garden on Saturday as finance ministers and central bankers
from the G-7 nations stood stony-faced behind him, President George W. Bush
declared: "All of us recognize that this is a serious global crisis, [which]
therefore requires a serious global response." Those gathered around him
generally agreed to coordinate their efforts to find a way out of the crisis
since actions taken unilaterally - a la Iceland's - will only make a bad
situation worse.

With 20/20 hindsight, we can speculate that America's failure to bail out Lehman
Brothers catalyzed the current crisis. Looking back further, a convincing
argument is being made that the American financial establishment's love affair
with the poorly understood and grossly under- regulated tools known as
"derivatives" contributed to the meltdown.

AS TO the here and now, Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Eli Yishai wanted
Sunday's cabinet meeting to consider creating an "economic kitchen cabinet" that
would address how to guarantee the safety of savings in our banks and the need
to raise yields on government bonds. But, ridiculously, Cabinet Secretary Ovad
Yehezkel pointed to a rule that requires agenda items to be submitted three days
in advance.

To be fair, the government has been effectively grappling with how to steer
Israel through this crisis emanating from beyond our shores. And analysts agree
our economy's exposure to mortgage-related debt and derivatives is minimal, and
that the biggest dangers are psychological.

To that end, Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On reassured Israelis that his ministry
and the Bank of Israel would intervene as necessary. They are reportedly indeed
weighing plans to offer deposit insurance and, if necessary, inject capital into
the banking system.

If anything makes people nervous, it is being told not to panic. And yet, Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert is quite correct to tell the public just that.

If, rather than letting fear prevail, Israelis adhere to the "buy low and sell
high" mantra, chances are we will all emerge to trade again another day.

Authorities here are doing their utmost to stem panic by making it clear that if
necessary, they stand ready to intervene in a timely fashion. The rest of us can
help by not getting caught up in the hysteria swirling around us.

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The Jerusalem Post

October 13, 2008 Monday

Who designs Jerusalem?

BYLINE: GERARD HEUMANN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 844 words

HIGHLIGHT: The author is a Jerusalem architect and town planner.

Recent years have seen too many signs that the municipality of Jerusalem has no
awareness of design - good or bad - while the rate of physical development is so
rapid that we're seeing the nearby countryside destroyed. Politics has a great
deal to do with this.

Of all our political figures, the mayor can do the most good or the most harm in
the matter of design. The direct impact mayors can have on the appearance of
their city is great, the indirect impact in a city with serious planning and
zoning programs enormous. Examples of mayoral support for destructive projects
are hardly lacking. Haifa's former mayor Arye Gurel pushed through the
catastrophic hotel built lengthwise opposite the Carmel Beach, thereby
permanently blocking public access and sea views. During the Gulf War, Tel Aviv
mayor Shlomo Lahat actually prayed that the first Scud missile fall on Kikar
Atarim, having no better idea of how to rid himself of the beachfront slum he
had approved.

Needless to say, Jerusalem is no exception; its list of failures is too long to
list here. Here's a small sampling:

Ehud Olmert, from his first day in office, encouraged the building of towers -
ignoring, among a great many other facts, that many would fall within the Old
City's visual basin. Their placement on a site-by-site basis has had the
expected destructive result. Yes men like former city engineer "I want to live
in New York" Uri Ben-Asher made matters worse. The unholy Holyland Park,
approved in spite of thousands of objections, and with far taller towers still
to come, is another of Olmert's design contributions.

At Malha, a shopping center, sports stadium, technology park and residential
neighborhood were designed as if each existed on separate planets. Not a single
building in the technology park bounds adjacent roads, not even opposite the
shopping center, where a golden opportunity existed for the design of valuable
commercial space at ground level.

The City Hall complex, Safra Square, built at enormous public expense, features
a monumental, shadeless and useless plaza bounded by dead arcades. Surrounding
it with 200 painted lions only serves to emphasize its hopeless sterility.
Plazas are successful when life goes on around them as well as within. In fact,
practically all the city center's public squares (several having been rebuilt
three to four times) remain lifeless.

WOULD-BE MAYOR Menahem Porush takes great pride in having supported the plan for
Har Homa, seemingly having learned nothing from the many previous planning
errors made in Gilo and Ramot - two other overly dense bedroom communities,
homogeneous and dull.

Understandably, many of our mayoral candidates have exhibited a pronounced
tendency to avoid the time-consuming and complex problems related to improving
and expanding the existing built environment, preferring instead to consider the
virgin land at the city's periphery. The Safdie Plan for a new town comprising
more than 20,000 dwellings west of Jerusalem, fortunately put on hold by
Lupolianski at the last moment, is one such case.

Economists warn us not to dwell on "sunk" costs, so we can only pray that the
stated goals of the light rail system's first line, designed to enhance public
access to the city center, will be met. At the very least, an investigation into
the costly and disturbing delays of the project, as well as a candid explanation
to the public, are in order.

The municipality's open-door policy toward superstar architects must be
abandoned. Calatrava's suspension bridge, built at a cost of hundreds of
millions of shekels, though beautiful in itself, bears little relation to its
surroundings. Gehry's design for the Museum of Tolerance on land donated by the
city is also totally unrelated to its physical context. And so far as the
selection of local architects and other professionals for public work is
concerned, there have been signs of favoritism. Transparent criteria should be
established.

Malha, Safra Square, Har Homa, West Jerusalem and the Museum of Tolerance are
but a few of the dozens of projects sponsored by the Jerusalem Development
Authority. They are all large-scale, self-contained and essentially single-use.
As such, they are destructive of natural human dialogue with the community they
are presumably a part of. Perhaps the time has come for a mayor to rethink the
way the JDA is run.

The vacuum that has resulted from so many years without a clear design policy
has led to mediocrity. For social awareness to be again translated into design
that encourages community values, a renewed respect for the opinions of one's
neighbors is necessary.

We must finalize the new Jerusalem Master Plan, and hope for a comprehensive and
well-integrated concept that incorporates physical, historical, social and
economic considerations - a Jerusalem having a strong unity and identity.

The education of our next mayor is unlikely to have prepared him to make crucial
design decisions. Surrounding himself with top-flight professionals while
exhibiting a willingness to listen and learn is his only prerogative.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SAFRA SQUARE, Jerusalem city hall. A monumental, shadeless and
useless plaza bounded by dead arcades. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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The Jerusalem Post

October 13, 2008 Monday

Why the Middle East is sick

BYLINE: BARRY RUBIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 930 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Region. The writer is director of Global Research in
International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East Review of
International Affairs Journal.

We now have the perfect metaphor for the Middle East's political situation. In
Egypt, a little boy with cystic fibrosis badly needs a certain medicine.
Unfortunately for him, that drug is only produced in Israel, and Egypt's health
ministry won't let it be imported.

Unless one understands how this story typifies the region, it's impossible to
understand the Middle East.

Let's remember that Egypt has been at peace with Israel for over 30 years, and
that, nevertheless, its government still does much to boycott, not to mention
demonize, the Jewish state. By constantly pursuing a hate- Israel campaign, it
stokes an atmosphere of hatred and extremism which also gives ammunition to the
Muslim Brotherhood that seeks to turn Egypt into a war-oriented, totalitarian
Islamist state.

So tightly controlled is the Egyptian media, so extraordinary the Israelphobia,
that the English-language Cairo paper Al-Ahram was considered courageous even to
mention the sick boy's family's effort to obtain the Israeli-invented medicine.

Meanwhile, an Egyptian wrote recently: "Admission into [a] state-run hospital is
likely to cost one his life." This came shortly after a scandal involving a top
ruling- party politician who was discovered selling tainted transfusion blood.

Arab countries cannot develop medicines and hi-tech advances precisely because
they are too busy using up the resources for battles against various fantasy
enemies of Allah.

SOME YEARS ago, a US official told me about funds that had been offered Egyptian
officials to implement a program dealing with Red Sea pollution. But the project
involved cooperation with Israel. The official was told that anything helping
Israel was unacceptable, no matter how much good it might do Egypt.

In pursuit of its vendetta against Israel and the West, the Arab world is
committing suicide - not only the individual suicide of the terrorist, but the
suicide of entire societies. On a daily basis, this means rejecting the reforms
those societies need. In the long run, it means risking takeover by radical
Islamists.

The rest of the world, finding such talk incomprehensible, either thinks it's
meaningless jabber, or ignores it altogether. Surely the problem must stem from
addressable grievances, fixable misunderstandings and emotional exaggeration?
Unfortunately, this is all nonsense.

What's the effective voice in the region? Not the "peace process" concept used
in talking with the West, but the "resistance" concept, used in talking among
themselves.

Even in countries with genuinely moderate governments, no official or
state-controlled newspaper (and very few intellectuals) dare say: Israel is not
an enemy; America is a friend; the true struggle is to raise living standards
and promote freedom. This is as true at 2008's end as it was in 1998, 1988,
1978, 1968 and 1958.

When asked in a recent poll about their feelings toward al-Qaida, 60% of
Egyptians answered "positive" or "mixed." The "positives" no doubt think
al-Qaida is right and international terrorism is the best - probably only - way
to deal with Israel and the West, no matter what the consequences. The "mixed"
have reservations about methods, but believe al-Qaida's fundamental world view
is accurate.

Analyzing the poll, analyst Doug Miller said such results were "yet another
indicator that the US 'war on terror' is not winning hearts and minds."

Yet the fault lies not with America but with the rulers, journalists, clerics,
educators and intellectuals in the Arabic-speaking world. The poll's results are
yet another indicator that the war on democracy and moderation is what's winning
hearts and minds.

Those defending the status quo mobilize the masses on its behalf, diverting them
against foreign devils rather than domestic dissatisfactions. Those seeking
revolution stir the masses into bloody upheaval against the status quo. The
former ride the tiger; the latter want to set the tiger on its historic masters.

How can the United States possibly tame a tiger trained and owned by others who
both whip and feed it daily?

WHAT DOES it matter if Arab notables speak soothingly at diplomatic parties or
in Western media interviews while millions at home are inundated by a very
different message? Even if the tie-and-suit, polished-manners crowd are sincere,
they dare not say the same thing to their people that they whisper into the ears
of gullible foreigners.

Here's a more typical rhetoric - coming from Hamas member of parliament Fathi
Hammad on al-Aksa television, September 7:

"The approaching victoryÉ is not limited to Palestine. You are creating the
ethos of victory for all Arabs and Muslims, and Allah willing, even on the
global level. Why? Because Allah has chosen you to fight the people he hates
most - the Jews." (MEMRI translation)

Nowadays one can even say this kind of thing in front of the UN General
Assembly, as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did recently, to tumultuous
applause. The clapping drowned out his regime's appalling internal repression
and economic failures.

It works. This is how Syrian President Bashar Assad speaks to his subjects. And
while Egypt's president and Jordan's king personally detest such ravings, they
pay the ravers' salaries.

Is Arab victory approaching? Well, no. But this kind of talk has kept the
suckers in line for 60 years now. It's just so useful for rulers and
revolutionaries.

The younger generation has already been thoroughly indoctrinated. Yet its
victory will be as great as that of the little boy (involuntarily) doing his
patriotic and religious "duty" by going without the medicine he needs.

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The Jerusalem Post

October 13, 2008 Monday

Shift the focus from synagogue to home

BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 964 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is the founder of The Jewish Values Network which seeks to
bring Jewish values to the mainstream Jewish and non-Jewish public. His upcoming
book, The Kosher Sutra: Eight Sacred Secrets to Recapturing Desire and
Rediscovering Erotic Passion, will be published in January.

Every synagogue on earth has attempted to make the High Holy Day services
exciting. Some have succeeded. Most have failed. That most Jews experience their
Judaism for three days a year at synagogue is quite a shame. It bores them to
tears, which explains why they don't come back until the next year. They sit for
hours listening to a service in a language they don't understand, hearing a
sermon that is often not relevant to their lives, and then offer their first
sincere thanks to God when the service is over. Hallelujah! I made it. I
survived. As for the services that are not in Hebrew and are shorter, they are
often so watered down as to lose their potency, unable to make a soulful impact.

Look, I'm not knocking synagogue. I'm an orthodox rabbi. I take my kids to shul
every Shabbos. I pray every day with as much concentration I can muster and
believe that in prayer we find our closest proximity to God. Yet the shul was
never meant to be the focal point of Jewish life. That was supposed to be the
home. In Temple times in ancient Israel, there were no synagogues. True, people
prayed in quorums of ten or more, just as we do today. But it was much more
make-shift and shtiebel-like. The focal point of Jewish life was not the
formality of the synagogue but the informality of the home. It was celebrated
not with the detachment of strangers but with the warmth of relatives. And as
Jewish life has slowly moved from the intimacy of the dining room table to the
structured rule of the synagogue pews, more and more Jews have opted out.

EVER SINCE the first Passover when the Jews were commanded to celebrate not in
synagogue clusters but in family groups. Ever since then, Judaism's principal
venue has been the Sabbath meal rather than the Sabbath services, the nightly
instruction of parent to child rather than the rabbi's sermon, and the timely
celebration of Jewish festivals with family and guests rather than with the
shamash (beadle) at shul.

But somewhere along the line this tradition was forgotten and the synagogue
became pre-eminent. Is this a positive development? Nearly every week we host
tens of mostly non-observant Jews at our home for the Friday night meal. They
love the warmth of the table, meeting new friends, the l'chaims we toast to
special life celebrations, and, most of all, the lively discussion of
significant life issues. But just imagine if instead I invited them to synagogue
as their first introduction to Judaism. They'd be holding a prayer book upside
down, feeling immensely self-conscious, and would often not even be greeted by
new faces. And yes, we can fix a lot of that. But come on, no synagogue on earth
is ever going to be as friendly as someone's home. Which is why the first
introduction to Judaism for non-affiliated Jews should be an invitation to a
Shabbos meal rather than the often non- ending monotony of the High Holy Day
services.

FOR THE 11 years I was rabbi at Oxford, sure, we held regular prayer services.
But I never made it a focal point of our activities. Our big event of the week
was a Friday night meal which drew hundreds of participants. When new students
wanted to join our group, I would always encourage them to skip the services and
join the meal. Please don't come to shul. Not yet. Wait until you get the hang
of things and fit in more. And many of these students became observant and
became the mainstays of our minyan. Had the order been reversed, I might never
have seen them again.

The same is true of the many non-Jews who have been introduced to Jewish
spirituality at our home. Yes, they have been to church many times. What they
have never done is seen anything like a Shabbos table. If they survive the
gefilte fish (they often ask me why they have never seen one in an aquarium),
the electricity in the air blows them away. One African-American Christian guest
told me we ought to do a reality TV show based on our home called simply, "The
Table."

Judaism is not found only in parchment of the Torah scroll but in the honey into
which the apple is dipped. We should be encouraging Jewish families to invite
for Shabbos eight guests every week (because a critical mass helps build a more
entertaining atmosphere), and then we'd be rebuilding our community.

Sadly, the shul is headed in the opposite direction. Parents bring their kids
and immediately pass them over to youth directors who give them pretzels and
then sing Adon Olam. I'm not looking to knock the youth directors, many of whom
do a fantastic job of inspiring our kids. But isn't that supposed to be the job
of the parent? As it is, we farm them out to teachers in Jewish day schools who
pray with them and study with them the whole week. One day a week they're ours?
And even them we send them to be raised communally? Even at shul we pull apart
the family?

THE JEWISH community, like any other, has different tastes. I personally find it
difficult to sit through a long-winded service replete with a cantor yodeling
even the most beautiful melodies. I have always been puzzled as to how a
synagogue service ever became a one-man concert rather than something
participatory which involves the whole community in singing. For that reason, I
have always organized small High Holy Day services which, to be sure, are about
reciting the whole davening but are also about discussion and explanation, which
makes them inclusive and participatory.

But there seems to be a disturbing trend in Jewish life whereby individuals are
being rendered passive. They sit and listen to the rabbi, they sit and listen to
the cantor, the youth director prays with their kids while they sit in silent
submission in the pews. And truth be told, this idleness is boring the heck out
of most Jews and slowly killing off Jewish communal passion.

www.shmuley.com

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The Jerusalem Post

October 13, 2008 Monday

Letters

BYLINE: Sheila Nartosky Rotenberg, Rosalie Brosilow, Deena Spigelman, Herb
Stark, Steven Schuster, Richard Schwartz, Roy Stern, Joel Burstein, Devora
Green, M.R. Miller

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1174 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Helping ourselves...

Sir, - Re Golda Meir's "We want defensible borders not only so that if we are
ever attacked we will be able to defend them, but so that the borders, by their
very existence, will dissuade our neighbors from touching us" ("Golda's
meltdown," Yom Kippur supplement, October 8):

Many promises have been made by those running for office since Golda's time, and
it seems as if at every opportunity someone is trying to offer upour borders for
"peace" or the possibility of their names going down in history.

In this new year, with a new government perhaps being formed, we will hopefully
stop worrying so much about how the rest of the world feels about us and begin
protecting ourselves. God helps those who help themselves.

SHEILA NARTOSKY ROTENBERG

Petah Tikva

...and the opposite

Sir, - It seems the hooligans in Acre are having themselves a good old time
("Acre riots continue despite massive police presence," October 12). The police
should crack down on all offenders - Arab and Jewish - without limits. Either we
live in a civilized society, or we don't.

ROSALIE BROSILOW

Shoham

Sir, - The rioting in Acre was apparently started as a protest against a car
being driven into the Jewish area on Yom Kippur. Those responsible contend that
this was done as a provocation - yet had they been truly concerned about the
sanctity of the day, they could not justify their actions. They should at least
have given the driver the benefit of the doubt; that he was on a legitimate
errand.

Driving down a road is not illegal, even if it disturbs the peace. Was the riot
not disturbing the peace? Even worse, it was self-defeating.

If the provocation was deliberate, then the provocateur succeeded beyond his
wildest expectations. It would have been smarter to let him pass unnoticed. A
let- down for him - and much saved in anger, time, money and injury.

What a way to begin the New Year.

DEENA SPIGELMAN

Jerusalem

Sir, - That community leaders from both sides agreed to meet to calm Jews and
Arabs in the aftermath of the riots in Acre stemming from an Arab driving into
the city on the holiest of Jewish holidays suggests that peace is attainable.
One hopes that those Arab and Jewish leaders will continue to apply their
efforts to bring about lasting peace between Arabs and Jews nationwide.

HERB STARK

Massapequa, New York

Privileged caretakers

Sir, - On Succot, the festival during which we offer thanks for life's
abundance, we are reminded that humans are only privileged caretakers of this
precious but imperiled planet. Like the succot of our Israelite ancestors in the
wilderness, this Earth is no more than our temporary dwelling, and it is our
responsibility to cherish and care for our planet and all its creatures, as co-
workers with God. We cannot rely on technological advances but must find a way
to live in harmony with nature.

As we decorate our succot with pictures and replicas of fruits and vegetables,
we should consider how future harvests are endangered by global warming,
widening water shortages and soil erosion and depletion. And as our Israelite
ancestors were sustained with manna, a vegetarian food "like coriander seed," we
should sustain ourselves with a wide variety of plant foods, to improve our
health and help move our endangered planet onto a sustainable path ("Greens see
Israel's shades of gray," October 2).

STEVEN SCHUSTER

RICHARD H. SCHWARTZ

New York

Loving, not austere

Sir, - It broke my heart to read Yaron Yadan's "Religion and secularism - a
moral accounting" (October 8). No doubt there are communities where his skewed
view of Orthodox Judaism is accepted. In all facets of life there is a spectrum
of views; he, unfortunately, found himself at one extreme.

Orthodox Judaism believes in a God whose perfection we fallible mortals must try
to emulate as best we can. The Torah and Halacha are an attempt by God, together
with the great rabbis throughout the generations, to create the best framework
for this. Although Halacha contains laws pertaining to the relationship between
man and God, the vast majority of laws - and, if one properly understands
Halacha, the most important ones - pertain to the relationship between man and
his fellow.

The striving for humanistic values in life is central to Orthodox Judaism, and
to present Halacha as monolithic and immutable is to deny a tradition of
thousands of years of debate presenting conflicting views on almost every topic.

Where Halacha differs from secularism is that it believes in absolute morality,
as opposed to relative morality where everyone can decide for himself what is
moral. (This is akin to allowing every driver to determine the proper speed
limit).

Orthodox Judaism is not the austere, forbidding and fearsome religion presented
by Mr. Yadan. It is warm, loving and fulfilling and tries to make us better
people.

ROY STERN

Efrat

Not greedy enough

Sir, - In "Good, bad, and greedy" (October 10) Asher Meir implies that excessive
greed is the cause of the current financial crisis. However, greed is simply the
desire to make a profit. If anything, the bankers and insurers weren't greedy
enough, or they would have worked harder to make wise investments. Their
laziness, gullibility and stupidity, not excessive greed, have caused the
financial crisis in which we find ourselves.

Bankers and insurers can be the world's worst businesspeople. We give our
hard-earned money to them for their use, practically for free, and they lose it.
Rather than investigating how best to invest our money for their own profit,
bankers and insurers take the lazy way out, follow the herd mentality and make
investments in what turn out to be pyramid schemes.

What are the business ethics of running a successful business into the ground
through laziness? That's the question I would like answered.

JOEL BURSTEIN

Jerusalem

'Mad cow disease'

needs another look

Sir, - Re "MDA kept busy during fast" (October 10): I feel that Magen David Adom
has no one but itself to blame for the shortage in blood donations around the
time of the High Holy Days or at any time. As a Brit who immigrated here 14
years ago, I have been prevented from donating blood for many years now for fear
of "mad cow disease" - which, if I am correct, has not surfaced in Israel.

I am sure that MDA would have more than adequate supplies of blood if it stopped
preventing Brits (and I understand also French and Irish) from donating. Until
it implemented this exemption, I donated every four months. Whenever I see a
request for donations, I can't help but think of the number of people excluded
from this extraordinary mitzva.

Isn't it time to review this policy?

DEVORA GREEN

Jerusalem

'Great Schlep' debunked

Sir, - Thanks to Haviv Rettig for addressing the insolent "Great Schlep" project
so intelligently ("Mocking the Jews," October 12). Do these patronizing young
people realize that the logical extrapolation of this insulting attitude to
their grandparents is that at age 65, they too will be hapless half-wits unable
to analyze a problem that presents a difficult choice?

M.R. MILLER, Jerusalem

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October 12, 2008 Sunday

The major diplomatic challenges for the 21st century

BYLINE: EFRAIM HALEVY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1316 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is a former head of the Mossad (1998-2002), national
security adviser to prime minister Ariel Sharon (2002-2003) and ambassador to
the EU (1996-1998). He is currently head of the Shasha Center for Strategic
Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A unique combination of unprecedented factors on the international and regional
scenes is rapidly changing the rules, the capabilities, the threats and the
challenges facing us.

First, the race between military nuclearization of the globe and its effective
prevention is gaining momentum. None other than Henry Kissinger has defined a
nuclearized world as uncontrollable. Hence this must be prevented at all cost.

All cost? Three recent challenges have been treated in different ways. North
Korea has been brutally pressured economically and has twice made a deal with
the United States, and twice been caught cheating on its implementation. Iran
has been cajoled and engaged in fruitless negotiations and is being threatened
with military action, so far to no avail. And Syria has been subjected to
surgical military action, the outcome of which is still unclear.

The necessity to create a system, to fashion a regime of mutual coexistence in a
crowded nuclear environment or to produce an effective method to prevent
proliferation will be a major feature of this century. This is most urgent
because nuclear capability is due to become cheaper, more accessible and ever
more miniaturized and mobile. No progress has, so far, been registered.

Second, the international system will have to address the growing phenomenon of
non-state players - terrorist movements with global reach, or regional groups
with strong impacts on global interests, including such as aspire to and may
even obtain non-conventional weaponry. Hamas in the Middle East and the Taliban
and its related allies in Pakistan in the Indian nuclearized subcontinent, are
only two of such key cases. It will be necessary to devise a variety of policies
and strategies to deal with these non- state phenomena. The employment of brute
force will not always be effective or wise.

Third, the nature of the threats - some distastefully label them "existential" -
is forcing changes in security and defense doctrine. Inter alia, no state or
non-state will be able to create a protective shield that will operate solely
within its borders. The nature of attack and delivery systems, incrementally
ballistic and long range, will dictate increasingly global responses to threats;
thus, 9/11 on the American continent elicited long-term responses in the
heartlands of Asia and the Middle East. More and more players will become
global, and the influences between big and smaller players will be increasingly
reciprocal. The global village in economy, business and trade is being joined by
the global village in the fields of defense and security.

Fourthly, the rules and norms of conflict will be fast changing. Traditional
laws and conventions in international law are becoming and will increasingly
become irrelevant and obsolete, entirely divorced from reality, and it will
become urgent to rewrite the rules of combat so they relate to new means of
combat, to revolutionary stakes at hand. The rights and wrongs of yesterday will
no longer apply.

Fifthly, the traditional nation-state, which has been the foundation for the
relations between states, will continue to undergo profound change in this
century. Thus, for example, by the mid 2050s, 50 percent of the citizens of the
Russian Federation may be of the Muslim faith. Religion and ethnic identity may
transform the very character of states and political entities. World order as we
know it today may be on the brink of an abyss. And I have not mentioned issues
like economic turmoil, global warming and health epidemics.

WHAT CAN we do about all this? Where is diplomacy in this struggle for survival?

The first challenge to be met is to prioritize the threats and opportunities.
What comes first? The world will not be able to deal with all multiple crises
simultaneously. There can be no doubt that the Middle East crises will be close
to the top because the three major threats to international order -
non-conventional proliferation, Islamic international terror and the oil crisis
- have deepest roots in our region. Destiny has catapulted Israel into the heart
of all three.

The second necessity will be to prioritize adversaries and to differentiate
between them. None other than Albert Einstein wrote in the 1930s that "to
prevent the greater evil, it is necessary that the lesser evil be accepted for
the time being." And saying so, he abandoned a longtime support of pacifism.

Opportunities will arise when we cease to lump all enemies under one heading and
deal with them in a more sophisticated and prioritized fashion. One such example
should be crafting a difference between dealing with Hamas and al-Qaida. Hamas
is regarded by al-Qaida as a sworn enemy - a traitor to the cause. And Hamas
feels deeply threatened by the likes of Osama bin Laden and his team. The
ability to identify these cracks in the wall of hatred and extremism and to
translate them into assets in the war against terror will be a prime challenge
in the decades to come.

The third principle that will open up opportunities will be to replace the
search for permanent solutions with a preference for interim medium-term
arrangements. It will need acceptance of the understanding that conflicts cannot
always be solved in tight time frames and therefore rather than prolong
hostilities, ad hoc, temporary measures are needed as bridging strategies until
time is ripe for genuine reconciliation.

Fourthly, these approaches will clear the international decks so that the
international community can concentrate both on constructive cooperation in the
fields of economy, health hazards and global warming on the one hand, and create
conditions for all-out war on the prioritized threats to international security.

Fifthly, under these circumstances, ad hoc coalitions, almost but not quite like
that of 1991 on Iraq, will be formed to confront the greatest threats and
dangers together. These coalitions will entail mutual concessions between
partners on secondary issues and these concessions may be such as to last for
quite some time.

ISRAEL, A major player in the Middle East and a junior player on the
international scene, must ensure that, as of now, it becomes an indispensable
partner for any future coalition that is created to face down international
existential threats whatever the method chosen to deal with them.

One such case in hand is that of Iran, which constantly and loudly advocates
putting an end to the existence of Israel as a sovereign and independent state.
If all other options fail, the military one might evolve into the only one left
"on the table." The dangers for all parties in such a predicament do not require
any further explanation.

But should the "diplomatic" option take center stage, it is more than obvious
that the items for negotiation will include interests that are most vital to
Israel. Euphemisms like "regional security" or "regional hegemony" or
guaranteeing Iran's security interests are inseparably bound up with the most
acute necessities of Israel. Should Iran go for what is enticingly labeled "the
grand bargain," it is unthinkable that this can be negotiated without Israel
sitting at the table. No ally of Israel, however loyal and attentive, and the
United States is just that, can act as a proxy in defining the sacrifice that
Israel might be called to accept and then negotiate it with Iran in Israel's
absence.

This is the kind of challenge that diplomacy will face in the years to come. And
Iran is but one example - albeit a very major one - of the intricate portfolios
that await us.

This, then, is our major diplomatic challenge for the 21st century. We have the
military, scientific, economic and cultural assets to ensure our place around
the table and to insist on these at all times and on every key matter pertaining
to our security and well-being. It is the mission of diplomacy to translate
these unique capabilities into a winning combination.

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The Jerusalem Post

October 12, 2008 Sunday

Acre riots

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 804 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

While most Israeli Jews spent Yom Kippur in prayer, contemplation or communing
with their bicycles, a troublesome minority exploited the Day of Atonement to
sin against public order.

In Kiryat Motzkin, Haifa, Beersheba, Holon, Rehovot and Jerusalem, loutish
Jewish youths - overwhelmingly not haredi - stoned MDA ambulances in displays of
juvenile delinquency that have become all too common in recent years.

Violence of a different order broke out in the northern town of Acre, where the
population of 50,000 is about one-third Arab. Here, at about 11:30 p.m., Jewish
youths hanging out on Yom Kippur took umbrage when Tawfik Jamal, an Arab
resident of Acre's Old City, drove his car along Avraham Ben Shoshan Street in
the Jewish part of town. Some of the youths claimed they feared he was about to
carry out a vehicular terrorist attack - similar to those recently committed in
Jerusalem.

Just what Jamal was doing on Yom Kippur eve in a Jewish neighborhood - where
virtually no cars except emergency vehicles are on the road - is in dispute. His
claim is that, accompanied by his son and the son's friend, he was picking up
his daughter from her fiance's place. The Jewish youths say he was blasting
music and smoking a nargila in an act of ostentatious provocation. The initial
police report backed the youths' version and suggested that Jamal was also
intoxicated.

A verbal confrontation quickly deteriorated, with the Jews throwing stones and
bottles at the Jamal party, which was eventually rescued by police.

An Arab who saw the altercation contacted a local sheikh and, within minutes,
calls were made from mosque loudspeakers: "The Jews are attacking us!" Up to
2,000 rioting Arabs chanting "Death to the Jews" then converged on the Jewish
part of town, rioting and looting. Hundreds of cars were damaged; scores of
shops vandalized. The disturbances petered out with daybreak.

However, on Thursday night after the fast, sporadic violence reignited in areas
where Jewish and Arabs neighborhoods abut. All told, about eight people were
injured.

Several hours after Yom Kippur, the country's top cops were on the scene and
taking charge. Some 700 specially- equipped police, outfitted for riot duty,
were deployed. Israel Police Insp.-Gen. David Cohen ordered that no live fire be
used in quelling any further disturbances.

What is essential now is that the violence, which has continued to flare
intermittently over the weekend, not spread to other areas where Jews and Arabs
live in close proximity. Constructively, over Shabbat, moderate Arab leaders
publicly criticized Jamal for his insensitivity. Still, all eyes remain on Acre,
where tensions have long been simmering between the mostly working-class
populations, with the Arabs insisting that they're not getting a fair share of
municipal services.

Everyone recalls the October 2000 Arab riots which erupted simultaneously with
the outbreak of the Aksa intifada. Jewish Israelis felt under siege then and the
police reacted to the bloodshed as if it were a full-scale rebellion. A state
commission of inquiry later criticized their handling of the violence in which
13 Arab citizens were killed.

What is essential now is that the violence, which has continued to flare
intermittently over the weekend, not spread to other areas where Jews and Arabs
live in close proximity. All eyes remain on Acre, where tensions have long been
simmering between the mostly working-class populations, with the Arabs insisting
that they're not getting a fair share of municipal services.

We have no sympathy with the band of Jewish youths who resorted to rioting when
Jamal made his appearance. What they should have done was to call the police
while seeking safety if they felt genuinely threatened. The behavior of the
Arabs involved, many screaming "Itbah al-Yahud" [death to the Jews], disgusts us
and is a reminder of how dangerously radicalized segments of the community have
become. We urge the police to identify the lawbreakers and bring them to
justice.

Sadly, the usual political arsonists played their predictable roles. MK Ahmed
Tibi termed the Acre events a "Jewish pogrom," while MK Arieh Eldad also played
the "pogrom" card. Eldad further fanned the flames: "One should not be surprised
if Jews take up arms to defend themselves while the police does nothing to
protect them."

Tibi and Eldad, predictably, got it wrong - as did local TV reports and several
of the Friday Hebrew newspapers. Using the term "pogrom" in connection with Acre
is an insult to the memories of the many Jews murdered in state-sponsored
pogroms such as those organized by the Russian government in the 1880s.

A correct Zionist response is to insist that Arab and Jewish citizens live by
the same rules and obligations. Anyone who advocates vigilantism undermines the
Jewish state and should be shunned.

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October 12, 2008 Sunday

Letters

BYLINE: Brum Berkovits, Ida Selavan Schwartz, Marie Therese Feuerstein, Jan
Sokolovsky, Abraham Cohen, Kenneth Schustereit

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 922 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Morality & the mensch

Sir, - Clearly Yaron Yadan missed the point of religious morality completely,
even while he was head of two kollels ("Religion and secularism - a moral
accounting," October 8). In Jewish tradition the ceremonial side of Torah and
Halacha has always been secondary to social responsibility. Jewish morality
centers on one's responsibility for happiness, liberty and equality - of one's
neighbor, not oneself. That's what we call tikkun olam. The paramount ethos
transferred through the generations, father to son, has always been: "Be a
mensch."

Go back to your sources, Yaron. And g'mar tov.

BRUM BERKOVITS

Haifa

Wounding omission

Sir, - The exclusion of Dr. Robert Gallo from the Nobel Prize reminded me of
another exclusion, that of Dr. Albert Schatz, discoverer of streptomycin, for
which Prof. Selman Waksman received the Nobel Prize ("And the winner is..."
Editorial, October 8).

Dr. Schatz was my biology teacher at Brooklyn College in 1950 when he was
embroiled in a suit against Waksman. As we walked to the subway together he
would tell me, with bitterness in his voice, how his supervisor at Rutgers
University had taken all the credit for the discovery. Waksman was also getting
all the royalties for the sale of the drug.

Rather than letting the case drag on - biology teachers did not get paid much in
1950 - Schatz agreed to an out-of court settlement.

Schatz died in 2005 with many achievements and awards to his name, but not the
one many scientists strive for, the Nobel Prize - which he deserved.

IDA SELAVAN SCHWARTZ

Ganei Omer

Film that wounds

Sir, - Your last Billboard cover (October 3) showed a couple of smiling
youngsters, the protagonists of For My Father, riding a bike. What were the
Israeli makers of this film about a suicide bomber and a Jewess thinking of?
Many survivors of suicide bombings are still limping around, inextricable pieces
of shrapnel and metal screws in their bodies. One surgeon will never operate
again. He was blinded by a female bomber.

Why this bland review of an insulting film? That it was made in Israel is
damaging to the integrity of our society, let alone those directly wounded by
the unrepentant bombers.

MARIE THERESE FEUERSTEIN

Zichron Ya'acov

Surrogates who spy

Sir, - In your October 3 issue of UpFront, we learned how the Israeli NGO
B'Tselem gives out cameras to Palestinians to record the misbehavior of Israelis
("Image Makers"). Two days later, we saw the Israeli NGO Yesh Din filing a claim
in the Supreme Court protesting the government's failure to evacuate Migron
("Palestinians sue state" October 5).

It must be clarified that these organizations are not really Israeli since they
receive funding from European governments.

B'Tselem's donors include the British Foreign Office, the Swiss Department of
Foreign Affairs, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry and the European Union. Yesh
Din's include the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, German's Foreign Office,
and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.This information appears on
their Web sites.

If these donor countries object to the conduct of our people or to our
settlement policies, they should address their concerns on the diplomatic level.
That is what nations do. They should not conduct their foreign policy
vicariously and inappropriately though our judicial system, or spy on us by
means of NGO surrogates. Israel must put an end to this totally unacceptable
practice. Early this year, Amendment 11 to the Amutot Law was adopted, requiring
registered non-profit groups to disclose contributions from foreign governments
in excess of NIS 20,000.

But reporting is not enough. We should follow the example of the Foreign Agent
Registration Act of the US, which declares that NGOs receiving such funding are
agents of foreign governments. They should be disqualified from filing petitions
to the High Court of Justice or demonstrating on any issue except insofar as it
affects the interests of their own governments.

JAN SOKOLOVSKY

Jerusalem

Simple or sobering?

Sir, - In juxtaposed articles, Gershom Baskin ("Between Rosh Hashana and Yom
Kippur") and Caroline Glick ("The convenient war against the Jews," both October
7), touch on major issues facing Israel and the Jewish people. In addressing the
conflict with the Palestinians, Baskin suggests that PM Ehud Olmert has
correctly recognized the existential nature of the conflict with the
Palestinians, leading him to the conclusion that the conflict can only be
resolved by dividing the land along the 1967 lines.

Caroline Glick addresses radical Islam's anti-Semitic agenda and the readiness
of others in the world to bow to their threats;as has Italy, we now learn.

While Baskin appears to believe that the conflict with the Palestinians can be
ended, Glick paints a dire picture of a "war against the Jews" that is only
growing.

Her thesis is sobering. If it is correct, Baskin's suggestion of a simple,
though painful resolution of our dispute with the Palestinians would likely be
short-lived, with the peace it hopes to achieve soon being seen as an
unproclaimed, but de facto, hudna.

ABRAHAM COHEN

Jerusalem

Yours, staunchly

Sir, - I am a Zionist Evangelical Christian who loves Israel. I pray for all
Jews and the peace of Jerusalem. I have supported LIBI for many years. Even if
America should abandon Israel, either because of trouble at home or a simple
lack of will, I and people like me never will. I send money out of every check,
and will continue to do so.

Masada shall not fall again. Shalom! Shalom!

KENNETH SCHUSTEREIT, Victoria, Texas

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October 12, 2008 Sunday

Ignore the grandchildren

BYLINE: JONATHAN ROSENBLUM

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 809 words

HIGHLIGHT: Think Again

The Obama campaign is encouraging Jewish kids to fly to Florida to visit their
grandparents over Columbus Day weekend. The Web site for the initiative features
comedienne Sarah Silverman instructing Jewish youth in Lysistrata tactics:
Threaten to withhold future visits unless granny agrees to vote for Barack
Obama. Here's another suggestion: Tell them that if they don't vote for Obama,
"the goodest person we've ever had as a presidential choice," it can only be
because they are racists.

My guess is that bubbie and zaidie will not be too impressed by such bullying;
nor should they be. The grandchildren will seek to prove that Obama is good for
Israel, but their identification with Israel bears no relationship to that of
their grandparents. For them the Holocaust is the stuff of history books, not a
living memory. Ditto the UN vote on Israel's creation. They did not huddle
around TV sets listening to the UN debates leading up to the 1967 war. Nor do
they remember the 10,000 graves dug in Tel Aviv in anticipation of war
casualties. Many have never heard of Entebbe.

A 2007 study by sociologists Stephen Cohen and Ari Kelman found that more than
half of non-Orthodox Jews under 35 would not view the destruction of the State
of Israel as a personal tragedy. The death and/or expulsion of millions of
fellow Jews is something they can live with. By those standards, they probably
would not see the Holocaust as a personal tragedy either.

Indifference to Israel, Cohen and Kelman found, "is giving way to downright
alienation." Israel complicates the social lives and muddles the political
identity of young Jews. Only 54 percent of the under 35 cohort profess to be
comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state at all.

THE GRANDCHILDREN will cite Obama's high rating from AIPAC as proof of his
pro-Israel bona fides. Irrelevant. Every senator with national ambitions has
such a high rating, which is based on nothing more than voting for appropriation
resolutions. Far more crucial to determining a candidate's likely relationship
with Israel as president is his worldview.

Obama views talk as a universal solvent, and seems to believe that most
conflicts can be solved by sitting people down around a conference table to air
their grievances. That makes him remarkably sanguine about resolving the
Arab-Israeli conflict, which he says would be a high priority from day one of
his administration. The last time an American president made solving the
conflict a high priority, Israel ended up with the Aksa intifada and open
warfare.

If Obama thinks there is an easy solution to the conflict, it can only come in
one form: Israel's return to its 1967 "Auschwitz borders." He basically
confirmed that in a June interview with Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz, in
which he allowed that Israel might justify "67 plus" in terms of a security
buffer, "but they've got to consider whether getting that buffer is worth the
antagonism of the other party."

Yet an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank would almost surely result in a
third Iranian-armed and financed adversary confronting Israel, just as previous
withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza led to the takeover of heavily armed
Iranian proxies in the form of Hizbullah and Hamas. Israeli security officials
estimate that absent an Israeli presence in the West Bank, Hamas would take over
there almost as quickly as it seized Gaza.

Not that the Palestinian Authority is much better. Its leader Mahmoud Abbas made
a special trip to personally congratulate child-murderer Samir Kuntar on his
release from Israeli jail, and the PA recently honored Dalai Mughrabi, the
mastermind of the 1978 Coastal Road massacre that killed 37 Israelis.

OBAMA'S FAITH in the power of words is equally dangerous with respect to the
Iranian threat. In June, Obama told the AIPAC convention that face-to-face
negotiations with Iran would be necessary before any military response could be
justified. In the last presidential debate, he dropped any reference to military
action and said negotiations must precede any strong sanctions, and must include
the Russians and Chinese.

But the Europeans have been engaged in futile, unconditional negotiations with
Iran over its nuclear program for six years. If Obama has a better offer to make
than they have, he should at least say what it is. As for the Russians and
Chinese, they have made clear that their economic interests lie in supporting
Iran. Negotiations will do nothing more than provide Iran with more crucial time
to perfect its nuclear technology and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with greater internal
legitimacy.

So an Obama presidency would likely result in an Israel living within
indefensible borders and in the crosshairs of a nuclear Iran. Bubbie and zaidie
should tell their progeny that in Jewish tradition wisdom flows from the elders
to young, not vice versa.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: VOLUNTEERS AT Students for Barack Obama headquarters watching
the vice presidential debate. Would an Obama presidency result in an Israel
living within indefensible borders and in the crosshairs of a nuclear Iran?
(Credit: Bloomberg)

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Four more weeks

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 712 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Not surprisingly, on a day when the New York stock market dropped more than 500
points, the second presidential debate on Tuesday between Republican nominee
Sen. John McCain and his Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in Nashville,
Tennessee focused largely on the economy.

Obama tied the financial crisis to government deregulation and the Bush
administration's lack of fiscal discipline, while McCain painted his opponent as
a tax-and- spend liberal. He says he would have the federal government buy up
bad mortgage debts to bring relief to regular Americans; the Obama campaign
counters that such a plan is basically already in place.

On Tuesday, Obama declared: "A year ago, I went to Wall Street and said we've
got to re-regulate. And nothing happened. And Sen. McCain during that period
said that we should keep on deregulating because that's how the free enterprise
system works."

But McCain says he has all along been advocating tighter controls over the
sub-prime housing market and that it was Obama who thought such loans were a
good idea.

The race remains close; surveys show Obama leading McCain by roughly 49 to 44
points.

The campaign is also getting personal. McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah
Palin, accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists who would target their
own country," pointing to Obama's links with 1960s-era radical William Ayers.
Palin says she's "just so fearful that this is a man who does not see America as
you and I see it." McCain asks: "Who is the real Barack Obama?"

Anti-Obama bloggers continue to promote the ludicrous idea that he is a secret
Muslim or - in the latest fantasy - a closet communist. Andy Martin, the blogger
who first promoted the secret Muslim canard, has now been revealed to have had
ties to a political action committee whose stated goal was "to exterminate Jew
power in America..."

For its part, the Obama campaign is trying to undermine McCain's image as a
maverick Washington outsider by reminding voters of his involvement in the 1989
Keating Five corruption scandal for which a Senate panel criticized his "poor
judgment." Keating was convicted of securities fraud.

NOT MUCH foreign policy ground was covered in Tuesday's debate. McCain again
took Obama to task for his willingness to "negotiate with [Iran] without
preconditions," telling a questioner that "we can never allow a second Holocaust
to take place."

Obama responded that it was "true... that I believe that we should have direct
talks - not just with our friends, but also with our enemies - to deliver a
tough, direct message to Iran that, if you don't change your behavior, then
there will be dire consequences." He reiterated that he would "never take
military options off the table," or give the UN veto power over US policy.

THIS AMERICAN election was always bound to hinge on domestic, not foreign
policy, issues. A Pew Research Center survey found that US voters are taking an
unprecedented interest in news about the economy. Barring some unforeseen
calamity, the likely victor on November 4 will be the candidate who instills the
most confidence among ordinary voters in his ability to rescue the ailing
economy.

That said, it remains hugely important to all Israelis that the next American
president be personally empathetic and diplomatically supportive to our cause.
The Bush administration has requested $2.55 billion in security assistance for
Israel - part of a new 10-year $30 billion security package. Whatever the issue
- Iran, Hamas, or Hizbullah - Jerusalem needs a friend in the White House.

Fortunately, both candidates define themselves as pro- Israel. Frankly, we hope
Obama clarifies his attitude toward borders and settlements to reassure us that
an Obama administration would never pressure Israel back to the 1949 Armistice
Lines. We'd also value hearing a similar message from John McCain.

Of course, we can't ask more of Obama or McCain than from our own government.
The world knows where the Palestinian Authority stands - intransigently in our
view - on the issues of borders, refugees and Jerusalem. So the most
constructive step the next Israeli government can take - once it is finally in
place, and preferably before the next president is inaugurated - would be to
announce where Israel draws its "red lines."

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October 10, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Raz Goldman, Baruch Kelman, Jerry Levitt, Terry G. C. Ting, Zev Chamudot

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 505 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Jewish to the core

Sir, - Jose Portuondo-Wilson is a lot more Jewish than most people I know. He
truly desires to make a home here and wants to stay in Israel. With so many
people who have made aliya and left within a year or two, Jose should be
commended on following his dream and fighting for it.

We should not allow him to have to return to the US. He loves Eretz Yisrael and
what the country stands for. He is an asset to the state and we definitely need
more people like him. He makes me proud to be a Jew, and I am shocked and
embarrassed by the rabbinate's actions ("Chicago Orthodox convert fights
Interior Ministry in bid for recognition," October 5).

RAZ GOLDMAN

Tel Aviv

Sir, - It was wrong for those three Chicago rabbis to convert this person on
their own knowing the difficulties involved. The Chicago CRC would have been
more than happy to handle this. These rabbis did a terrible injustice to this
convert. They should have advised him to go to a recognized beit din, thus
avoiding the problems he is now experiencing.

BARUCH KELMAN

Jerusalem

Getting into gear

Sir, - That "60% of factories checked last year violated air-pollution
standards" (October 6) is distressing enough. But why must we glorify this with
the accepted symbol in Israel for industrial zones, which depicts chimneys
spewing smoke?

For a more apt and environment-friendly symbol, I suggest interlocking gears
based on the sign of the Iscar company of Tefen Industrial Park.

JERRY LEVITT

Kfar Veradim

When peace comes

Sir, - I was surprised to read "China slams US arms sale to Taiwan" (October 5),
which stated that China blasted "the arms sale [that] interferes with China's
internal affairs and harms its national security."

First, Taiwan has never been ruled by China for one single day, so there is none
of the so-called "internal affairs" about Taiwanese business. Second, if China
wasn't aiming more than 1,000 missiles at Taiwan, Taiwan would not have to
purchase any defensive weapons from the US. Third, if China agreed to sign the
peace agreement with Taiwan, then Taiwan could reduce billions of dollars of its
defense budget and use the money saved to improve the Taiwanese people's lives.

Finally, Taiwan's 23 million people, like Israel's 7.33 million, share the
universal human right to live and exist in the world. When they live in peaceful
surroundings, there will be no need to purchase any defensive weapons from any
country.

TERRY G. C. TING

Representative , Taipei Economic & Cultural Office

Tel Aviv

It defies reason

Sir, - We were informed in a small item that Cat Stevens, otherwise known as
Yusuf Islam, turned down an invitation to attend celebrations of the 10th
anniversary of the Peres Center for Peace ("Cat Stevens rejects Peres Center
invite," October 7). We learned, further, that the musician had twice in the
past been banned from entering Israel because of his anti-Israel statements and
suspicions of his funding Hamas activities.

Is there a rational explanation for why Yusuf was ever invited to this event?

ZEV CHAMUDOT

Petah Tikva

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October 10, 2008 Friday

The coming train-wreck in Lebanon

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1916 words

HIGHLIGHT: COLUMN ONE

Over the past several weeks, both Washington and Jerusalem have spelled out
clear policies relating to the situation in Lebanon. The two policies contradict
one another, and by adopting them, the US and Israel are on a collision course.

Following Lebanese President Michel Suleiman's visit to Washington last month,
this past week Assistant Deputy Secretary of State David Hale and Assistant
Deputy Secretary of Defense Mary Beth Long visited Beirut. Hale met with
political leaders and Long presided over the first meeting of the newly formed
US-Lebanese joint military committee. The purpose of the committee is to train
and arm the Lebanese army. To this end, the US announced it will be providing
the Lebanese military with $63 million in new equipment that includes
ammunition, trucks, humvees, mobile communications systems and Cobra attack
helicopters.

In an interview with LBC television network, Hale stated that the US policy of
supporting the Lebanese military was likely to remain unchanged after the US
presidential elections in November. In his words, "There will be continuity in
our policy to LebanonÉ Republicans and Democrats both support Lebanon and I am
confident that there is a baseline of support for US policy in Lebanon."

As for Israel, last Friday OC Northern Command Maj.- Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said
that Israel's strategy for defeating Hizbullah in the next war remains what it
was in the last war. Israel will seek to destroy Hizbullah by bombing it from
the air. According to Eisenkot, the difference between Israel's campaign in 2006
and a future one is that next time the bombing will be more comprehensive. Given
Hizbullah's domination of the Lebanese government, Israel no longer needs to be
concerned about protecting a pro-Western government in Beirut. Speaking to
Yediot Aharonot Eisenkot asserted, "Today there is no distinction [between
Hizbullah and the Lebanese government] and there is no dilemma. The operational
significance of this is that the Lebanese government is responsible for all the
activities carried out within its borders."

Eisenkot's statements echo remarks made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in August.
During a visit to the Home Front Command Olmert said, "If Lebanon becomes a
Hizbullah state, then we won't have any restrictions inÉ regard [to hitting
government targets]."

ONE OF the common features of both countries' policies towards Lebanon is their
utter neglect of the lessons of previous American and Israeli failures in the
country.

The 1983 US peacekeeping mission in Beirut is rightly considered one of the
gravest failures in US military history. The stated aim of the deployment of US
Marines was to help the Lebanese army assert control over the capital city and
then expand its control to the suburbs of Beirut and gradually over the entire
country.

The mission was to be accomplished by separating the IDF, the Christian, Druse,
Shi'ite and Sunni militias and the Syrian military forces from one another.
Political pressure from Washington did succeed in compelling Israel to withdraw
its forces from the city. But very quickly, the US Marines on the ground
realized that they were in a full- scale war and that there was no way they
could accomplish the aims of the mission with the tools they had at their
disposal as a peacekeeping force.

After IDF forces left Beirut, the Marines found themselves under attack from the
same Syrian forces and Druse, Shi'ite and Sunni militias that had been fighting
the IDF. The Christian militias, for their part, also treated the Marines the
same way they treated the IDF. They used Marine positions as cover as they
shelled the Druse, the Shiites and the Sunnis. The Lebanese military - weak,
incompetent, corrupt, and riven by the same sectarian enmities that fuelled the
war - was both unable and unwilling to take the military steps necessary to
assert control over the city even with Marine assistance.

Once the futility of its strategy became clear, the Reagan administration had
two options. The Americans could pull out of Beirut and support an Israeli
expansion of the war to Syria and so remove the primary source of the conflict.
Or, they could redefine their objective to reflect reality and order the Marines
to attack Syrian positions and Syrian and Iranian-backed militias and so set the
conditions that in the fullness of time might allow the Lebanese government to
assert political and military control over the country.

Yet rather than reconfigure its strategy and its strategic aims to accord with
conditions on the ground, Washington opted to ignore what was happening. The
Marines did not receive permission to take the fight to its source, to support
Israel, or even to protect themselves from the war they found themselves in the
middle of.

Thus the stage was set for the attack against the Marine barracks at the Beirut
airport. On October 23, 1983, an Iranian and Syrian-backed Hizbullah cell
attacked the unprotected Marine barracks with a massive car bomb. Two hundred
forty-one Marines were killed. Humiliated, the US pulled out of Beirut with its
tail between its legs. The message that it was possible to defeat America
reverberated throughout the region.

The lesson of the US experience in Lebanon was clear: You cannot assume that
favored actors are trustworthy or competent allies just because it is
politically expedient to believe they are. Reality is what it is, and if you
wish to change it, you first must acknowledge it.

ISRAEL'S 2006 war against Hizbullah in Lebanon is rightly considered the gravest
failure in Israeli military history. After Hizbullah assaulted Israel on July
12, Israel announced its intention to destroy Hizbullah as a fighting force. It
further announced that to ensure that Hizbullah would not threaten Israel again,
Israel would demand that the Lebanese army deploy along the border with Israel
after the war to prevent Hizbullah from reasserting its control over South
Lebanon.

The IDF General Staff and the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government opted to accomplish
these aims by bombing Hizbullah bases, command and control centers and missile
arsenals from the air. Within the first three days of the war, this strategy
successfully flattened the group's stronghold in Beirut's Dahiyeh neighborhood.
It also destroyed Hizbullah's long-range missile arsenal. But these successes
failed to impact Hizbullah's ability to wage war.

Hizbullah's commanders continued to operate. Its units continued to launch
missiles and rockets against Israeli territory. Iran and Syria continued to
supply the group with arms and personnel. As for the Lebanese military whose
forces were supposed to be part of the long-term solution, far from opposing
Hizbullah, its forces actively assisted Hizbullah in targeting Israeli cities
and military targets throughout the war.

Due to Hizbullah's resilience in the face of the air campaign, it quickly became
apparent that Israel's strategy needed to be replaced. To defeat Hizbullah,
Israel needed to adopt a maneuver strategy that tasked ground forces with
invading and conquering South Lebanon. To effect the long- term demise of the
Iranian-controlled and Syrian-assisted group, Israel also needed to bomb
Hizbullah-related targets in Syria. Such attacks would deter Iran and Syria from
employing Hizbullah as their foreign legion in Lebanon in the future. Only after
Iran and Syria had been deterred and Hizbullah had been defeated on the ground
could the Lebanese military begin to act as a controlling authority in the
south.

But when presented with this reality, Israel's political and military leaders
refused to countenance it. They clung to the notion that airpower and Lebanese
military deployment to the South could serve as the primary components of a
winning strategy. Tipping their hats to the public outcry provoked by the
strategy's self-evident failure, they embellished it by adding a limited ground
component to the operational plan.

But since the strategy remained one based on airpower, maneuver units were
provided with no clear operational objectives. With no relevant strategic frame
of reference to guide them, the General Staff commanders couldn't determine how
to use the ground forces. And so they were deployed willy-nilly to battles that
served no operational purpose.

The failure of the country's strategic leadership to base their strategy on
reality caused Israel to fail to achieve its stated objectives in the war. And
Israel's failure constituted a massive victory for Hizbullah and its state
sponsors. With the passive support of the Lebanese military, in May Hizbullah
staged a coup that won it effective control over the Lebanese government. And
with the passive support of the Lebanese military, Hizbullah has rearmed and
reasserted full control over South Lebanon.

For its part, unscathed by the 2006 war it effectively controlled with Iran,
Syria now feels confident enough to plan a reinvasion of Lebanon. Today Syria
has 10,000 troops positioned on Lebanon's northern border. Damascus is openly
preparing a pretext for invasion by waging a proxy war in Tripoli through its
Lebanese Salafist militias.

THE LESSONS of Israel's failure in 2006 are clear. First, Hizbullah cannot be
defeated on the ground without invading and conquering South Lebanon. Second,
Hizbullah cannot be defeated without attacking its state sponsors. Third, the
Lebanese military will not fight Hizbullah in Israel's place.

In addition to their reliance on ignoring the lessons of their previous
failures, the current US and Israeli strategies for contending with Lebanon also
share an outsized estimation of the relevance of the Lebanese government.
Specifically, both policies wrongly view the government of Lebanon as a relevant
force in the country. They diverge only on how they relate to the government.
The US believes that the Lebanese government is a credible ally. Israel on the
other hand sees the Hizbullah-dominated government as its enemy.

There is ample evidence supporting both positions. But the basic reality that
both Washington and Jerusalem ignore is that whether it is a friend or a foe,
the Lebanese government today - as it was in 1983 and indeed since the PLO
fomented the Lebanese civil war in 1975 - is completely inconsequential. Some
elements of its military are pro- Western. Overall, both during the 2006 war and
during Hizbullah's coup in May, the Lebanese military has facilitated
Hizbullah's operations. Its former commander Michel Suleiman owes his position
as president of Lebanon to the support he enjoys from Hizbullah and Syria. And
regardless of its commanders' political views, the fact of the matter is that
the Lebanese army is incapable of establishing and enforcing the authority of
the central government over the country. Moreover, since May, Lebanon's central
government exists at the pleasure and in the service of Hizbullah.

So both Israel and the US are now embracing policies that are founded on false
readings of the facts on the ground and on a refusal to countenance the lessons
of their past failures. As a consequence, both countries have adopted policies
that are doomed to fail. Moreover, their divergent assessments of the Lebanese
government place them on a collision course that can threaten their alliance.

In light of all of this, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran have good reason to be happy.
When the next war erupts, rather than fighting them, their two greatest foes may
well spend their time and energy fighting each other.

caroline@carolineglick.com

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October 10, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: James Montel, Chaim Langert

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 266 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

TAKING ISSUE

The article on Shalom Lerner and the election in Beit Shemesh was quite
informative ("Angling for mayor," September 26). However, I take issue with the
contention that Anglos and the national religious have their needs met in Beit
Shemesh. I don't think any sector of the population is getting what they need in
the critical areas of education and employment. Each morning hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of children load buses and private transport to travel to schools
outside the city because their educational needs are not met in Beit Shemesh.
Many others have simply dropped out of the education system.

Thousands of Beit Shemesh residents fill buses, trains and cars each day to
travel to their workplaces in other cities because there is no place for them to
work locally. Wouldn't it be nice if, instead, people were commuting to Beit
Shemesh because of the wonderful schools and jobs it had to offer?

I challenge all the candidates for mayor of Beit Shemesh to make education and
economic development their top priorities, and to tell us in detail what their
visions and plans are in these areas.

James Montel

Beit Shemesh

WHERE IS THIS LEADING?

While the Jerusalem Municipality plans to reduce traffic congestion on Derech
Beit Lehem and surrounding streets by turning Derech Beit Lehem into a major
traffic artery ("Rejecting its own advice," August 22), has it considered how
may additional cars this will bring to the city's streets?

Is this the action to take when we are building a light rail system to encourage
more people to use public transportation?

Chaim Langert, Jerusalem

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Letters

BYLINE: Malka Weisberg, Marilyn Mandelbaum, Tom Harris, Aaron Lerner, Avi
Leiman, Zeev Raphael, Edith Dorot, Hela Crown-Tamir

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1265 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Give cameras to Arabs hospitalized in Israel

Sir, - It is so irritating to have, once again, a cover story about the "poor,
victimized" Palestinians on the West Bank ("Image makers," Larry Derfner,
October 3).

I have two children living in the West Bank. Both have families, pay taxes,
serve in the army. Neither they nor any of their neighbors throw stones, call
their Arab neighbors derogatory names, or burn land. Their children's textbooks
do not promote hate, as their Palestinian neighbors' do. They have had their
cars and the buses they ride stoned.

I too was "privileged" to have my car stoned while visiting them. Funny, no one
handed me a video camera to film the stones flying. Maybe Yoav Gross should have
a different strategy. Let him hand out his cameras to all the Palestinian
patients being treated in Israeli hospitals, to Palestinians studying in Israeli
universities, even to Palestinians shopping in Israeli malls. Then he can travel
to any one of the 20 or so Arab countries and film the treatment of Muslim women
there.

MALKA WEISBERG

Jerusalem

Sir, - I found this four-page story about the controversial B'Tselem Shooting
Back project offensive. It had numerous pictures showing the Palestinian side.
One picture is worth 1,000 words, and by not including, equally, photos telling
the Israeli side, the story was neither fair nor balanced.

MARILYN MANDELBAUM

Jerusalem

Living, and learning...

Sir, - Yossi Alpher, in "What Oslo didn't teach us" (October 3), concluded: "The
two-state solution is still the best. Oslo should have taught us that much." No.
What Oslo taught us is that history did not start in 1993, nor in 1967. Starting
in the middle of the story, as Alpher does, brings ruinous solutions by
identifying the wrong problems.

The original two-state "solution" was implemented back in 1946: "We pledge to
God, to wage a jihad in defense of Arab Palestine, and to endeavour to retain
its Arab identity," declared King Abdullah I upon the independence of the
Palestinian state of Jordan. Extending "Arab Palestine" into Israel is surely
not the problem we want to solve.

Meanwhile, in Orwellian doublespeak, Alpher demands that the Palestinians
"confront their own heavy contribution to the fiasco." That isn't likely because
for their dictatorial leadership, the establishment of Israel was the "fiasco,"
and all their efforts since then, including wars, negotiations and terrorism,
have been directed at eliminating us.

Finally, the settlement effort, restarted by legal purchases before the last
century, and approved by the United Nations in 1947 and 1948, is a strange thing
to call a "beast." No settlement, no Israel.

Assuming that we can all begin to learn the right lessons, not from talk in
Norway but from life in Israel, where would Alpher have us live to learn them?

TOM HARRIS

Jerusalem

...or not, as the case may be

Sir, - Yossi Alpher's op-ed could have been more appropriately titled "What I
refuse to learn from Oslo." The entire Oslo enterprise hinged on Yasser Arafat's
forfeiting the Palestinian right to engage in violent resistance against the
"occupation" - as included, at Yitzhak Rabin's insistence, in the historic
September 9, 1993 exchange of letters and later agreements.

But, from day one, Arafat directed, encouraged and promoted violence against the
Jewish state - both via his illegal Fatah militia and the various PA armed
forces.

Reminder: Marwan Barghouti is not sitting in an Israeli prison for jaywalking.

And yet when Yossi Alpher, a man who spends his time promoting various
withdrawal schemes via his "bitterlemons" project, describes Palestinian
failures, he limits himself to noting that the Palestinians "failed
spectacularly at state-building: corruption, cronyism, poor leadership and
endemic violence have too often characterized the efforts of the ruling national
movement." "Endemic violence" at the end of a laundry list is the most Alpher
can allow himself after over 1,000 Israelis were murdered in the Oslo
experiment?

His refusal to come to grips with what transpired in the endeavor he so strongly
supported and promoted as director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies
and elsewhere serves as an important warning to anyone entertaining similar
policy recommendations today.

AARON LERNER Director,

IMRA - Independent Media

Review & Analysis

Ra'anana

Us & Them...

Sir, - Sarah Honig depicted the true situation between us in "Then what's the
alternative?" (October 3).Yossi Alpher and other visionary seekers of fortune
need to take a good look and stop deceiving themselves and others.

AVI LEIMAN

Safed

...the real story

Sir, - As a veteran "homegrown purveyor of bliss and peace," permit me to take
issue with Sarah Honig's reluctance to offer an alternative to our dismal
reality. The fact that she declines to "compose detailed substitute policies for
the incontrovertible mess our inept/delinquent leaders have made of things" is
noteworthy, but otherwise unimportant.

I am not sure, however, that our political leadership enjoys similar license to
evade offering us a realistic and more attractive alternative. As citizens and
voters, we may legitimately ask our candidates for their vision about the kind
of future they have in mind for us.

How do they propose to tackle the formidable issues we are facing? How do they
see the future of our Jewish and democratic state, considering the fast-growing
non-Jewish minority, of which a significant part is denied customary civil
rights? Simply retaining the status quo is not an acceptable option.

Ms. Honig's search for "a genuine, able, willing and honorable peace partner"
appears disingenuous. Since 1970, a number of Arab peace feelers have been on
record. With the notable exception of Egypt and Jordan, we rejected or ignored
them. Would it not, for example, be fitting to consider the present initiative
of the Arab League? If it fails to offer us adequate security, why not launch a
bold and practical initiative "made in Israel"?

Not much appears to have changed during these past 40 years. Our conformist
Israeli public is blissfully ignorant of the positive voices from the other
side. It prefers to recall 1967's Three Noes of Khartoum and happily swallows
phrases like "our neighbors openly rehash their hate" and "refuse to recognize
Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state."

ZEEV RAPHAEL

Haifa

How 'Shekem' came to be

Sir, - I enjoyed reading "Shaking things up at Shekem" (September 5), but need
to correct two points. The acronym "Shekem" stands for Sherut Kantinot
Vemiznonim, and not as reported. I know this because it was my late husband,
Franzl, who set it all up.

We had just come back from Libya, where my husband, an officer in the British
army, had served. Upon returning, Franzl was summoned by David Ben-Gurion, who
told him that he wanted to set up a canteen-like service based on the American
PX and the British NAAFI. This Franzl did, and the name Shekem was thought up
after many brainstorming sessions, often in my home.

The first Shekem was indeed in Camp Yona, but not in three rooms. It was housed
in a huge shed with my husband's "office" in one corner, surrounded by goods and
supplies.

Thanks for bringing back such fond memories.

EDITH DOROT

Ashkelon

Olympics of the mind

Sir, - Hillel Halkin's "Man into machine" (August 29) prompted the idea that
here, on this little piece of Jewish earth, we Israelis could host and sponsor
an "Olympics of the Mind." All the best and brightest brains of the world would
be invited to compete for the gold, silver and bronze.

Really, it's not a bad idea. Let's start planning today.

HELA CROWN-TAMIR , Mevaseret Zion

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The Jerusalem Post

October 10, 2008 Friday

Livni's other Iranian challenge

BYLINE: AMOTZ ASA-EL

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1123 words

HIGHLIGHT: Middle Israel

Whether you do or don't like her, the good news about Tzipi Livni is that she is
not full of herself.

It's been nearly 15 years now since we last had modest leaders like Yitzhak
Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin, and we simply forgot what it feels like to have
somebody head toward the villa on Balfour Street and not feel like Napoleon
entering the Notre Dame for his coronation.

If anything, Livni seems as bewildered as the rest of us by the turn of
improbable events that have landed her where she has arrived. Evidently, she
does not forget that her stint's aftermath is prone to be not much happier than
her predecessor's. This is the good news.

The bad news is that Livni has yet to demonstrate to any of her many prospective
partners, rivals and enemies - whether at home or abroad - that she means
business.

Some say Livni's supreme test will be in her ability to squeeze water out of the
Syrian rock. Others insist that the big test awaits her somewhere between
Ramallah's well- tailored negotiators and Gaza's threadbare gunmen. That's of
course besides those who think Iran will dominate Livni's premiership, adding
grimly that the dilemmas she will face there will be unlike anything she faced
as minister of immigrant absorption, justice and also foreign affairs.

Middle Israelis disagree. To them, Livni's first test of mettle will pit her not
against Mahmoud Abbas, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Bashar Assad, but against Shas
leader Eli Yishai and the voodoo economics he is trying to impose on her.
Paradoxically, it is in this little-noticed way that Livni will first face Iran.

THE IRANIAN economy has not won much attention in the West, outside of
intelligence organizations. Ever since the revolution Iran has been in the
headlines as a religious, military and diplomatic story, but its economy, like
any Middle Eastern country's domestic affairs, was assumed to be boring, cryptic
and inconsequential.

Well, the fact is the Iranian economy has been a major-league mess, one that in
fact may bring down the mullahs quite regardless of their foreign entanglements.
As they prepare for next year's presidential election, Teheran's clerics must
consider tampering with the revolution's economic centerpiece for the first time
since unseating the shah 30 years ago next February.

Designating the working classes as their main social pillar and the previous
era's elites as Public Enemy Number One, Teheran's clerics created an elaborate
subsidies regime, assuming oil will always be there to finance such spending and
the people will be happy as long as they are fed, even if they are disempowered.

That is why driving a car in Teheran costs less than it does anywhere in the
world, about 12 cents per liter. Consequently, Iran is drinking much more oil
than it can digest, including large quantities that are smuggled illicitly to
neighboring countries. Had prices been freely set, much of this would have been
exported at a great profit. According to the IMF, this year Iran stands to lose
more than $60 billion this way, nearly twice its losses to energy subsidies last
year.

Meanwhile, since the Islamists' military and nuclear adventures came at the
expense of a serious upgrade of the economy's refining capacity, Iran continues
to import much of its refined oil, which costs them the same high prices it has
cost the rest of the world in recent years. In other words, the clerics'
economic management has made Iran lose both when oil prices rise and when they
fall.

All told, Teheran spends a fifth of its budget on energy and farming subsidies.
Price interference has expectedly distorted the economy, resulting in 27 percent
inflation officially, and a much higher level unofficially. The refusal to let
the central bank free the currency - a move that is economically imperative, but
politically risky as it will empower the business sector - has spiked
speculative demand for Teheran real estate, in the absence of varied investment
outlets. Consequently, the price of a square foot has skyrocketed within a
decade from $50 to $1,000.

Meanwhile, the mullahs discouraged family planning and the population doubled
since 1979 to 70 million, which means that the clerics' subsidies' regime must
now stuff twice as many pockets with taxpayer's cash. The result of all this is
that one in five work-age Iranians is believed to be unemployed and the economy,
that back in the shah's days grew consistently by at least 7 percent annually,
has not grown per-capita even one year since 1979.

Realizing that something must be done to rationalize their price system, but
still eager to keep the masses' livelihood managed and their self-empowerment
controlled, the mullahs now say they will change the price support system, but
not the pandering to the masses. "We are going to give money directly to the
needy," Ahmadinejad said recently.

In a nutshell, this is also what Eli Yishai says.

THE SHAS system of price interference is less crude than Iran's, and therefore
more cunning.

Shas does not rule the country and possesses no oil wells, but it nevertheless
gets cash into its constituents' pockets by, for instance, getting better
busing, longer hours and cheaper lunches for a school system that discourages
cultural enlightenment and self-fulfillment. That's pretty much the same
thinking that has governed the ayatollahs' economy. If allowed its way, it can
land us in the hole where Ahmadinejad now is.

None of this impresses Eli Yishai as he extorts Tzipi Livni to restore the child
allotments formula that was discontinued by Bibi Netanyahu, whereby parents
received for any child after the fourth a monthly NIS 850, about four times the
sum for the first four. Now, using literally the same words as Ahmadinejad,
Yishai says, "We will find ways to transfer money directly to the needy." This
would be a nonstarter under any circumstances, since money works only when
charged according to supply and demand and earned in return for work. However,
set against the backdrop of a global economic crisis, Yishai's demands are
altogether scandalous.

To show us, and the rest of those out to test her mettle, that she has what it
takes, Livni must confront Yishai and tell him: "Your demands are both
unaffordable and immoral. You may not care for the consequences, because the
mess you want me to make will not be yours to clean, but I have to consider the
entire citizenry, and the future, too. I appreciate your concern for your
voters, and in fact share it. But I think they will best be helped by being led
to the professional mainstream as engineers, technicians, army officers, MBAs,
lawyers, doctors and anything else that makes people earn an honest shekel. Call
me when this becomes your aim."

Then all will know Tzipi Livni means business.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Defying economic gravity. The leader of Shas. (Credit: Ariel
Jerozolimski)

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The Jerusalem Post

October 10, 2008 Friday

A vote for Jerusalem

BYLINE: CALEV BEN-DAVID

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1103 words

HIGHLIGHT: Snap Judgment

More and more I find myself having to defend to fellow Israelis my decision to
continue living in Jerusalem. The capital, they insist, is now a "haredi city,"
and it is inconceivable to them how someone not part of that community can
remain here.

Patiently I explain that there is still plenty of social and cultural life here
for those who are not part of the ultra-Orthodox community, certainly more than
when I moved here two decades ago - even, if one is so inclined, on Shabbat.
Yes, the haredi neighborhoods have been steadily growing during that period, but
that still doesn't mean the rest of the city has become another Bnei Brak. Not
yet, anyway.

Yet the problems for Jerusalem's non-haredi Jewish residents are in many ways
deeper, and more troubling, than these negative cliches. Earlier this year, for
example, I wrote about the difficulties encountered by the grade school attended
by my two daughters. Because it belongs to the Tali system, which is officially
linked to the non- Orthodox religious streams, it has for years suffered neglect
at the hands of Jerusalem's haredi-controlled city hall.

This year Tali Bayit Vagan was forced out of its building and made to
"integrate" with another school with no connection to either the Reform or
Conservative movements, in part because the municipal education department
wanted to both dilute its special character and turn over its building to a
haredi educational institution that it saw as more in tune with the changing
character of the area.

Adding insult to injury, following the transfer, the municipality carried out
long-overdue improvements on the old building that Tali had vainly demanded for
years, and also finally removed from its street a nearby roadblock that had made
the picking up and dropping off of students there a daily hassle for their
parents (which, it is now apparent, was the point).

It is this kind of preferential treatment for haredi concerns, and
discrimination against those with a competing interest - and not any kind of
objection to Jerusalem having a strong spiritual atmosphere - that so infuriates
other residents of the capital.

I agree that Jerusalem is, and should be, Israel's "Holy City," and those
looking for an essentially secular urban atmosphere are better off in Tel Aviv,
Haifa and elsewhere. But if its non-haredi residents, ranging from non-observant
to modern Orthodox, are made to feel like second-class (and over-taxed)
citizens, then the capital will indeed end up as little more than a bigger Bnei
Brak (with a university and some government offices attached).

Needless to say, it will also result in the predetermined failure of any effort
to properly upgrade and integrate the capital's Arab neighborhoods with the rest
of the city, even those deep in its center, and virtually guarantee over time a
division of the capital that will be both political and physical.

These are the stakes involved in keeping Jerusalem a city of all its residents.
Doing so will be a long and complex process, involving efforts by both the
national and local governments working together with the private sector, to
craft effective housing, educational and economic development policies.

Before all that, the capital is going to need proper leadership in city hall.
And the Jerusalem mayoral election scheduled to be held on November 11 is likely
to be the most crucial local ballot ever held in the modern history of the
capital.

THIS COLUMN is not intended to be an endorsement of Nir Barkat, who is somewhat
misleadingly described as the "secular candidate" in the mayoral race even
though some of his top aides belong to the modern Orthodox camp and he has made
a strong pitch for that community's support.

Certainly Barkat's background is attractive enough - a non-partisan independent
who earlier in life succeeded in the hi-tech business and only entered local
politics after experiencing his own frustrations with the municipality over
education issues.

I've also had the chance to see him up close in a meeting that dealt with some
traffic problems in my neighborhood, and emerged impressed with his intelligent
and sympathetic demeanor.

Whether that will make him an effective mayor is another matter. The point here
though is simply that all Jerusalemites must at least understand what is at
stake in this race.

The city's haredi political structure has certainly made no bones about how it
views this campaign. Despite incumbent Mayor Uri Lupoliansky's proven ability to
attract at least some secular support, the United Torah Judaism and Degel
Hatorah parties shunted him aside in favor of UTJ Knesset member Meir Porush,
whose entire career has been based solely on advancing haredi sectarian
interests.

Nor, other than absurd bus advertisements that laughably try to depict Porush as
some kind of haredi Santa Claus, has his campaign barely tried to disguise the
fact that his mission is to go even further than Lupoliansky in speeding a
process that will turn the capital into an ultra-Orthodox haven.

Statistically, Jerusalem's haredi population still comprises a minority of the
city's Jewish population, estimated at about 35 percent. In the last election,
though, voter apathy and political divisions among the non- haredi population
gave Lupoliansky a victory over Barkat.

Polls now show Barkat with a substantial lead over Porush. But the recent court
ruling that prevented Aryeh Deri from joining the race removed the threat of
competition for Porush within his own camp, while Barkat might still have to
contend with the prospect of Israeli- Russian businessman Arkadi Gaydamak, and a
possible challenge from Meretz city councilor Pepe Alalu, diluting his own
constituency.

More worrying is surely that come election day, Barkat's lead over Porush will
evaporate simply because of a failure by non-haredi voters to make it to the
polls in significant numbers, as has been the case in the past.

Well, in a democracy choosing not to vote is a right every bit as much as going
out to cast a ballot. Barkat might certainly not be to every voter's taste among
Jerusalem's non-haredi electorate, and Porush will certainly deserve the victory
if his constituency remains as united and motivated as in the past.

This election, though, will surely prove a turning point, in both symbolic and
practical terms, for Jerusalem's character and fortunes for years to come. And
my own ability to continue defending to other Israelis my commitment to remain
in the capital - as well as justifying that decision to myself - will depend in
large part on who ends up sitting in the mayor's office after November 11.

Calev@jpost.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: If Jerusalem's non-haredi residents are made to feel like
second-class (and over-taxed) citizens, then the capital will end up as little
more than a bigger Bnei Brak. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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551 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

October 10, 2008 Friday

Problematic proof texts

BYLINE: DAVID J. FORMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1090 words

HIGHLIGHT: Counterpoint

Simhat Torah is fast approaching. It is one of the most joyful holidays in the
Jewish calendar, ushered in with great fanfare. Jews around the world put their
worries on hold and dance and sing with abandon, passing the Torah, which
catalogues Jewish history, beliefs and values, from one to the other. Having
just celebrated a new year, we are grateful that we will again start reading
this sacred book, which reaffirms the creator's role in our everyday life: "In
the beginning, God..."

Yet, with all the positive energy that flows from Simhat Torah, it poses a host
of challenges, because the use of Torah - or in too many cases its abuse - has
led the Jewish people astray in its own homeland.

Let me explain. In preaching, there are two types of homiletic techniques:
exegetical and eisegetical. Exegesis sees the text dictating to the reader the
subject and theme to be explored. Such an approach holds that what was set "in
stone" at the divine revelatory moment at Sinai, when the Written Law (Torah)
and Oral Law (Talmud) were handed down, is immutable, and thereby only possibly
relevant to the modern world. Eisegesis sees the reader interpreting Jewish
texts so that he can - not hopefully, but actually - cope with the diversity of
the natural order and the breadth of historical experience.

Because the Torah has spawned a wealth of literary commentaries - each having
its own halachic adherents - it would be incorrect to claim that either the
Torah or the Talmud is indisputably absolute. More than not, eisegesis has
dominated the interpretive halachic scene. A person who claims that only he
possesses the exegetical "truth" ignores the amplification of the Jewish
tradition so that it can be applicable to ever changing social and political
realities.

More so, as Jewish experience underwent change, not only Halacha, but also
concepts of God were widened to cope with that change. The personal (almost
tribal) God of Abraham was quite different from the national God of Moses, which
was significantly different from the messianic God of the rabbis. There was
still only one God, but with varied understandings.

IN JUDAISM, one can choose his halachic weapon to support his worldview by
calling upon those rulings that support either a literary or liberal reading of
the tradition. One can opt to follow the House of Shammai, with its strict
interpretation of Jewish law, or select the House of Hillel, with its expansive
approach. To justify a particular position, especially a political one that
relates to the "other," depending on whether you fall to the Right or the Left
on the ideological spectrum, both secular and religious Jews hurl quotes from
Jewish law at each other as proof texts for their opinions.

This approach is problematic, because in the Torah alone there are a multitude
of contradictory statements. The first such contradiction occurs in the opening
chapters of the book of Genesis where there are two alternative stories of the
creation of the human species.

As we fly into fits of ecstasy on Simhat Torah, reveling in the celestial
wonders of the creation story, which comprises the first chapters that we read
on the holiday, we should keep in mind that they first and foremost relate to
all of God's creatures as equal in the eyes of the Almighty.

Referring to the creation of the human species in the divine image, we are
taught: "Why was but a single person created? It was for the sake of peace, that
no one could say, 'My ancestry is greater than yours'" (Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5).
To understand this in terms of race, we read: "God created Adam from the dust of
the four corners of the earth - yellow clay and white sand, black loam and red
soil. Therefore, the earth can declare to no race or color of humankind that he
does not belong here, that this soil is not his rightful home" (Yalkut Shimoni,
1:3).

SO, NOW comes the question: What in God and the Torah's name are those religious
settlers from Yitzhar, Havat Maon, Sussiya and Hebron, who claim to be fierce
devotees of Halacha, doing? How do they justify their continued harassment of
Palestinians? It is one thing to say that they are responding to Palestinian
violence perpetrated against them, but it is quite another matter to turn the
territories into the "Wild West Bank" because of some xenophobic readings of
Jewish texts, where any and all Palestinians are considered descendants of the
Amalakites, destined for eternal abuse.

The rampage of the settlers from Yitzhar carried out against Palestinian
villages in the Nablus area went far beyond meting out any punishment to match
the condemnable crime of a Palestinian burning down a Jewish home. While the
media suddenly wakes up and reports this incident, and the government responds
with harsh statements about Jewish- led pogroms, the fact is that the actions of
the Yitzhar population is neither new nor isolated. Unprovoked attacks on
Palestinian villages - shooting water tanks, smashing windows, slashing tires,
poisoning grazing fields, uprooting olive trees, chopping down grape vineyards
and seizing land - are everyday occurrences by too many settlers.

No doubt, on Simhat Torah, these same settlers will embrace the Torah as they
prance about in wild frenzy, confident that they are implementing God's message
by initiating acts of violence against the "other." For them, God is a "man of
war" (Exodus: 15:3).

The tragedy in all this is that we have let the religious settlers hijack the
Jewish literary tradition. We have conceded religious authority to them, not
realizing there is more than one way to skin a halachic cat.

It all boils down to a single issue: Does one view Jewish law through a
universal lens that understands the tradition as being inclusive and adaptable,
or through a parochial prism, which interprets the tradition as being
chauvinistic and stagnant? The battle lines have been drawn. Do we glorify the
nationalistic fervor of Joshua more than we admire the peaceful yearnings of
Jeremiah? Do we hold David the warrior in greater esteem than David the
psalmist? Do we worship priestly ritual at the expense of prophetic morality? Do
we prefer the God of judgment over the God of mercy?

I often wonder: What are the settlers from Yitzhar, Havat Maon, Sussiya and
Hebron thinking during Simhat Torah when, at the end of the festivities, they
return the Torah to the ark and, along with the entire house of Israel, sing the
wistful plea of the Jewish people throughout the ages: "The Torah's ways are
pleasant and all its paths are peace" (Proverbs 3:17)?

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Settler argues with Israeli border police officers. Xenophobic
readings of Jewish texts? (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The Jerusalem Post

October 10, 2008 Friday

'Woman of Letters'

BYLINE: MARILYN HENRY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 1004 words

HIGHLIGHT: Metro Views

Reading Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise is like falling in love on the first
date. A dramatic story, it was written by the daughter of a Russian Jewish
banker whose family had been exiled in France after the Russian Revolution.
Later a celebrated French author, Nemirovsky was exiled again by the Nazi
occupation and forced by circumstances to worry about her two daughters, her
work and her legacy. What a story - what stories! Nemirovsky's writings and the
dramatic tale of how Suite Franaise was written, under what terrible conditions:
in the Burgundy village of Issy-l'fvque, amid German soldiers, with her ink,
paper and money running out.

And then there was the author's fate. She ran out of time. Arrested by French
gendarmes on July 16, 1942, she was registered at the Pithiviers internment camp
as "Epstein Irne Nemirovski, woman of letters." She arrived at Auschwitz on July
19 and died a month later, on August 19, of typhus. She was 39. Her husband,
Michel Epstein, a banker, was deported in October.

Suite Franaise is both a story and history - of the German occupation, of French
collaboration, of Nemirovsky's desperate efforts to record events in a
meaningful way. On June 2, 1942, only weeks before she was deported, she wrote
in her journal: "Never forget that the war will be over and that the entire
historical side will fade away. Try to create as much as possible: things,
debates... that will interest people in 1952 or 2052."

BUT THE writer was no prophet. The "entire historical side" did not fade away,
and her work and her life are now part of it, salvaged by her daughter Denise,
who - beginning at age 13 - carted a valise with her mother's leather notebook
and family photos through two years of hiding with her sister, Elisabeth, who
was five when Nemirovsky was deported.

Artifacts including the valise, Nemirovsky's notebook crammed with script in
blue ink, photos and video interviews are part of a powerful exhibition, "Woman
of Letters," at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage, co- produced with France's
Institut Memoires de l'fdition Contemporaine, which is the repository for
Nemirovsky's papers. It is on view in Lower Manhattan until March 22, and is
supplemented by a series of programs on French and Jewish history.

Although she had protected it, Denise Epstein did not examine the valise for
years. "I hoped that the owner of the suitcase would come back," she said at a
program last month at the museum. "I was waiting for her to open it."
Eventually, she opened the valise and the notebook. What she thought was her
mother's diary was, in fact, two novellas, Suite Franaise, with her mother's
notes on character development, plot structure, personal anxieties, written in
such a tiny scrawl that it required Denise to use a magnifying glass and to
devote years to transcribing it.

There was something akin to rapture over the discovery and survival of Suite
Franaise. The acclaim was astonishing. Published in French in 2004, it won
France's prestigious literary award, the Renaudot Prize - the first time the
prize honored a writer for a posthumous work. In 2006, it was published in the
US. It has since been translated into nearly three dozen languages.

'FOR ME, the greatest joy is knowing that the book is being read," says Epstein.
"And it's an extraordinary feeling to have brought my mother back to life. It
shows that the Nazis didn't truly succeed in killing her." But it was hard to
retain her image. The success of Suite Franaise led to the reissue of
Nemirovsky's other writings, from the Paris of the 1920s and 1930s, and raised
questions about her personal sentiments and attitudes.

Epstein, for instance, says she was unaware she was Jewish until she was
compelled to wear a yellow star. Nemirovsky had converted to Catholicism in 1939
and had her daughters baptized in an effort to save them. After the war, Epstein
considered herself Jewish, saying, "Catholic was just a label." It is odd to
hear complaints from Jewish quarters in the US and France that Nemirovsky faced
her Judaism only because of the persecution she suffered; this was true of many
during the Nazi era.

And in this age of rampant assimilation, rabbis and communal leaders in both
countries can attest to the fact that Judaism today in the US and France is
often less a religion than a reaction to anti-Semitism. Perhaps Jewish museums
in the US and France, as well as Yad Vashem, should emulate the New York museum
and use Nemirovsky's life and stories to teach both Jewish cultural and
Holocaust history - how important writers and artists were so easily reduced to
stateless helplessness.

Nemirovsky's novel David Golder - replete with racist stereotypes - raised the
specter of the author's anti- Semitism. It is the inevitable question her
daughter confronts. "I believe we read - and I include myself - David Golder
with the perspective of someone reading after the Shoah," said Epstein, speaking
through a translator. "It is not anti-Semitism; it is social criticism of a
milieu she knew extremely well."

Her mother could have a "cruel perspective" and this was, said Epstein, "the
same way she looked at the French bourgeoisie." As more becomes known about this
woman of letters, for many, the enchantment of the first date recedes. If it is
painful to read David Golder, it is because we recognize him and because
Nemirovsky has drawn him so sharply. We are uneasy because her charm is tinged
with vicious caricature. This is a woman who has been brutally uprooted twice in
her short life and spares few from the ruthless razor that is her pen.

Who are we, the Jewish generations born in the West after the Shoah, to judge
Nemirovsky? Our privileged world was not hers. Those, in the US and in France,
who castigate her as "a self-hating Jew" might want to purge their bookshelves.
Jewish literature, like Jewish history and Jewish life, is filled with unsavory
and unsympathetic characters - some merely thoughtless or neurotic, others
heartless or evil - and we write and read about them all.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Irene Nemirovsky. 'It is not anti-Semitism; it is social
criticism of a milieu she knew extremely well,' says her daughter. (Credit:
Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York)

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October 10, 2008 Friday

Whom did Tzipi make happy?

BYLINE: SARAH HONIG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1249 words

HIGHLIGHT: Another Tack

'Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you what you are," wrote Miguel de
Cervantes in the 17th century. But this bit of folksy wisdom is older than the
author of Don Quixote. He merely resorted to and repeated what was in wide
circulation before him and what continues ubiquitously after him. Rare indeed is
the mother anywhere who in one language or another - in an array of nuances on
the theme - hasn't sternly lectured her offspring and intoned that "you are
known by the company you keep."

Whom we gravitate to and, conversely, who flocks around us, roots for us, boosts
us, bets on us and enlists to further our prospects is certainly telling. The
nature of our choices and the character of whom we attract can define us.

In the most basic sense our associations can indicate whether we are upstanding
or delinquent, whether we are cerebral or shallow, whether we are responsible or
reckless, whether we are refined or tacky, whether we are idealistic or
hedonist, whether we are loyal or treacherous.

So when an aspiring politico vies for the nation's topmost title, the
composition of her cheerleading squad cannot be dismissed as beside the point.
When Tzipi Livni succeeded in securing her party's leadership - never mind by
what questionable means nor with what an infinitesimal margin - the identity of
those who reveled in her narrow triumph assumes key significance.

Whom did Tzipi make happy?

THE MOST immediate answer is available at our roadsides. No sooner was Livni's
victory announced - albeit before voting in the Kadima primary ended - than
Peace Now festooned our highways, including Tel Aviv's main traffic artery, the
Ayalon Freeway, with gigantic banners calling for the establishment of a "peace
government by the present Knesset." In other words, Peace Now, which doesn't
want new elections (lest ogre Bibi Netanyahu win), favors a replacement for Ehud
Olmert from within the existing (if severely skewed and non-representative)
parliamentary setup.

Since Livni was formally entrusted with the task of forming a new coalition, the
Peace Now campaign must perforce be regarded as supporting her bid. The only
other alternative is scheduling early elections.

The Left, always hectoring indignantly in democracy's name, of late considers
elections as inherently undemocratic. In non-coincidental synchronization with
the election-shy "Peace Camp," Livni too is given to authoritatively reciting
mantras like: "The country mustn't be dragged to elections," "What we need is
governmental stability" or "We can't afford politicking, we have a country to
run."

Subtext: The public mustn't be allowed to butt in via the ballot box. That would
be too destabilizing according to all nominal democrats who prefer that the
man-on-the- street stick strictly to his no-consequence daily preoccupations and
keep his unwelcome intrusive nose out of the big existential issues.

And in the name of this democratic guideline, it made perfect sense for Livni to
invite Meretz into her coalition. It doesn't really matter whether Meretz will
actually join up officially nor not. Its ad hoc support is guaranteed the
further left Livni veers, and she knows it. Her positions already overlap those
of Labor's more dovish leftist fringes, which is why the journalistic-judicial
elites which propped up Kadima from its illegitimate inception, followed up by
advancing Livni's interests. Their aim was to install the left-most available
candidate at the helm of the bogusly centrist Kadima. It was a perfect faade and
to help pull it off Livni was, in this instance, their woman.

She might well emerge - sans elections - as Israel's first ultra-leftist
premier, which accounts for the rapturous reaction to her primary coup in such
post-Zionist bastions as stylish Rehov Sheinkin. Her negotiations with Ahmed
Qurei leave little doubt - she's committed to repartitioning Jerusalem and fully
shrinking Israel back into the 1949 armistice lines (the ones ultra-dove Abba
Eban dubbed "the Auschwitz boundaries"). She had opportunistically outstripped
the leftward deviations of Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak and even Ehud Olmert.

This probably accounts for the cohesive editorial ecstasy emanating from
Haaretz's opinion pages. It's not for naught that its star columnists uniformly
applaud her. But such orchestrated harmony isn't restricted to Israel's elitist
establishment and its subservient eager-to-please mouthpieces.

THE LIVNI-LEFT synergy seems to have extended even beyond Israel's borders to
include the most unlikely of endorsers. No less than Syria's government
newspaper Tishrin has seen fit to sing her praises. Promoting her as "the
Mossad's beauty," Tishrin is sure "she will determine the entire region's fate."
Avoiding its standard diatribe and invective, Tishrin described Livni as
Israel's "iron lady." This is no individual writer's whim or personal misreading
of reality. Nothing is printed in the leading Damascus daily without the
regime's unambiguous nod. The Syrians have a staked interest in sucking up to
Tzipi, a courtesy they withheld from all Israeli leaders thus far. They must
entertain high expectations for tangible goodies in return.

The al-Arabia satellite television network took its advocacy a step farther. It
didn't merely withhold abuse and bestow a few selected compliments on the
Israeli premier of its choice. Al-Arabia did Livni an actual service. A few days
pre-primary, it gave her a free prime- time electioneering slot, just after the
end of the Ramadan daylight fast, during which she in effect made her pitch to
Israeli Arab eligible primary participants, who comprise more than a fifth of
Kadima's membership roll. There must have been a cogent reason why al-Arabia
bothered to insert itself into Kadima's internal electoral process, and why,
having opted to do that, it chose to champion Livni's cause.

Perhaps Livni's interlocutor, Qurei proffered the most pertinent explanation
when he openly and unabashedly drummed up support for Livni, arguing that "she
is prepared to grant Palestinians what no one else would." He must know what
he's talking about and his decision to take a stand at all must be grounded in
ulterior motives. Livni did arrange a blue Israeli identity card for his
daughter and he did arrange that very considerate al-Arabia interview for her,
showing again that not only are there no free lunches but that the company you
keep does suggest quite a lot.

Some may minimize the bottom line, while others may ascribe more than
immediately meets the eye to the "Mossad beauty's" associations, but one fact is
quite incontrovertible: Livni has managed - unlike any past Israeli premier or
wannabe premier - to consolidate around her persona an unprecedented coalition
of forces inimical to Zionism, be they in greater Tel Aviv (trendy laid-back
bohemian post-Zionists, self-serving local business tycoons, media moguls and
doctrinaire old-school leftists) or as far off as Damascus, Ramallah and the
United Arab Emirates. These are all Livni's friends. They are the company she
keeps.

Therefore, try though she may to pose as the post- ideological, pragmatic
single-minded chairperson of the board, she is no dispassionate political
middle-of-the- roader. She has taken an extreme-left detour, down the circuitous
habitually well-beaten track of her old and new groupies. They all compellingly
attest to who she is. As Cervantes stressed, his observation about one's friends
may be "a short sentence but it's drawn from a long experience."

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October 10, 2008 Friday

A time to plant

BYLINE: BARBARA SOFER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 1015 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Human Spirit

Of course we Israelis are innovative and daring - a people with a constant
stream of new technological ideas and bungee jumping young people backpacking
through the Third World. But one of the sublime pleasures of life here, whether
you're religious or not, is our connections to the cycles of the year.

Take, for instance, the public discussion of the first rain. Our enthusiasm for
the first rain goes beyond the relief of having precipitation after a long dry
summer. We want to know if the rain is merely an insignificant shower or if it
indeed ranks as the yoreh, the biblical first rain. "I will give the rain of
your land in its season, the first rain - yoreh- and the last rain - malkosh -
that you may gather in your corn, and your wine, and your oil," says the Bible
in Deuteronomy 11:14. Thirty-three hundred years later, meteorologists and
rabbis weigh in on the status of the rainfall. Based on Psalm 65, for the rain
to be yoreh it has to saturate the ridges and reach down to the depths. This
discussion rates the evening news.

Likewise, every seven years we of the modern Jewish state are still marking the
sabbatical-shmita years The current shmita year began on Rosh Hashana 5768, and
ended two weeks ago on 29 Elul 5768, September 13, 2007-September 29, 2008. When
we returned to our land in modern times, it was obvious that we'd continue
marking the biblical injunction of sabbatical years.

How exactly we should apply the ancient rules to our essential agriculture was
and is a subject of much argument. The pioneering museum in Mazkeret Batya
documents the refusal of the early settlers to plant during the sabbatical year
despite the hunger and the displeasure of Baron Rothschild's representatives.
The correct implementation of shmita remains a subject of argument. But whether
you accept the heter mechira ("selling" the land to non-Jews to allow the
consumption of local produce), prefer a system of supervised harvesting called
otzar beit din, or buy carrots and onions imported from Italy, the concern to
mark the biblical sabbatical year demonstrates the ongoing continuation of the
traditions that have bound us to our land.

WHEN IT comes to our national forests, there is no debate. The biblical
commandment to leave the land fallow is kept faithfully. Forest land is neither
worked nor cultivated during shmita. In practical terms, that means that last
year there were no popular Tu Bishvat school excursions for planting, no
tourists rejoicing at planting trees with their own hands and no ebullient
forest dedications.

The grandson of a friend was on a family trip to Colorado where the expanses of
natural forests impressed him. "They must have a great JNF here," he said. When
he explained what he meant to the forest ranger, the Coloradan shook his head.
"No, son, God planted these trees." For whatever the divine reason, in the
Promised Land, God has left the responsibility for the planting to us.

The successful greening of our tiny portion of the earth is, of course, the
fruit of the efforts of our unique national institution, the Jewish National
Fund-Keren Kayemet L'Yisrael, one "hedge" fund that continues to yield
dividends. The concept of a national fund owned collectively by the Jewish
people was first proposed in Basel at the first Zionist Congress in 1897 by Zvi
Hermann Schapira. But Professor Schapira, a mathematician, couldn't sell it. Not
until four years later in 1901, after all the pros and cons had been endlessly
argued, did Theodor Herzl vent his exasperation and push through the resolution.

Schapira had died three years earlier and the first JNF-KKL donor was a delegate
who pledged £10 in his memory. Herzl himself made the second contribution. A
bank clerk named Haim Kleinman from a small town in Galicia suggested placing a
collection box in every Jewish home - and the famous Blue Boxes were born. The
first task of JNF was to acquire land, parcel by parcel, but early on, forestry
became a major activity. The first JNF-KKL trees were planted in 1905, an olive
grove in memory of Herzl, who'd died of heart failure at 44.

The rest is history. Much of the forestation was the hands-on work of new
immigrants seeking employment soon after their arrival. By the 1970s, forests
were opened for the public as recreation areas for picnics, hiking and
exhilarating vistas, a mix of amusement and inculcating a love of the land.

We have figured out how to plant forests in most unlikely locations. Yatir, our
largest forest, actually borders the Negev, and it's the only forest in the
Middle East where an ongoing study of carbon dioxide exchange and its impact to
impede global warming is happening. So precious are our forests, that during the
Second Lebanon War, even though employees in the North weren't required to work,
JNF-KKL firefighters eschewed shelter from the Katyusha rockets to remain in the
forests to extinguish fires.

We've successfully planted more than 240 million trees on our rocky soil. We're
the only nation to finish the last century with more trees than we had in the
previous one. All this while keeping sabbatical years.

To understand the lengths we go to protect this tradition, look at the procedure
that was created for frustrated tree-planters during shmita. JNF-KKL came up
with a system to "prepare" a tree for planting. You could bag a tree sprout in a
polyethylene bag together with a non-soil planting solution. The bags were
placed on a raised polyethylene surface so that the future trees would never
touch the earth.

Next week, on Simhat Torah, we'll also recite the prayer for rain - not for the
yoreh, which we've already enjoyed, but "to soften the wasteland's face when it
is dry as a rock." We pray for blessing, for life and for plenty.

The first job of the winter rains is to wash the soil and make it amenable to
baby trees. The champion gardeners of the JNF-KKL are poised to plant tens of
thousands of new saplings: tiny oaks, pistachios, carobs, pines and eucalyptus.
I like to think of all those new young roots stretching deep into the rested,
renewed soil of our ancient homeland.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Forest land is neither worked nor cultivated during shmita.
(Credit: Ofer Zemach)

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October 8, 2008 Wednesday

And the winner is...

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 725 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

I do hope you are right.

- Winston Churchill accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1953

The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded this week to Francoise Barre-Sinoussi
and Luc Montagnier "for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus," and to
Harald zur Hausen "for his discovery of human papilloma viruses causing cervical
cancer."

Hausen, from the Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, gets half the prize;
while Mme Barre-Sinoussi, from the Pasteur Institute, and Montagnier, from the
World Foundation for AIDS Research, share a quarter each.

No one questions the wisdom of awarding the prize to these virologists. Since
1981, when AIDS was first identified, 25 million people have died; 33 million
live with this incurable disease. Roughly 5,000 AIDS cases have been diagnosed
in Israel.

Barre-Sinoussi and Montagnier have made it possible not only to manage the
illness, but to screen for HIV in the blood supply. Hausen's work will one day
allow scientists to overcome the number two cancer killer among women. It is too
bad, however, that the Nobel medical jury - Stockholm's Karolinska Institute -
did not see fit to also recognize the contribution of Dr. Robert Gallo, an
American virologist widely co-credited with discovering HIV. It's true that the
jury was limited to three choices; still, Gallo's exclusion proves that the
Nobel awarders don't always get it right.

Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, died in 1896 and left his fortune to
endow the prize named after him. Nobel committees in various fields solicit
nominations from academics, scientists, previous laureates and others.

Most of us will have to rely on the wisdom of the physics jury in selecting
Yoichiro Nambu, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa yesterday: Nambu for
discovering the "mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics"
and Maskawa, with Kobayashi, "for the discovery of the origin of the broken
symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in
nature."

The chemistry award will be announced today; literature follows on Thursday. The
peace prize will be revealed Friday, and economics on October 13.

While many Nobel decisions are universally respected, others generate
controversy.

For instance, PLO leader Yasser Arafat was awarded one-third of the 1994 prize,
along with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, for "efforts to create peace in the
Middle East" - though he really specialized in creating chaos. Henry Kissinger
and Le Duc Tho shared the 1973 prize for helping South Vietnam trade land for
peace. Sometimes a peace prize, like the 1929 award to Frank Billings Kellogg, a
US secretary of state, reflects the triumph of hope over experience. Kellogg
crafted a treaty, ratified by scores of countries including Germany and Japan,
which outlawed the use of force in international relations.

So who - of the 33 groups and 164 individuals nominated - will the International
Peace Research Institute, the Nobel peace jury, tap this year? Among the leading
candidates are two "disappeared" Chinese dissidents, Gao Zhisheng of the Falun
Gong and environmental campaigner Hu Jia.

In literature, London bookies are betting on relative unknowns: Claudio Magris,
Adonis - said to be one of the Arab world's greatest living poets - and
Jean-Marie Gustave Clezio. Dark-horse contenders include Israel's Amoz Oz and
Jewish American novelist Philip Roth. It's been 15 years since a US author won.
Professor Horace Engdahl, a Scandinavian literature professor and Nobel juror,
claims that "The US is too isolated, too insular" to generate world-class
fiction.

Jews have done rather well in the Nobel, capturing 19% of the chemistry awards;
41% in economics; 13% in literature; 9% of the peace prizes; 26% in physics and
28% in medicine. Israelis have made their mark too: Robert Aumann for economics
(2005); Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko for chemistry (2004); Daniel
Kahneman, economics (2002); Rabin and Peres for peace (1994); Menachem Begin,
peace (1978); and Shmuel Yosef Agnon for literature (1966).

WHAT THIS suggests, simply, is that in the roster of some 780 prizes given to
individuals (and 20 awarded to organizations) since 1901, Nobel jurors have made
laudable decisions as well as egregiously foolish ones.

Isn't it good to know that some of the smartest people around are as fallible as
the rest of us?

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October 8, 2008 Wednesday

What a difference a day makes

BYLINE: MELANIE GREENBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 767 words

HIGHLIGHT: Ultimately, the decision to sit on Yom Kippur is not necessarily
about religion but rather heritage, tradition and pride. Melanie Greenberg is a
freelance writer living in New York. She is finishing her first novel.

Yom Kippur is rather inconveniently timed. Just ask any Jewish ballplayer. It
invariably falls during either the pennant race or the postseason, which poses a
dilemma for players with teams that are championship contenders.

In 1934, my grandfather, Hank Greenberg, was the first player to sit out a game
on the Day of Atonement. He was a man for whom baseball was practically a
religion, so his was not an easy decision. Particularly because the Detroit
Tigers were in a close race for the pennant, and he was a fierce competitor.

The deliberation began on Rosh Hashana. Much to the consternation of many fans,
my grandfather initially announced that it was his intention to sit out the
Jewish New Year. However, a leading rabbi in Detroit, presumably a baseball fan,
cleared him to play, citing an obscure passage from the Talmud. As it happened,
my grandfather provided the two home runs that allowed the Tigers their 2- 1
victory against the Red Sox. The Detroit Free Press applauded his effort by
publishing a front page headline the following day, reading: "Happy New Year,
Hank" - in Yiddish.

With only 10 days left until Yom Kippur, he would soon be faced with another
predicament. Despite the fact that he was not particularly observant, he
ultimately decided to sit. He realized that his choice was bigger than his
personal relationship to his religion. It was about doing the right thing by
acting as a representative for the Jewish people. For American Jews, who were
still only acknowledged as second-class citizens, his was a meaningful decision.
While he would not be met by the roar of the stadium crowd, he was greeted with
thunderous applause and a standing ovation when he walked into temple.

The Tigers lost that outing, in large part due to his absence. However, one
might say he won a victory for his people by making the statement that their
heritage was something in which they could take pride.

IN 1965, Sandy Koufax, the next of the great Jewish ballplayers, also observed
Yom Kippur, sitting out the first game of the World Series. Like my grandfather,
Koufax was admired for his decision, though it would have dire consequences for
the Dodgers that day. Don Drysdale, who pitched in his place, had an abysmal
outing, giving up seven runs in 22Ú3 innings. As Walter Alston approached the
plate to pull him from the game, Drysdale gave him a sheepish look, saying
famously, "Hey, skip, I bet you wish I was Jewish today, too."

In recent years, Gabe Kapler has been one of the most vocally Jewish athletes in
baseball. He has a tattoo of the Star of David on one leg and the words "Never
Again," a reference to the Holocaust, on the other. Given his devotion to his
heritage, one would think that the decision to sit out Yom Kippur would be a
no-brainer for him. Yet, in both 2001 and 2004, when faced with choice, he
decided to play.

Kevin Youkilis, like Kapler, a player for the 2004 Red Sox, did not take the
field that day. However, unlike my grandfather and Sandy Koufax, he did not go
to shul but, rather, suited up and sat in the dugout - a reflection of his
ambivalence. He wanted to honor his religious tradition, but his heart was in
the game.

That same year, Shawn Green, who had sat out Yom Kippur in 2001, was scheduled
to play - not one - but two games over the holiday. In the end, he went with a
compromise, playing one and sitting the other. Green said that, while he was not
religious, he felt it was important to at least acknowledge his faith.

When asked about their respective decisions, players have responded that it is a
personal choice, that every individual has to do what is right for him.

That is not entirely true.

Heavy though the burden may be, I believe that Jewish players share the same
obligation as my grandfather - to serve as representatives for their people.
Admittedly, he lived through different times. However, Jewish athletes still
have the ability to impact their communities.

If Kevin Youkilis and Shawn Green had wanted to send a message, they might have
been more effective if they had made stronger commitments to their positions.
Moreover, if Gabe Kapler cares so deeply about the Holocaust, he could have
acknowledged the people who lived through it by exercising a right to which they
were denied - the right to be Jewish, to observe Yom Kippur.

Ultimately, the decision to sit on Yom Kippur is not necessarily about religion
but rather heritage, tradition and pride. If there are any Jewish players left
standing tonight, I hope they bear that in mind, remembering that, as Jewish
ballplayers, theirs are bigger than simply personal decisions.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: HANK GREENBERG, shown here with John F. Kennedy in 1946,
announced his intention to sit out the close 1934 pennant race that fell on Rosh
Hashana - but a leading rabbi in Detroit cleared him to play. (Credit: John F.
Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.)

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October 8, 2008 Wednesday

Reflections on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur

BYLINE: DAVID HARTMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 814 words

HIGHLIGHT: The stark, evocative imagery of the liturgy is aimed primarily at
shattering complacency. The writer is co- director of the Shalom Hartman
Institute in Jerusalem. http://hartman.org.il

The themes of death and the "thinness" of human existence recur in the liturgy
of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur and during the entire period beginning with the
month of Elul. This is not because of a morbid desire to undermine human
confidence and autonomy or to shock us into fearing God out of a sense of
helplessness and sin. The existential themes of the High Holy Days are meant to
create a sensitivity and appreciation of the precious significance of everyday
existence.

Existentialists spoke about confronting one's mortality as a necessary condition
for achieving human authenticity. Although a preoccupation with death can create
nihilism and a paralyzing sense of the futility of human initiative,
nevertheless the Jewish tradition believed that the themes of human mortality
and finitude could be integrated into a constructive and life-affirming vision
of life.

The language of the Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur prayers, such as the explicit
enumeration of the different ways that a human life can be destroyed, is not
meant to terrorize us into self-negating submission. The stark, evocative
imagery of the liturgy is aimed primarily at shattering complacency. The impact
of this experience can be life-affirming insofar as it serves as a catalyst in a
process of self-creation and moral renewal.

FOCUSING ON human mortality and the contingencies that wreak havoc upon human
lives heightens our sensitivity to the deadening effects of habit and routine.
People often deceive themselves into believing that they can successfully defer
living the kind of lives they consider worthwhile until some future time. While
not questioning the importance of reflecting on the meaning of one's life, they
believe they can postpone dealing with this issue.

"Why become confused and troubled by the meaning of my life now? I can deal with
it later, when I retire, when economic realities are more favorable, when I will
be free of parental responsibilities..." This attitude is na·ve and
self-deceptive because it ignores the real consequences of present patterns of
behavior and learning that can weaken and ultimately extinguishes one's natural
capacity to live life deeply and seriously.

Another theme of Yom Kippur, teshuva, is expressed in the call to return, to
renew, to re-create one's self and in the appeal for divine forgiveness and
atonement, in the recitation of "for the sin we have sinned..." and other
confessional sections of the liturgy. The essence of teshuva - the crucial
principle without which this concept would be empty of meaning - is the belief
that the past need not define the future. A person can break the causal chain of
habit and defy the seeming necessity of repetition that suffocates spontaneity
and the joy of life.

THE CALL to teshuva, therefore, is expressed not only in the plea to God for
forgiveness and in the affirmation of God's gracious love and reluctance to mete
out punishment and retribution, but also, and most poignantly, in the repeated
attempts at convincing the individual to believe in the possibility of change.
The personal significance of Yom Kippur ultimately turns on the individual's
ability to believe that his or her life can be different. The major obstacle to
teshuva is not whether God will forgive us but whether we can forgive ourselves
- whether we can believe in our own ability to change the direction of our
lives, even minimally.

Teshuva is grounded in the idea of an open future, in the belief that the
possibilities for human change have not been exhausted, that the final chapters
of our personal narratives have not yet been written. The sense of empowerment
felt on Yom Kippur reflects an underlying faith in the power of the human will
to break the fixed cycles of the past and to chart new possibilities for the
future.

Many scholars who take issue with translating God's name, ehyeh asher ehyeh,
which was revealed to Moses at the burning bush, as "I am that I am" insist on
emphasizing the future orientation of the verb ehyeh, "I will be." For many, the
Jewish concept of God must convey the idea of newness - of new spiritual
possibilities in the future, of new ways of understanding and of relating to
God. To sense the presence of God in one's life is to believe in the possibility
of radical surprise and of genuine human change.

Communal forms of worship must not be allowed to degenerate into automated,
mind-numbing exercises in herd conformity. Our rabbis taught that although Jews
stood as a people at Mt. Sinai, each individual personally appropriated the word
of God. We must not be intimidated by the High Holy Day prayer book. Although we
share a common liturgy, we must be capable of appropriating its significance in
terms of our individual lives and concerns. Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur
challenge us to discover the meaning of personal authenticity and self-renewal
within the context of community.

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October 8, 2008 Wednesday

Letters

BYLINE: Hazel K. Brief, Joseph Guedj, Kenneth Besig, James A. Marples, Ira
Robinson, Nathan Elberg, Meera Jacobson, Editor's note

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1224 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

What mom & dad give...

Sir, - Kudos to Shmuley Boteach in "Why Orthodox youth are leaving the fold"
(October 7) for asking parents to stand up and be counted. It is easy to say it
is the "bad" influence of society corrupting our youth, much harder to take a
closer look at ourselves as parents.

When we are with our kids, are we really? Or are we busy taking a call, or
checking one more thing on the Internet?

As an ADHD coach for teens and adults, I routinely ask my clients if they eat
family meals together. Six years ago, the answers were, "Shabbat, of course, and
a few times during the week." Now I mostly hear... "We are not all around," or
"my mom puts food on the table and when we are hungry we take something."
Parents say, "I don't have the time to make a sit-down dinner during the week."

Bur family dinners are not for gourmet dining. They are a way to close out the
world for a few minutes - and to listen, listen, listen to our kids. Even one
meal together a week makes a difference.

Let's not underestimate what mom and dad have to give.

HAZEL K. BRIEF

Modi'in

...a brand-new bike

for Yom Kippur!

Sir, - Unbelievably, the most solemn day on the Jewish calendar has been turned
into a farce, with the excuse that it is the only traffic-free day of the year.
Kids ride all over to their hearts' content and some parents even buy their
child a brand-new bike for the occasion! Last year, on my way home from
synagogue, I noticed that three kids hadn't even removed all the protective
nylon wrapping.

Another thing I noticed: Children playing in the synagogue compound behaved very
well, while those cycling around the junction behaved like hooligans, uprooting
road signs. It was an ugly sight. But it is the parents, not the kids, who were
to blame.

No one should be compelled to observe any religious practice, but for a Jew to
disrespect this most solemn day is incomprehensible.

Two Spanish football teams postponed a match to allow Idan Tal, presently a
Betar Jerusalem player, to observe Yom Kippur.

JOSEPH GUEDJ

Karmiel

Cutting losses...

Sir, - Ronnie Bar-On and the rest of this government had better start taking a
good hard look at what to cut out of this coming budget, and the more the better
("Bar-On warns against budget increase amid crisis," October 6).

Plainly, as a result of the financial market meltdown throughout the global
economy, the expected growth in the international, and Israeli, economy next
year won't take place. A worldwide recession including Israel is a practical
certainty. Further, as the worldwide credit crunch takes its toll in business
contraction and higher unemployment, as well as further defaults on loans, the
tax revenues on which the budget depends simply will not be there.

Most governments are aghast at the very thought of budget cuts, and this one is
no different. However, chances are that Mr. Bar-On will be forced by economic
circumstances - such as the fact that various Israeli pension funds have lost
over NIS 100b. in the past several weeks and the losses continue to climb - to
call for at least a 10% across-the-board budget cut by every ministry except
Defense and Education.

However, if he and the Treasury fail to heed the economic clarion call being
heard throughout the world, many Israeli businesses won't simply contract and
reduce their workforce; they will be forced to close, leaving their employees
without jobs.

People without jobs cannot pay the same taxes or buy at their usual levels. In
many cases they have to default on their mortgages.

The Israeli Treasury and government have a chance right now to soften the
recessionary blow by cutting the budget; and the citizens of Israel have every
right to demand it.

KENNETH BESIG

Kiryat Arba

...in a casino gone bad

Sir, - Re "Local stocks drop most in 8 years" (October 6): It is breathtaking to
see Israeli stocks slump 6% in a single day... and 9% in a day a week ago in the
US. Greed- fueled manipulation of housing prices in America, combined with
unwise lending by bankers without being balanced by solid collateral, has turned
worldwide financial institutions into a casino gone bad.

It is my view that the only way to stabilize things is to link raw land prices
with tangible commodities such as gold. Land prices alone tend to stay fairly
stable. It is the arbitrary guesswork in appraising home values that has created
the unsustainable frenzy in real-estate.

Mortgages on paper can diminish in value overnight... but temperate values in
raw land alone would equalize the market by eliminating speculation on houses
with dubious worth.

JAMES A MARPLES

Longview, Texas

Canada's Jewish lobby

Sir, - Ruth Klein's response to Isi Leibler's evaluation of Israel advocacy in
Canada was disingenuous in one important respect ("Leibler misses the mark,"
October 2).

She is certainly correct that the current Canadian government under Prime
Minister Stephen Harper is a staunch defender of Israel. By implication,
however, she seems to imply that this is a result of effective Canadian Jewish
advocacy efforts.

The Canadian government's attitude toward Israel has never essentially been
determined by such efforts. Because of the Canadian parliamentary system, the
"Jewish vote" has never been as influential as in the US, and, historically,
Jewish lobbying efforts with the government have not often achieved their
objectives.

On the contrary: Prime Minister Harper and his Conservative government support
Israel out of apparent conviction, despite the fact that the Jewish vote - and
political contributions by Canadian Jews - have tended to go to the Liberal
Party.

IRA ROBINSON

Montreal

Sir, - Ruth Klein hit the nail right on the thumb, missing the point completely.
Canadian Jews have a stronger sense of identity than in much of the Diaspora,
and they want to feel proud of that identity. Certainly, there is much to be
proud of with regard to Israel's accomplishments.

Leibler correctly pointed out that the official policy of Canadian Jewish
organizations has been to avoid speaking about Israel in more than a whisper.
Support for Israel is supposed to be invisible.

When I threatened to walk out of an academic symposium at Concordia University
which touched upon the anti- Netanyahu riot, student panelists couldn't believe
there were actually people who would openly support Israel.

Organizations like CIJR make it feasible to support Israel out loud, to wear a
kippa on a university campus. They elevate and inform the discussion, allowing
us to express our pride.

NATHAN ELBERG

Montreal

A joy to read

Sir, - 'Post' readers are indeed fortunate on days when Yehuda Avner's writing
appears. His "When Washington bridled and Begin fumed" (October 7) was a
particularly striking example of his narrative skills - transforming a meeting
between Menachem Begin and American ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis into a
riveting account of relations between Israel and the US in 1981. It opened, as
well, a window onto both men's personalities.

Mr. Avner manages - oh, so skillfully! - to draw us into Begin's private
apartment, making us feel we are witnesses to what happened there. And he does
it all without the use of cliches or neologisms.

MEERA JACOBSON

Netanya

Editor's note: Yehuda Avner's op-ed was dedicated to the memory of Harry
Hurwitz, founder and president of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. We
apologize for the inadvertent omission.

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October 8, 2008 Wednesday

Poetry in motion

BYLINE: JUDY MONTAGU

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1347 words

HIGHLIGHT: How one man's dogged search created a revolution in 'the use of the
self'. In My Own Write

Overheard - an exchange between Avital, aged seven, and a doll

Doll: Why is your mommy sleeping on the floor?

Avital: She isn't sleeping. She's doing Alexander.

Doll: What's Alexander?

Avital: Your head flies away, and another one after it.

Doll: What's it for?

Avital: I don't know, but it makes your body better and gooder.

Becoming "better and gooder" is something that occupies many of us at this
intensely introspective time of year. While the bulk of our concern focuses on
spiritual improvement, Jewish tradition also urges us to look after our health.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslav reportedly sent a disciple to "talk to his limbs."
Deuteronomy 4:9-10 commands: "Guard yourself and guard your soul very
carefully," about which the Torah commentator known as the Kli Yakar explains,
"'Guard yourself' means take care of your body."

This imperative, whether he knew his Bible or not, was central to the life of a
highly unusual man, an Australian named Frederick Matthias Alexander
(1869-1955), who discovered a revolutionary system of physical and mental
reeducation.

The Alexander Technique - like Pilates and Feldenkreis - has become popular,
even trendy, in the West, including Israel, but its essence and extraordinary
value are, I believe, still not widely appreciated.

IT'S EASIER to explain what Alexander isn't than what it is.

It isn't a form of exercise. Exercise involves doing things with one's body,
while Alexander begins with the opposite premise: "undoing" or "letting go of"
bad and counterproductive habitual patterns.

Nor is Alexander an aspirin-like "cure" to be applied to specific maladies,
though it has the potential, as Lulie Westfeld notes in F.M. Alexander - The Man
and His Work, "to remake the lives of... people suffering from a great variety
of functional disorders."

"I do the same for everyone," said F.M., as he liked to be addressed, "whether
he comes to me for flat feet or nervous tension."

Last month, Post health reporter Judy Siegel-Itzkovich wrote about a British
study of 600 sufferers from back pain that compared the long-term effectiveness
of massage, exercise and Alexander. The results, published in the British
Medical Journal, showed that massage helped in the short term only, while
Alexander retained its effectiveness at one year, particularly when combined
with exercise.

So, "undoing" aside, do the practitioners of Alexander actually do anything?
Very much so, though it may be scarcely visible to a casual observer.

The work involves setting in motion a new dynamic between the head, neck and
back that Alexander discovered, painstakingly, over nine years of lonely and
minute observation of himself in a mirror. He called this head- neck-back
dynamic the Primary Control and showed that when working correctly, it brings
about the easiest, most efficient and healthiest use of the entire organism.

THE Alexander "formula" - easy to state, initially hard to internalize and
virtually impossible to establish without the vocal guidance and skilled hands
of a qualified teacher - is: "Neck free, head forward and up, back lengthening
and widening."

That's all; but it encompasses a level of improved functioning that elicited
from the philosopher John Dewey, one of Alexander's earliest adherents,
"admiration in the original sense of wonder." Other enthusiasts, many of whom
came to Alexander for lessons after he moved to London in 1904, included
physicians, eminent actors and statesmen.

Aldous Huxley wrote about "constant improvement in physical and mental health...
we cannot ask more from any system."

The new head-neck-back pattern is kept going not via any physical effort, but by
nothing more - and nothing less - than pure thought; by means of which
directions are continuously given to the head, neck and back, "one after the
other, all together," as Alexander put it somewhat enigmatically. Mental imagery
is a help ("Your head flies away...").

This repeating pattern, this flow of thought directing the body's inner energy,
begins to undo the excess muscular tension built up by years of faulty use and
allows the body to regain its natural posture, expending just the right amount
of effort needed to function as it was designed to. After a while, the results
become visible - both in the body itself and in one's mental response to every
external stimulus.

"Thought?" a newcomer to the technique might venture, doubtfully. "Just thinking
can change the body's shape?"

It did mine. And Lulie Westfeld, among the first group of teachers who trained
under Alexander, starting in 1931, noted that all the trainees without
exception, men and women, exhibited physical changes for the better.

In an early film of F.M. himself practicing his technique, my teacher Dalia
Altmann told me, "You can actually see him growing." This, of course, was not
real growth, but what renowned Alexander teacher and author Patrick J. Macdonald
called an "ironing-out" of the body. Simply, each vertebra had been allowed to
claim its rightful space in the spinal column.

WHAT LED Alexander on his excruciating, solitary quest - nine years! - for the
Primary Control? It was his burning, lifelong ambition to be a Shakespearean
actor.

A successful professional reciter, he began in 1892 to have trouble with his
voice - specifically a severe hoarseness that threatened to end his thespian
dreams. Medical advice didn't help for long. Gradually, he realized that his
trouble was caused by something he did when he used his voice.

The doctors helpless, Alexander now became a pioneer - a natural role, Westfeld
notes, for a "lone wolf" raised in the Australian outback, used to relying on
his own resourcefulness. He knew little about anatomy, but had the advantage of
keen observation.

And observing himself day in, day out, he noticed that as he recited, he tended
to pull his head back, causing a chain of harmful reaction. This eventually led
to his landmark discovery of the head's leading role in the body's functioning -
for good or ill - a conclusion confirmed by the physiologist Rudolf Magnus of
Utrecht in 1926 and the experiments of the biologist G.E. Coghill in 1929.

Much trial and error yet lay ahead for the dogged explorer; but Alexander was on
the way to discovering his revolutionary "use of the self," the title of one of
his books.

'ALWAYS I meet two opposing attitudes about Alexander," Westfeld writes. "The
first regards him as an archetypal hero... worship[ping] his personality without
judgment or discrimination. The second regards him as partly a charlatan, who in
some inexplicable way seems to have done great things for many people."

The harshest critics of her book, she says, "are likely to be those who are
familiar with Alexander's work and will charge me with calculated
understatement."

If F.M. the man was an idol, he had feet of clay, Westfeld makes clear. Whenever
a chance to advance his work presented itself - such as setting up an Alexander
children's school - he had "a way of killing every opportunity." He seemed not
to care whether his trainees learned or not, fearful perhaps of his work being
distorted. He wasted months of their time putting on plays, with himself as the
star. He loved horse-racing and "placed a bet every half-hour of every working
day."

But he was a good family man; he loved children; he was often excellent company;
he could be generous - and he was a genius whose work became recognized despite
himself and his eccentricities.

ALONGSIDE the physical, the Alexander Technique has a spiritual side.

"It puts you in touch with your essence," says my teacher Altmann, "enabling you
to 'own' your rightful space in the world. Its dynamic is like living waters -
mayim hayim - continually renewing itself. It allows a person to find his quiet
center and grow from there."

Describing the technique, she uses the word "elegant." As is my wont, I go
afterwards to Webster's. It doesn't disappoint, defining "elegance" as
"dignified gracefulness or restrained beauty of style."

I have a feeling that F.M., who once described a group of anatomists seeking to
study with him as "walking deformities," would applaud.

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October 8, 2008 Wednesday

Atonement for Oslo

BYLINE: MICHAEL FREUND

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 918 words

HIGHLIGHT: The first step to correcting a mistake is to admit that one has
occurred. Yet even this basic, fundamental truth seems to have escaped many of
our decision makers. Fundamentally Freund

Tonight is the start of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when Jews
traditionally seek to make amends for their misdeeds, whether committed against
their fellow man or against God. It is a special and decidedly meaningful period
on the Jewish calendar, one that resonates deeply across the generations. After
all, no human being is free of sin, and no one would dare to lay claim to a
flawless record entirely clean of mistakes.

No one, that is, except for Shimon Peres.

In an interview last Friday with Makor Rishon, our president showed little
inclination toward introspection when the subject turned to the disastrous 1993
Oslo Accords with the PLO that he helped to fashion.

Asked what he now thought of Oslo in retrospect, the putative peace-maker had
only words of praise for the unmitigated catastrophe that he brought on this
country. Disproving the notion that with hindsight necessarily comes knowledge,
Peres insisted that "Oslo gave us the basis for peace."

What it also gave us, of course, was murder and mayhem on an unprecedented
scale, as a surge in Palestinian terror left hundreds of Israelis dead and
thousands of others injured over the course of subsequent years.

Regardless, Peres went on to list what he feels to be the singular achievement
of the accord with Yasser Arafat. "As a result of Oslo," he declared, "the Arabs
agreed that the basis would be the '67 borders and not according to the 1947 UN
plan... In addition, they recognized the State of Israel and declared their
opposition to terror."

Undoubtedly, the residents of Sderot and the rest of the Negev will rest easier
in their bomb shelters the next time Palestinian rockets are hurtling in their
direction, comforted by the knowledge that they have at last been "recognized."

WHILE PERES grudgingly acknowledged that the Palestinians have "split" - a
veiled reference to the ascension of Hamas to power - he nonetheless cheerfully
maintains that all is well in la-la land.

"Until today, there remains a group headed by Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] that is
conducting negotiations with Israel, and which rejects terrorism and is fighting
terror," he said, conveniently overlooking the fact that the Palestinian
Authority leader is perhaps Ehud Olmert's only serious rival for the title of
"lamest duck in the Middle East."

Rarely has so much breathtakingly simplistic revisionism and audacious
historical inaccuracy been condensed into so few words.

In 1993, Peres defied military intelligence, and basic common sense, when he
convinced prime minister Yitzhak Rabin to bring Arafat and his band of
terrorists to Gaza, give them weapons and hand over territory to their control.
The immediate and predictable result was an unprecedented wave of stabbings,
shootings and suicide bombings which left Israel reeling from the worst wave of
terror in its history.

Oslo was Israel's single greatest strategic disaster since the 1973 Yom Kippur
War. It marked a moral low point in Israel's conduct of its foreign relations,
as Arafat's bloody track record was overlooked and, instead of being arrested,
he was embraced as a peacemaker.

The agreement brought about a sharp increase in anti- Israel violence, it
divided the land and people of Israel, weakened the country's deterrence
posture, and paved the way for the eventual rise of Hamas.

It was considered the bold experiment of the 1990s, but it exploded in the
country's face, leaving the laboratory in flames and sparking a wave of
extremism and jihadist violence that is still very much with us today.

IT IS regrettable that Peres could not rise to the occasion in his interview and
offer some acknowledgement of failure or at least a plea for forgiveness from
the victims of Oslo. But not a single, solitary word of contrition, penitence or
remorse is to be found on the subject.

Needless to say, it is tempting to chalk this up to Peres' chosen profession -
that of politics, where admitting that one is wrong is rarely high on the daily
"to-do" list. As Winston Churchill wryly noted, "A politician needs the ability
to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next
year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't."

But the reality is that Peres' obstinate refusal to come clean is also
reflective of a larger problem in Israeli society: a lack of willingness to
accept personal responsibility for one's actions. It plagues our lives in so
many spheres, from the playground to the boardroom to the Knesset.

The first step to correcting a mistake is to admit that one has occurred. Yet
even this basic, fundamental truth seems to have escaped many of our decision
makers.

Peres and those who backed the Oslo Accords owe all Israelis a belated apology.
On September 13, 1993, when Rabin shook hands with Arafat after signing the
accord, I along with many other television viewers felt a sense of gloom. Not
because we were we were any smarter or wiser, but simply because we knew, deep
down, that you cannot compromise with evil, however easy and tempting it might
appear to be.

Now, some 15 years later, that gloom is shared by all, as peace has never seemed
farther and less achievable than it does today.

So when Peres goes to synagogue tomorrow to mark Yom Kippur, I hope he'll take
to heart the words that we recite in the Musaf prayer: "for repentance, prayer
and charity remove the evil of the decree." And then maybe at last he'll realize
that while he may not be able to undo the mistakes of the past, the least he can
do is apologize for them.

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October 8, 2008 Wednesday

Counting Islamists

BYLINE: DANIEL PIPES

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 802 words

HIGHLIGHT: While extremists may number some 150 million, the good news is that
the majority of the world's billion-plus Muslims oppose the totalitarian variant
of their religion. The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube
distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
www.DanielPipes.org

The recent distribution of some 28 million copies in the United States of the
2005 documentary Obsession has stirred heated debate about its contents. One
lightening rod for criticism concerns my on-screen statement that "10 to 15
percent of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam."

The Muslim Public Affairs Council declared this estimate both "utterly
unsubstantiated" and "completely without evidence." Masoud Kheirabadi, a
professor at Portland State University and author of children's books about
Islam, informed the Oregonian newspaper that there's no basis for my estimate.
Daniel Ruth, writing in the Tampa Tribune, asked dubiously how I arrived at this
number. "Did he take a poll? That would be enlightening! What does 'support' for
radical Islam mean? Pipes provides no answers."

Actually, Pipes did provide answers. He collected and published many numbers at
"How Many Islamists?" a weblog entry initiated in May 2005.

First, though, an explanation of what I meant by Muslims who "support militant
Islam": these are Islamists, individuals who seek a totalistic, worldwide
application of Islamic law, the Shari'a. In particular, they seek to build an
Islamic state in Turkey, replace Israel with an Islamic state and the US
constitution with the Koran.

AS WITH any attitudinal estimate, however, several factors impede approximating
the percentage of Islamists.

How much fervor: Gallup polled over 50,000 Muslims across 10 countries and found
that, if one defines radicals as those who deemed the 9/11 attacks "completely
justified," their number constitutes about 7 percent of the total population.
But if one includes Muslims who considered the attacks "largely justified,"
their ranks jump to 13.5 percent. Adding those who deemed the attacks "somewhat
justified" boosts the number of radicals to 36.6 percent. Which figure should
one adopt?

Gauge voter intentions: Elections measure Islamist sentiment untidily, for
Islamist parties erratically win support from non-Islamists. Thus, Turkey's
Justice and Development Party (AKP) won 47 percent in 2007 elections, 34 percent
of the vote in 2002 elections, and its precursor, the Virtue Party, won just 15
percent in 1999. The Islamic Movement's northern faction won 75 percent of the
vote in the Israeli Arab city of Umm el-Fahm 2003 elections while Hamas, the
Palestinian terrorist organization, won 44 percent of the vote in the
Palestinian Authority in 2006. Which number does one select?

What to measure: Many polls measure attitudes other than application of Islamic
law. Gallup looks at support for 9/11. The Pew Global Attitudes Project assesses
support for suicide bombing. Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi security specialist, focuses
on pro-Osama bin Laden views. Germany's domestic security agency, the
Verfassungsschutz, counts membership in Islamist organizations. Margaret Nydell
of Georgetown University calculates "Islamists who resort to violence."

Inexplicably varying results: A University of Jordan survey revealed that large
majorities of Jordanians, Palestinians, and Egyptians wish the Shari'a to be the
only source of Islamic law - but only one-third of Syrians. Indonesian survey
and election results led R. William Liddle and Saiful Mujani in 2003 to conclude
that the number of Islamists "is no more than 15 percent of the total Indonesian
Muslim population." In contrast, a 2008 survey of 8,000 Indonesian Muslims by
Roy Morgan Research found 40 percent of Indonesians favoring hadd criminal
punishments (such as cutting the hands of thieves) and 52 per cent favoring some
form of Islamic legal code.

The Islamic Supreme Council of America's Hisham Kabbani says 5-10 percent of
American Muslims are extremists. Given these complications, it is not surprising
that estimates vary considerably. On the one hand, the Islamic Supreme Council
of America's Hisham Kabbani says 5 to 10 percent of American Muslims are
extremists and Daniel Yankelovich, a pollster, finds that "the hate-America
Islamist fundamentalists É averages about 10 percent of all Muslims." On the
other, reviewing ten surveys of British Muslim opinion, I concluded that "more
than half of British Muslims want Islamic law and 5 percent endorse violence to
achieve that end."

These ambiguous and contradictory percentages lead to no clear, specific count
of Islamists. Out of a quantitative mish-mash, I suggested just three days after
9/11 that some 10-15 percent of Muslims are determined Islamists. Subsequent
evidence generally confirmed that estimate and suggested, if anything, that the
actual numbers might be higher.

Negatively, 10-15 percent suggests that Islamists number about 150 million out
of a billion-plus Muslims - more than all the fascists and communists who ever
lived. Positively, it implies that most Muslims can be swayed against Islamist
totalitarianism.

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October 8, 2008 Wednesday

Religion and secularism - a moral accounting

BYLINE: YARON YADAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 862 words

HIGHLIGHT: The observant Jew is forbidden to wonder whether the commandments are
harmful by their very nature, perhaps even despicable. The writer is secular. In
the past he was head of the Lithuanian haredi kollels Sha'arim Hametzuyanim
B'Halacha and Tiferet Tiveria, and an expert on halachic rulings. He is founder
and chairman of the Orr political party (http://www.orr.org.il) and author of
Hadat Kama al Yotzreiha.

In this article I will concentrate on the substantial difference between the
moral accounting required of the religious person and the moral accountings of a
secular person. The source of the difference lies in the vastly different values
which stand in opposition yet are both widespread in Israeli society: worship of
God as the supreme value and man's happiness as the supreme value - the
difference between humanism and worship of the divine.

"Awake, sleepers, from your sleep, and arise, slumberers, from your doze"
(Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 3:4). This is the essence of Rosh Hashana and
its continuation, Yom Kippur - man may be physically awake but spiritually
asleep. Spiritual slumber can be such a pervasive sin that one can hardly expect
any real change, any moral accounting. In speaking of a moral accounting, I
speak of something deep and not just superficial, something which touches upon
the moral axioms, the supreme and the fundamental values from which sprout
ethics and morality. This requires starting fresh and building anew, as though
we had just established a system of values for a new society. What are the
values upon which we should build? Each person must discover the supreme value
which is most important to him and from which rules and laws stem.

THE DISTINCTIONS in types of moral accounting begin with the very definition of
the term "morality." The humanist sees morality as universal ethics, including
each person's natural right to liberty, equality and happiness, while the
religious person sees morality as obedience to the demands God makes of him, as
expressed in the Torah and in Halacha. The humanist is accountable to himself;
the religious person is accountable to God.

When religious people speak of morality, they don't even mean it as a synonym
for "ethics." They mean it only as "support for the Torah" - constant, lifelong
review and internalization of obedience. One of the problems of language is that
the very same word can have two opposing meanings when used by two different
groups of native- language speakers.

Thus for the word mussar (morality), etymologically the source of the word, as
used in Judaism, is from yesurim (rebuke), as explained by Rashi on Proverbs
13:11. The yoke of Torah and the commandments is considered mussar because they
rebuke people and cause them to submit to the yoke of heaven, as is written:
"Listen, my son, to the rebuke of your father," and as is explained by Rashi,
"Listen to the Written Torah and to the Oral Torah" (Proverbs 1:8).

The religious Jew is forbidden to wonder whether the commandments of his
religion are harmful by their very nature, perhaps even despicable. As proof, in
Laws of Repentance (4:2), Maimonides wrote the one who disagrees with the words
of the sages will find it difficult to repent. "We have been cautioned against
raising any thought which causes one to uproot a fundamental principle of faith"
(Laws of Idolatry, 2:3).

In contrast, secular society sees man's happiness as his own responsibility, and
so imposes upon the individual the obligation to consider how he can improve his
own physical and spiritual well-being. Critical thought and moral accounting,
even about sacred cows and entrenched myths, are encouraged and developed. Many
times harsh criticism is raised when laws passed by the Knesset do not coincide
with an individual's expectations, and this criticism attempts to foment change
in the name of logic, ethics and social justice.

IT IS no wonder, then, that the moral accounting made within the Orthodox
community on Yom Kippur is a case of man examining his actions and how they met
the demand for obedience. Did he follow the rules of Halacha as he ought to
have? The Maharil wrote: "Every sin committed by a person should be confessed.
If he ate a forbidden food, he should say, 'For the sin which I sinned before
You by eating a forbidden food,' etc."

To further explain the religious demand for a moral accounting, for an
accounting of active obedience to divine demands, we should read the biblical
source.

In the Bible (Leviticus 16) Yom Kippur is a day of forgiveness and atonement for
all sins. Paradoxically, the Torah's method of atonement for sins is by an act
of vandalism performed by the high priest. He had to take a bull, two rams and
two goats, slaughter one of the bulls and one goat, sprinkle their blood on the
Holy Temple's curtain and altar seven times and then burn them.

The remaining goat was sent to the desert. (The sages stated that the goat was
taken to a cliff and its hind pushed until it tumbled and fell down the
mountain. Before it reached halfway down, its limbs would break - Yoma 67a.) The
two rams would be killed and brought as a whole- offering on the altar, and thus
would the high priest atone for the sins of the entire nation. The text
describing this ritual is read in the synagogue as part of the Yom Kippur
prayers.

For most of Yom Kippur the religious person is found in the synagogue, where he
must complete a long set of prayers written hundreds of years ago. There is no
time to think whether Judaism is the path one should choose, and so principles
become subordinate to symbols.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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October 7, 2008 Tuesday

Edgy markets

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 718 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Don't just do something - stand there. That's probably still the best advice
economists can offer policymakers as Israel navigates its way through the global
credit crisis.

Some of the uncertainty Israelis are experiencing is attributable to the
country's political vacuum. A deeply unpopular prime minister has resigned and
no successor is yet in place. Nor is there a figure of stature who can reassure
the country, FDR-like, that "there is nothing to fear but fear itself."

This past Sunday's cabinet meeting addressed the economic crisis perfunctorily.
On his way to Moscow, the premier allowed that the source of the problem was
external. In a globalized world, however, this "insight" is small comfort.

Meanwhile, economists can't agree whether government spending next year should
be increased beyond the planned 1.7 percent. If it is, the times demand that the
additional monies contribute to growth and not be squandered on political
payoffs.

Some of the uncertainty is psychological. With the word "panic" dominating US
and European media coverage of the banking and credit crisis, Israelis can't
help feeling a sense of spillover queasiness.

We went into Rosh Hashana with tabloid headlines screaming about how much the
country's richest personalities - Shari Arison, Lev Leviev, Nochi Danker,
Yitzhak Tshuva and the Offer brothers - had lost on their global investments.
Implication: Their pain would trickle down.

So it was predictable that shares would take a beating when trading resumed
Sunday on the Tel Aviv Stock Market. Yesterday the market also closed down
across the board.

Sunday's losses were the worst in close to a decade. In fact, since January 2008
real estate shares have lost 67% of their value. Market gains elsewhere achieved
over the past two years were largely wiped out.

GRANTED, it is hard for local policymakers to address the effects of the
worldwide crisis on Israel when no one can yet fathom its scope.

But if the current global crisis has taught us anything, it is that calling for
complete governmental noninterference with business is just as dopey as
advocating a centrally planned economy.

Crucially, those charged with making economic decisions for the country need to
do a better job of agreeing among themselves and communicating a coherent
message - not just to big business, finance and the stock market, but to average
Israelis as well.

We need to be hearing more from the top professional echelon at the Finance
Ministry, the Israel Securities Authority and the Bank of Israel, among others.
The media must resist the temptation to sensationalize the situation even as
they keep Israelis abreast of developments. Finance Ministry Director-General
Yarom Ariav's reassuring interview Monday morning on Army Radio is an example of
the responsible coverage needed.

Israelis everywhere are watching developments. Those who run small businesses
worry that it will be harder to obtain bank loans; those about to buy new homes
hope mortgages will remain within reach. From builders to hoteliers, sectors
dependent on overseas customers are watching to see how the crisis in Europe and
America will affect them.

Israeli employers pay into a tax-exempt keren hishtalmut account - a sort of
rainy day fund maintained for their employees. This money is invested until
tapped cyclically. With the market down, so too is the value of these keren
hishtalmut accounts, as consumer spending will probably soon reflect.

Many Israelis also belong to a pension scheme - kupat gemel - to which both they
and their employers contribute. These funds, too, are invested in the market.
Nine percent of pension savings have reportedly been lost since the beginning of
the year.

Just about every Israeli has a bank account. But unlike in the US where the FDIC
insures deposits - Israelis have no such insurance. Fortunately, Bank of Israel
Governor Stanley Fischer assures us that the country's banks are stable - that
no one expects a run on the banks.

Nevertheless, developing a plan to protect the deposits of average Israelis
should figure high on the agenda of the next government.

Israelis need reassuring that those charged with regulating the country's
business, finance, markets and economy are effectively looking out for their
interests, even as they encourage efficient growth and investment.

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The Jerusalem Post

October 7, 2008 Tuesday

When Washington bridled and Begin fumed

BYLINE: YEHUDA AVNER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 2348 words

HIGHLIGHT: In pushing through the Golan Law in 1981, Menachem Begin caused a
potentially explosive situation with the Reagan administration. The writer was
on the personal staff of five prime ministers, including Menachem Begin.

Shoulders stooped, dark shadows under his eyes, Menachem Begin sat slumped in a
wheelchair, steeped in morose musings. Pain, physical and mental, swayed through
his mind and body as he contemplated the diabolical happenings swirling around
him in the closing months of 1981.

For one, he had slipped and broken his hip - hence the wheelchair and the
physical pain. Second, his peace partner, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, had
been assassinated. Third, his incessant efforts to reach an agreement on an
autonomy plan for the Palestinians had stalled. Fourth, Syria had all but taken
over Lebanon, and Yasser Arafat's PLO its southern reaches. Fifth, the
Israeli-US relationship was souring, president Ronald Reagan warning against an
Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Sixth, the national economy was in the doldrums.
And seventh, his beloved wife, Aliza, was sick.

So, there he sat in the simply furnished apartment of his official Jerusalem
residence, and brooded. The room was as quiet as a crypt, but for the purr of
the radio broadcasting the evening news, to which he was hardly listening. But,
suddenly, his ears prickled at the sound of the announcer quoting Syrian
president Hafez Assad as saying he "would not make peace with Israel even in a
hundred years." The premier picked up the phone to his longtime and most trusted
aide, Yehiel Kadishai, and asked him to find out the current population of the
Golan Heights, and call him straight back. This he did - 10,000- 12,000 Druse
were living on the Golan, and a few thousand Israeli settlers.

Begin closed his eyes and forced himself to think through his pain: The Golan
Heights rose 300 meters over the farm-rich Hula Valley. Were it governed by a
friendly neighbor, the escarpment would be of little military value, but in
enemy hands it was a strategic nightmare. Its capture in the Six Day War put an
end to years of Syrian harassment and bombardment of the villages and towns
below. Now, Assad, the most intractable and intransigent of all the Arab
leaders, was saying for the umpteenth time that Syria would never recognize the
Jewish state. So why wait? Why leave this sparsely populated critically
strategic plateau in a state of legal limbo under military administration when,
by a simple act of legislation, it could be incorporated into Israel's sovereign
law?

This is precisely what Begin did the following day: He pushed through a
unanimous cabinet decision in the morning, a two-thirds Knesset majority in the
afternoon and ignited a firestorm in Washington in the evening. "You know, Al,"
said president Reagan to his secretary of state, Alexander Haig, "this Golan
business makes me mad. It has complicated Middle East peace-making endlessly."

"I agree," concurred an angry Haig, "particularly after we've recently signed a
strategic cooperation agreement with the Israelis, which Begin pressed for. I
assumed that that agreement would put paid to the Israeli penchant for taking us
by surprise, and that they would fully consult with us before taking such a
drastic unilateral action."

"Does the agreement oblige them to consult with us?" asked the president.

Haig shrugged, and his sharp eyes, set in a high strong-boned face, narrowed
when he answered, "Well, nowhere does it say so specifically. The Israelis never
actually promised to consult us, but we had every reason to understand that as
strategic allies we would be consulted on matters which clearly affect our
interests as well as theirs."

"So what do you propose?" The president popped a few jelly beans into his mouth.

Haig took his time answering, and when he did, his voice was pensive and
measured: "Well, Mr. President, we have to convey to Mr. Begin a message sharp
enough so that he'll sit up and take note, and not surprise us again."

"Such as what?"

"Such as suspending the strategic cooperation agreement until we conduct a
serious review about our interpretations of it."

The president mulled and chewed and said, "You're right, Al. That's the way to
go. Let's do it."

"I'll instruct our ambassador, Mr. President," said the secretary of state.

NEXT DAY the prime minister received ambassador Samuel Lewis in his private
apartment. He was sitting in a chair, with one foot propped on a stool and, by
him, a table covered with papers.

The men liked each other. Begin respected the 51-year- old, ebullient Texan's
urbane and well-honed diplomatic skills. In the eight years he was to spend at
his Tel Aviv posting, which spanned the Carter and the Reagan administrations,
Lewis became so well connected and was so well trusted that frustrated
politicians would occasionally unburden their souls to him and dole out
confidences that were properly the preserve of hush-hush forums.

"Come on in, Sam," called Begin when Lewis appeared at the door accompanied by a
note taker.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Prime Minister?" asked the ambassador solicitously,
shaking him by the hand. He noted that the premier's cheekbones and chin were
more pronounced than ever, and there was pain in his eyes.

"Much better, thank you," answered the premier, vainly trying to pump a bit of
cheer into his voice. "The trouble is, I can't bend my leg. But you know me by
now, Sam - a Jew bends his knee to no one but to God."

Whether this was a bit of banter or a declaration of defiance was hard to tell.

The prime minister invited Lewis to take a seat, stiffened, sat up, reached for
the stack of papers on the table by his side, put them on his lap and in a face
like stone and a voice like steel, resorted to histrionics as a vehicle of
diplomacy by speaking nonstop for almost an hour, never once pausing to look at
his notes, and beginning with a thunderous recitation of the perfidies
perpetrated by Syria over the decades, and ending with: "Therefore, Mr.
Ambassador" - that's what he called him whenever he was blasting off - "I have a
very personal and urgent message to president Reagan which I want you to
transmit immediately."

"Of course," said Lewis, having been through this sort of ritual before where
everybody knew their roles and recited their lines.

"Mr. Ambassador, during the last six months the US government punished Israel
thrice. On June 7 we destroyed the atomic reactor near Baghdad. It was an act of
salvation in the highest sense but, nevertheless, you announced you were
punishing us by breaching a written and signed contract for the delivery of F-16
aircraft."

"Not punishing you, Mr. Prime Minister, merely suspending..."

Begin galloped on in a tone that told Lewis this was no fleeting squall: "Not
long passed and we, in self- defense - after a PLO massacre of our people, one
of them an Auschwitz survivor - bombed the headquarters of the PLO in Beirut.
Regretfully, there were civilian casualties, and again you punished us. You
suspended delivery of F-15 aircraft."

"Excuse me, Mr. Prime Minister, it was not..."

"By what right do you lecture us on civilian casualties? We rack our brains to
avoid civilian casualties. We sometimes risk the lives of our soldiers to avoid
civilian casualties."

"Mr. Prime Minister, I must correct you..."

"A week ago, on the recommendation of the government, the Knesset adopted the
Golan Law, and again you declare you are punishing us. What kind of language is
this - punishing Israel? Are we a vassal state? Are we a banana republic? Are we
14-year-old boys that have to have knuckles slapped if they misbehave?"

"This is not a punishment, Mr. Prime Minister, it's merely a suspension
until..."

"You cannot and will not frighten us with punishments, Mr. Ambassador. Threats
will fall on deaf ears."

"But we've not used the term. The intention is to..."

"Excuse me, Mr. Ambassador, you announced that you are suspending the
deliberations on the memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation."

"We simply have to..."

"I regard your announcement as a renunciation of the agreement on the part of
the American government. We shall not allow a sword of Damocles to hang over our
heads. The people of Israel have lived for 3,700 years without a strategic
agreement with America, and it will continue to live without it for another
3,700 years!"

"Please allow me to explain..."

"Moreover, in imposing upon us pecuniary sanctions you have broken the word of
the president who said the United States intends to purchase from Israel
military hardware to an amount of $200 million. Now you are saying this
commitment will not be honored. Is this proper, Mr. Ambassador? Is it done? What
are you trying to do, hit us in our pockets?"

"If only you'd allow me to..."

"In 1946 there lived in this house a British general whose name was Barker.
Today I live in this house. After we blew up his headquarters in the sequestered
part of the King David Hotel, Barker said, 'You can punish this race only by
hitting them in their pockets,' and he issued an order to his British troops
that all Jewish coffee shops were to be out of bounds. That was the Barker
philosophy. Well, I now understand why the whole great effort in the Senate to
win a majority for the arms deal with Saudi Arabia [the sale of highly
sophisticated equipment] was accompanied by such an ugly anti-Semitic campaign."

"Not so..."

"Yes so. First came the slogan, 'Begin or Reagan!' - the inference being that to
oppose the deal with Saudi Arabia was tantamount to supporting a foreign prime
minister while being disloyal to the president of the United States. Are such
eminent senators as Kennedy, Jackson, Moynihan, Packwood and, of course,
Boschwitz [a Jew], who expressed opposition to the deal, disloyal citizens? Are
they? Then came another slogan: 'We will not allow the Jews to determine the
foreign policy of the United States.' Well, let me tell you something, Mr.
Ambassador: No one will frighten the great and free Jewish community of the
United States. No one will succeed in intimidating them with anti-Semitic
propaganda. They will stand by us. This is the land of their forefathers, and
they have a right and a duty to support it."

"Mr. Prime Minister, you surely don't believe that..."

"We are being told the Golan Law adopted by the Knesset has to be rescinded. The
word 'rescind,' Mr. Ambassador, is a concept from the time of the Inquisition.
Our forefathers went to the stake rather than rescind their faith. We are not
going to the stake, Mr. Ambassador."

"We are merely suggesting a review..."

"It is my firm belief there is not a man alive who can convince the Knesset to
annul the Golan Law. So please tell the president that nothing and nobody can
bring about its abrogation."

Ambassador Lewis clearly had had enough. Dispensing with even the pretense of
nicety, he shot back: "Mr. Prime Minister, you have not allowed me to explain
what I have to say. I shall certainly deliver your urgent and private message to
the president. But in the meantime I have a message for you: Between friends and
allies there should be no surprises. There should be consultations by either
party on issues which affect the other's interests."

"Correct, but the surprise on this occasion was because we did not want to
embarrass you by putting you in a predicament vis-a-vis the Arab capitals with
which you have ties. Had we told you beforehand what we intended to do, you
would have said no. We did not want you to have to say no and then proceed with
the legislation, which is what we would have done under all circumstances."

Faced with this unyielding barrage, which to the ambassador seemed somewhat
hyperbolic and, in part, even paranoid, he saw no point in carrying on, so he
took his leave and set out for the drive back to his Tel Aviv embassy, to cable
off his report. On the way out of Jerusalem he switched on the car radio and
what he heard flummoxed him totally. It was the voice of the cabinet secretary
repeating almost word for word in English, for the benefit of the foreign
correspondents assembled outside Begin's residence, the fieriest of the fieriest
all the passages of the premier's harangue.

THE WHITE HOUSE was livid. It deemed the language of the premier's message
intemperate. It deemed its tone improper. And it deemed the treatment of its
envoy an affront to America itself. But Begin refused to retract a single word.

Shortly thereafter, Ambassador Lewis escorted a senior senator to meet Begin and
assess the frozen situation. When the meeting was done, the ambassador said,
"Mr. Prime Minister, there is something I wish to talk to you about. It concerns
me personally."

Begin gave him an amiable look, and said, "Go ahead, Sam. What's on your mind?"
There was not the slightest hint of guile in his voice.

"It has to do with the handling of the urgent and private message you asked me
to deliver to the president - the fact that you authorized the release of that
message to the media almost immediately was, to put it mildly, a violation of
every diplomatic norm and practice. And the way you did it made me feel I was
being treated like an idiot."

"But surely, you realize there was nothing personal in what I said or did," said
the premier, surprised at Lewis's rancor. "I considered your government's act of
such grave national consequence that I felt compelled to fully inform our people
of our stand, there and then - that we, too, have red lines."

"Yes, but hardly had I left Jerusalem I heard your spokesman on the radio
quoting what you'd said to me almost word for word, in what was supposed to be a
personal message to the president."

Begin pursed his lips in thought, and said, "I simply never thought of it in
that light, Sam. My one consideration was that, given the sharpest difference of
views we had - and still have - on a matter so vital to our future as the Golan
Heights, I felt our public had a right to know exactly what was said, and where
we stood. I apologize if I embarrassed you personally. Please, forgive me."

The tone of contrition in the prime minister's voice filled Sam Lewis with a
sense of uncommon bemusement. For never did he believe that this proudest of
men, Menachem Begin, was capable of such humble apology. It was something he
still remembered when talking to me not very long ago.

avner28@netvision.net.il

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: BEFORE THE RIFT. President Ronald Reagan and prime minister
Menachem Begin at the White House, September 1981. BEGIN READING a September
1981 copy of 'Newsweek' on his visit to the States. (Credit: PMO)

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The Jerusalem Post

October 7, 2008 Tuesday

Why Orthodox youth are leaving the fold

BYLINE: RABBI SHMULEY BOTEACH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1011 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer hosts a daily US national radio show on Oprah and Friends.
His most recent book is The Broken American Male.

I grew up in a modern Orthodox community in Miami Beach. Till today, nearly all
my friends remain observant Jews. But that kind of predictability, whereby those
who are raised observant remain so, is a thing of the past. Every week I meet
and receive e-mails from formerly observant teenagers and twentysomethings who
have left Orthodoxy. This includes large numbers of hassidic youth who are
leaving the fold. The reason this is so alarming is that it goes against the
most basic assumption of the Jewish community - that receiving a Jewish
education is the surest way to guarantee observance and commitment.

When I joined Chabad before I was bar mitzva, it was almost unthinkable for
Lubavitch children to choose to be non-observant. Indeed, the majority gave
their entire lives to the Jewish people by choosing to go to the far corners of
the globe on shlichut. But today Chabad is beginning to ask itself why a
not-insignificant number of its youth are giving up observance, even as they
remain attached to the Chabad community and continue to live in Crown Heights.

The same is true of other hassidic communities. I recall a lecture I gave at the
92nd St. Y a few years back, when about 10 former Satmar Hassidim came as a
group to introduce themselves. They had no yarmulkes or beards, and a few had
tattoos. I appreciated their honesty and candor in sharing with me how far they
had drifted from Judaism, but wondered what could have so thoroughly alienated
them from their heritage. I ask the same question of the many non-practicing
hassidic youth who often join us for Shabbat and holiday dinners at our home.

Several theories are offered as to why some Orthodox youth are leaving. Many
believe it is because Orthodoxy is no longer insulated from mainstream society.
Try as one might these days, the secularizing influences of the culture pour
through. Still others argue that it is simple mathematics. With more Orthodox
children being born, it makes sense that a larger number will choose to leave
Judaism. One rabbi told me that we should focus not on the growing number who
are leaving but on the overwhelming majority who choose to stay put, which
numerically is quite an achievement.

Perhaps.

But for the branch of Judaism that has long advocated - and rightly so - that
education is the key to observance, it is simply unacceptable to see so many
youth lost.

I CANNOT claim to know all the causes for their exit, but I have learned this
about disaffected Orthodox youth: A big part of the problem is distracted
parenting. We in the Orthodox community justifiably pride ourselves on our
strong families. But as parents, we usually face even greater pressures than
other parents because of our large families and considerable religious duties.
The net result is that we are sometimes not as engaged with our children as we
ought to be, and delegate their Jewish upbringing to teachers and the general
community.

Many who live in the Orthodox world quietly harbor the opinion that their kids
will, by osmosis, remain observant. They send their kids to yeshiva, they let
them play with religious friends. Surely they will choose a righteous path. But
absconding on our responsibility to be the primary influence in our children's
lives is irresponsible and unacceptable.

Take synagogue, for example. More and more shuls are creating youth services
where the expectation is that young children will not pray with their parents
but will immediately be farmed off to a youth director. But is that a good
thing? Isn't it a parent's responsibility to teach a child how to behave in
synagogue and pray rather than have the child go to a youth service where they
will be given pretzels and sing "Adon Olam?" And even if the youth service is as
comprehensive as the main service, isn't this the one day a week when a father
prays with his children rather than have them do so with teachers at school?

And speaking of school, yes, we rely on our children's rebbes to give them
inspiration and information. But only a parent can make a child feel
unconditionally loved and appreciated, making Judaism in turn feel warm and
inviting.

Many rabbis work so hard for the community that they are unaware that their own
children are neglected. Few, for example, are as dedicated to the Jewish future
as Chabad. But it can come with a cost. Many shlichim are so overwhelmed with
teaching, organizing communal events and fund-raising that they scarcely have
family time. Just last week I went to visit a Chabad shaliach who has literally
brought hundreds back to Judaism and runs every evening from home to home to
teach. The man is a hero of the Jewish people. But surely even he would agree
that he must also be a hero to his children.

Our rabbis go through all our life-cycle events with us. Weddings, bar mitzvas
and, sadly, funerals. But they need to have at least four proper family dinners
a week if they are not to lose a connection with their own kids. A highly
regarded Reform rabbi who hosted me for a lecture in California told me how,
after 22 years in the pulpit, his wife was leaving him. She simply could no
longer take the loneliness of being a rabbi's wife. He spoke of how this was
unjust recompense for having given over his whole life to the Jewish community.
He is right. But families are also hungry and also need to be fed.

We in the Orthodox community must also begin to question at what age it is
appropriate for children to be sent away from home to yeshiva. To be sure, a
dormitory experience can be very rewarding, as it was for me from the age of 14.
But then, there is no substitute for a child receiving the affirmation of loving
parents, and we need to open more yeshivas in more places so that kids don't
need to be sent away at too young an age.

Observant parents would do well to remember that there is no mitzva to save the
entire world even as we watch our own children getting lost. And as we all think
this Rosh Hashana about what we can improve upon in the coming year, being
better parents should be at the very top of our lists.

shmuley@shmuley.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: TWO YOUNG Chabad emissaries in India. Other Chabad youth have
given up observance even as they continue to live in Chabad communities.
(Credit: Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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All Rights Reserved

566 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

October 7, 2008 Tuesday

Letters

BYLINE: Rebecca Raab, Fay Dicker, Joe Frankl, Naftali Balanson, Nathan Aviezer,
Eliezer Whartman, Moshe Aumann, Dr. Hava-Yael Schreiber, Berel Koseff

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1163 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Giving...

Sir, - Has Ehud Olmert never heard the expression "Charity begins at home"? If
he is in such a generous mood, why doesn't he give away some of his private
property and leave our land alone! ("Cabinet gives a gift to Russia: Sergei's
Courtyard," October 6).

REBECCA RAAB

Ma'aleh Adumim

Sir, - Can there be any justification for a lame-duck prime minister journeying
to Moscow with this irrevocable gift? The stated rationale, that this
"generosity" will sway Vladimir Putin away from furthering Iran's nuclear
aspirations or providing Syria with advanced anti-aircraft batteries, is
spurious - or pathetically naive ("Sergei's Courtyard," Editorial, October 6).

FAY DICKER

Lakewood

...generously

Sir, - I've heard of land for peace, but land for a photo-op is something new.

JOE FRANKL

Savyon

How Israelis help

to demonize Israel

Sir, - In his defense of Yesh Din, David Kimche evades NGO Monitor's substantive
analyses by claiming that we reject all criticism of Israelis in the West Bank
("Breaking the law," October 3). In contrast, the members of Yesh Din, he
asserts, have Israel's best interests at heart. Similar claims are made by
B'Tselem officials regarding the Shooting Back project ("Image makers," UpFront,
same date).

As our publications demonstrate, NGO Monitor views critical discourse on human
rights as both necessary and as a hallmark of Israel's vigorous democracy. The
problem with the powerful network of Israeli NGOs, led by groups such as Yesh
Din and B'Tselem, is their selective use of human rights rhetoric to promote
partisan political objectives.

For both groups, the steady condemnation of Israeli policies is merely a means
to the main political goal: ending the occupation and returning to the 1949
armistice lines. In this context, the selective coopting of human rights values
which erases the context of Palestinian terror damages the universality of these
fundamental principles.

These NGOs, moreover, increasingly use funds provided by European governments
and the New Israel Fund to campaign in international forums such as the UN.
B'Tselem recently opened a lobbying office in Washington DC; and Yesh Din's
highly misleading "statistics" are headlined by the media as evidence of "war
crimes."

In this process, Israeli NGOs contribute to the Durban strategy of demonization
and the efforts by anti-Semitic groups to isolate Israel.

NAFTALI BALANSON

NGO Monitor

Jerusalem

Where are you,

'Imam Forman'?

Sir, - Rabbi David Forman raises doubts about Israel's decision to bomb
terrorist leader Salah Shehadeh because civilians were also killed in the attack
("Moral ambiguity versus moral clarity," UpFront, September 26). I believe that
attacking terrorists whenever possible shows moral clarity, because not
attacking them endangers our lives and is equivalent to placing a higher value
on the lives of Palestinian civilians than on those of Israeli civilians.

Terrorists enjoy the backing of the civilian population. They are idolized;
streets and schools are named in their honor. Whereas Israelis are truly sorry
when Palestinian civilians are killed, Palestinians do not even try to hide
their delight when Israeli civilians die.

Where is the Palestinian "Rabbi Forman" condemning the killing of Israelis?

NATHAN AVIEZER

Petah Tikva

Third Temple blues

Sir, - Re "Making a sacrifice" (Ask the Rabbi, Shlomo Brody, UpFront, August
29): The building of a third Temple would be, in my view, the most divisive,
most destructive act ever committed by contemporary Jewry. Its rebuilding would
entail the magical disappearance of the Mosques of Omar and al-Aksa, with all
the attendant repercussions.

There are four major streams (and a few smaller ones) in world Jewry. One would
never agree with another as to what should take place were the Temple to be
rebuilt.

Aside from the absurd suggestion that animal sacrifices be restored, other
issues remain: who would finance and maintain the structure; who would be the
Kohen Hagadol (High Priest) and his assistants; who would determine the rites
and prayers; whether grain and fruit offerings would be brought for the tithes
and atonement of sins - and, above all, what would be the relationship of the
Temple to Israel and to world Jewry.

Would it affect the image of God as being "without shape or form," who is
non-corporeal, or would we worship an anthropomorphic deity who demands animal
sacrifices, brings down natural disasters as punishment for sinners, issues
orders for mass slaughter, threatens and carries out his threats, becomes
jealous and angry, and listens and speaks to human beings?

Someone once asked if God was a farmer, a dietician, a cook, a carpenter or a
tailor, because he issues directions on how to raise crops, proper foods to eat,
minute details on how to construct the holy Ark, and how to sew the vestments of
the High Priest.

ELIEZER WHARTMAN

Jerusalem

Not only, but also

Sir, - In his review of Zev Golan's English translation of Israel Eldad's book
The First Tithe ("In the underground," UpFront, August 29), Alexander Zvielli
wrote: "Eldad... also edited Chronicles, the newspaper of Jewish history."

To set the record straight, Chronicles was co-edited by Dr. Eldad, of blessed
memory, and the undersigned.

As a matter of fact, the English-language paper, launched (in 1949) and
published by the late Polly Van Leer, was already a going concern under my
editorship, beginning in 1950, when Dr. Eldad came on board in 1952 as chief
editor of the Hebrew edition, Divrei Hayamim.

MOSHE AUMANN

Jerusalem

Halachic infertility:

A medical problem

Sir, - Re "On halachic infertility" (Ask the Rabbi, Shlomo Brody, UpFront,
September 19): Mid-cycle or ovulation bleeding is a medical problem and should
be investigated as such.

It could be caused by either a hormonal problem or an intrauterine pathology.

It is true that a rabbi should be consulted first, in case the woman might not
be a nidda halachically.

But if she is, then a proper medical solution has to be found for her medical
problem, namely infertility and abnormal bleeding.

DR. HAVA-YAEL SCHREIBER

Ob/Gyn Specialist

Jerusalem

Well-deserved win for our Paralympians

Sir, - The fact that the Paralympic duo who won the silver medal for the tennis
doubles were unseeded made their win even more impressive ("Boaz Kramer and
Shraga Weinberg ready to racket-and-roll," October 3).

Maybe Inbal Pezarro - who won not one, not two but three silver medals - should
have been acknowledged as one of the "People of the Year" instead of Shahar
Zubari, who won only a bronze and brought shame on Israel with his uncalled-for
remarks about the Chinese people.

I feel that the lack of media attention to our Paralympians reflects the
attitude of the Israeli government. It gave a grant of NIS 9 million for 42
participants at the Olympic Games, while only NIS 900,000 was allocated for the
43 Paralympic sportsmen, who because of their disabilities require much more
assistance.

Does that fact make them or their achievements less commendable?

BEREL KOSEFF, Jerusalem

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The Jerusalem Post

October 7, 2008 Tuesday

Keeping it civil

BYLINE: GIL TROY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1020 words

HIGHLIGHT: From the Center. Both violence and democracy define Israel's history,
interwoven like the two DNA strands. The writer is professor of history at
McGill University and author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and
the Challenges of Today and Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best
Presidents.

Last month, a de-magnetized identity card prevented me from entering the
building housing my office on the McGill University campus at 10:30 one night. I
asked a woman passerby who looked like a faculty member for help. "My ID card
isn't working," I said. "I teach here."

"I know who you are," the woman spit out contemptuously. "You're that awful
right-wing conservative professor."

Startled, I was about to launch into my standard defense when I face that
accusation, saying how I consider myself a centrist, just wrote a book
championing moderation and besides, if all she knows about me is that I'm pro-
Israel and anti-terror and that makes me conservative, liberalism is in worse
shape than I thought. Instead, I wisely stayed silent. I just looked at her
quizzically. Backpedaling from this ugly descent into politics when a simple,
civil exchange was required, my colleague said she lacked the correct card and
left.

This admittedly minor but nevertheless outrageous incident highlights why those
of us in the broader Zionist community should be particularly horrified by the
pipe bomb attack against Prof. Ze'ev Sternhell ostensibly in the name of
Zionism. Those of us who have defended Israel on campus know what it is like to
take unpopular stands. We understand that independence of thought is the
lifeblood of freedom, that democratic communities and especially intellectual
communities wither in environments that smother dissent.

The attacks and ostracism pro-Israel professors experience worldwide reveal that
the intolerance underlying the assault against Sternhell is not unique to
Israel. But it is rare, and particularly horrible, to see this increasingly
common small-mindedness degenerate into violence. The violence reflects the
acute shortage of two key ingredients democracy demands: mutuality and civility.

IT IS the most compelling lesson from George W. Bush's simplistic approach to
democracy: Democracy entails much more than choosing your leader. The chaos of
Iraq, the brutality of Gaza's Hamas-Fatah civil war, teach that without mutual
respect votes are worthless tools and rights are shams. Citizenship in a
democracy requires a commitment to sharing rights, to granting the same
liberties to others that we demand and enjoy.

People frequently swing rights as clubs, claiming their right to free speech
without extending that freedom to others who disagree with them. Without that
grace, people are not enjoying free speech but demanding personal prerogative.
Mutuality requires thinking about others, accepting differences within the same
community, and limiting some of our excesses for the common good. Mutuality
tempers the individualism so essential to freedom, avoiding the descent into
selfishness. Civility is the logical and necessary result.

Alas, modern Israel often lacks both mutuality and civility. The litter strewn
about too many sidewalks, the aggressiveness harming so many on the roads, the
harshness of so many public interactions and the corruption tainting so many
leaders, all reflect the elevating of individual whims over communal norms. The
palpable, toxic, mutual contempt between left and right, secular and religious,
reveals an arrogant presumption of personal infallibility that demeans the
freedom of others to draw opposite conclusions reasonably.

And the particular pathology of the settler community, characterized by illegal
outposts, bursts of rioting and a growing disrespect for the police and the army
is a ticking time bomb that must be defused. Last month, when 40 thuggish
settlers attacked an IDF post near Horesh Iron every parent of an IDF recruit or
reservist should have denounced this outrage. These soldiers are our sons,
brothers and fathers. Anyone who targets them should be jailed; those who
facilitate such attacks should be shunned.

After the Sternhell bombing, in the dying days of his administration, while
giving interviews sounding more left wing than he ever did so he could guarantee
adulation and steady speech income when he travels abroad, Ehud Olmert lectured
his fellow citizens about avoiding "lawlessness." Olmert's unsuitability to
teach anyone about respect for the law underlined his utter inadequacy as the
country's leader.

BOTH VIOLENCE and democracy define Israel's history, interwoven like the two DNA
strands. There is an element of the Wild West in the country, which despite its
flaws remains the Middle East's only real democracy. At its best, this
unruliness is part of its appeal, making it compelling as a
country-still-in-formation, as a place that can be more open, more malleable,
more creative than the more staid West. At its worst, this rowdiness reveals
itself in the ugly violence coursing through the society; in the rough way
parents handle children, then children handle each other; in the growing crime
rate; in occasional outbursts against Palestinians. Like all functional
democracies, Israel must forge a community that indulges individuals enough so
they flourish without spoiling them so much they harm others.

The balance is delicate, the stakes are high. The Sternhell pipe bombing
reflects not only twisted individuals whose moral system has imploded but an
ugly strain within society. If America the celebrity-obsessed produces glory
hounds like the men who shot Ronald Reagan and killed John Lennon, a politically
charged Israel produces ideological fanatics like the criminals who targeted
Sternhell.

Fortunately, Israeli society is healthy enough to be united in disgust by this
hooliganism. The attack was as evil as it was self-defeating. Instinctively -
and blessedly as a disincentive to copycats - reporters echoed Sternhell's most
provocative pronouncements, broadcasting them more loudly than ever in response
to this horrific attempt to silence him. All of us who love Israel, who cherish
democracy, must embrace Sternhell as he recovers. And in that group hug we
should utter the mantra of a healthy democracy rooted in mutuality, fostering
civility: Whether or not I agree with you, I will defend to the death your right
to express your ideas (knowing that it protects my rights too).

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: THERE IS an element of the Wild West in the country, which
despite its flaws remains the Middle East's only real democracy. (Credit: Ariel
Jerozolimski/The Jerusalem Post)

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The Jerusalem Post

October 7, 2008 Tuesday

A vehicle promoting evil

BYLINE: ISI LIEBLER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1239 words

HIGHLIGHT: Candidly Speaking

Five years ago, I wrote that the civilized world would benefit from the
dissolution of the United Nations, already then a dysfunctional assembly of
nations dominated by tyrannies and dictatorships.

Since then, despite the welcome replacement of secretary-general Kofi Annan by
Ban Ki-Moon and aside from a few symbolic meetings in New York condemning anti-
Semitism, the situation has dramatically worsened.

The newly created UN Human Rights Commission, intended to be more balanced than
its predecessor, shamelessly promotes medieval anti-Semitic blood libels and
demonization of Israel at levels unprecedented even by UN standards. Many of the
Israel-speeches dominating the agenda could have been delivered at Hizbullah
gatherings. Israel is routinely condemned as the world's worst example of human
rights violations by apologists for monstrous regimes like Sudan.

Likewise, representatives from states such as Libya, Iran and Cuba hold key
positions controlling the UN Durban II Conference agenda and are unabashedly
displaying a determination to produce a replay of their first gathering in 2001
that became the springboard for the new global wave of ant-Semitism cloaked as
anti-Zionism. It is no coincidence that the preparatory committee this year
scheduled a meeting to review xenophobia on Yom Kippur.

Although occasionally expressing concerns about anti- Semitism, most democratic
countries have displayed a penchant to assume positions of neutrality in the
face of toxic anti-Israeli hostility. So it is especially regrettable that when
Canada courageously called for a boycott of Durban II, Israel hesitated when
firm support might have tipped the US and other democracies to follow suit - a
move which would have relegated Durban to a coven of discredited dictatorships
and extremist NGOs.

BUT IT was at the last General Assembly plenum at the end of last month, when
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad transformed the podium into a launching
pad for demonic Jew hatred unprecedented since the Nazi era, that UN hypocrisy
and double standards reached their nadir. A similar diatribe from such a
platform against any other religion or ethnic group would have been
inconceivable. The obscene outburst paraphrased the notorious Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, accusing "Zionist murderers" of controlling international
finance, the media and furtively manipulating global politics. The Iranian
president who had repeatedly been calling for the elimination of the Jewish
state reiterated that the world would soon benefit from the collapse of Israel,
a member state of the organization he was addressing.

The response from many of the government and UN officials will be recorded as a
day of infamy for an organization established after the defeat of Nazism to
create a new world order based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
the rule of international law.

Not only was Ahmadinejad's tirade greeted by many representatives with
enthusiastic applause, but the secretary-general, who only a short time earlier
had condemned anti-Semitism, remained silent. The president of the General
Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, a former Nicaraguan foreign minister and a
Catholic priest, made a point of publicly embracing the Iranian Holocaust denier
after his vile address, and then attending the bitterly protested dinner in
honor of the Iranian president.

If the Ahmadinejad diatribe fails to trigger a dramatic response, there is
little doubt that similar depraved onslaughts by representatives of tyrannies
will become the order of the day. Indeed, there is even a serious effort under
way to elect Iran to a non-permanent seat on the Security Council.

What does this say about the UN? That an organization dominated by tyrannies and
dictatorships, not surprisingly, is being exploited as a platform for promoting
evil. Moreover, the situation will continue to deteriorate if the tensions
between Western nations and Russia degenerate into a new cold war, and the
Russians intensify their existing support for rogue states like Iran and Syria.

This horrific UN General Assembly session extending the welcome mat to
Ahmadinejad, coincided with the 70th anniversary of the Munich agreement, when
Britain and France betrayed Czechoslovakia in a vain effort to appease Hitler,
paving the way for the most terrible war in history. Despite the fact that there
is not a single recorded instance in which appeasement of terrorist regimes
succeeded in achieving peace, the same blunders are repeated, even though the
US-led democratic world is militarily far superior to those Islamic extremist
regimes challenging Western civilization. What is lacking is the will, fuelled
by a combination of cowardice and economic greed, to confront rogue states like
Iran before they are able to evolve into immensely more dangerous nuclear
powers.

NEEDLESS TO say, this has special relevance to Israel. Yet in recent weeks, just
when some of the more powerful democracies might have been more inclined to back
a firm principled stand, our policy toward the UN seems to have taken a step
backward.

Our newly appointed UN representative, Gabriela Shalev, while condemning the
General Assembly's embrace of Ahmadinejad and capitalizing on the superb address
delivered by President Shimon Peres, was reported to have dismissed the shocking
behavior and passivity of delegates as traditional diplomatic behavior. She
ludicrously added that some of the ambassadors applauding the Iranian
president's Jew baiting had privately praised Israel to her.

Even more bizarre were media reports quoting Shalev saying that in addition to
defending Israel at the UN, she considers her job to be "correcting the UN's
image in the eyes of the people of Israel." If these reports are true, we may
have replaced our former outstanding ambassador Dan Gillerman with an
unqualified academic.

Our aspiring prime minister, Tzipi Livni, must be made aware that if her
appointees to the UN are going to defend or make excuses for that body, even our
allies will conclude that we have taken leave of our senses.

We should initiate a global campaign highlighting the extent to which the UN has
deviated from the original hopes and aspirations of its founders, transformed
into an instrument for subverting democracy and undermining the civilized world.

We should encourage the emerging view that challenges the validity of democratic
states bearing the brunt of the cost of financing a global body exploited for
the promotion of evil objectives by the numerically dominant tyrannies. Today,
the case for the dissolution of the UN political framework while retaining those
welfare agencies which make a constructive contribution has never been greater.

What should be mooted as a substitute is a new multilateral association of
countries limited to those who are broadly democratic and display respect for
human rights. Such a body could serve as a vehicle to promote democracy
throughout the world, simultaneously providing an inducement to autocratic
regimes to reform to qualify for inclusion. It would also enhance constructive
multilateralism; in the absence of destructive extremist blocs, it would also
create a more realistic environment for improved superpower consultations and
co-operation.

Such an approach would undoubtedly now find increasing support among
increasingly progressively more exasperated democracies including the United
States.

ileibler@netvision.net.il

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GRAPHIC: Photo: AN EFFORT is under way to elect Iran to a non- permanent seat on
the Security Council. (Credit: Bloomberg)

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The Jerusalem Post

October 7, 2008 Tuesday

Between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur

BYLINE: GERSHON BASKIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1139 words

HIGHLIGHT: The demise of partition as an option brings us back into an
existential conflict. The writer is the co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center
for Research and Information.

Why did Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suddenly now realize that the price of peace
with the Palestinians is giving back almost all of the West Bank, dividing
Jerusalem and even acknowledging Israel's part in the suffering caused to
Palestinians as a result of the establishment of Israel? Why do Israeli leaders
and Israeli generals come to these same political insights only when they no
longer have any real power to do anything about it?

At the time of coming to the decision to disengage from Gaza, prime minister
Ariel Sharon said that the weight of responsibility changes your vantage point.
Perhaps that is true when you are a leader with a strong coalition government
behind you, or when there is no real opposition working against you, as Sharon
had during those days. Olmert had a strong coalition, but only on paper and only
if he didn't make any controversial decisions.

After muddling the war in Lebanon, he lost his "moral majority" in the Knesset
and even within his own party, and along with all of the corruption
investigations, he was not given a free day to really focus on his main and most
important mission - peace with the Palestinians. Domestic politics have always
clouded the vision of Israeli leaders and have always prevented them from
fulfilling their political agenda.

Olmert has been liberated from domestic politics - he doesn't care about his
coalition or his popularity rating any more. He can now say what he really
believes. It is, on the one hand, refreshing to hear such honesty from a
political leader, but; on the other, extremely frustrating to hear it when it is
too late to impact any political change.

Olmert has faced the reality that we may have missed the opportunity to create
the Palestinian state next to Israel. Ironically, for most of his political life
he was opposed to this idea and now he has come to realize that the survival of
the State of Israel and the Zionist enterprise is based on it.

I HAVE spent a lot of time recently traveling around the West Bank and seeing
the reality of the settlement entrenchment that makes it almost impossible to
separate Israel from Palestine. Larry Derfner, a Jerusalem Post columnist, wrote
last week that we must come to realization that as much as Tel Aviv is Israel,
so is Nablus. More and more Palestinians are coming to this conclusion as well.
Palestinian newspapers as well as debates in the Palestinian universities and
among political activists throughout Palestine and the Palestinian Diaspora are
coming out in support of the one-state solution.

Objectively speaking, in light of the continued settlement building and the
failure of the negotiators to produce an acceptable agreement, it seems like a
logical conclusion. The main problem is that there is no such thing as a
"one-state solution."

The Palestinian national movement has traveled long distances since its
institutionalization with the founding of the PLO in 1964. For 24 years it held
steadfast to the idea of a "secular democratic state" in all of Palestine, from
the river to the sea. According to the PLO Charter, Jews that came to Palestine
after the beginning of the Zionist movement's "colonialization" would have to go
back to where they came from. We correctly understood the PLO Charter as a call
for the destruction of the State of Israel.

In 1988, after the outbreak of the first intifada, the local Palestinian
leadership in the refugee camps and in east Jerusalem, living under Israeli
occupation for 20 years, succeeded in imposing a different agenda on the
Palestinian leadership in exile. In November 1988 the PLO adopted the two-state
solution which implicitly recognized the State of Israel. That recognition
became explicit in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo Agreement.

Now after 20 years of failing to convince Israeli governments to accept the
two-state solution, the Palestinian national movement is in the process of
reviewing and renewing its political agenda. A significant number of Palestinian
intellectuals and political thinkers, some of the very same people who helped to
shape the position in support of the two-state solution, are now saying it's too
late. There is currently a new search for ideas and political concepts aimed at
reshaping the vision of the Palestinian national movement.

The more simplistic version or "sound bite" of the new vision is "the one-state
solution." The more sophisticated renditions reflect an enhanced and keen
political awareness of international politics and national liberation struggles
and call for democracy - one person, one vote. They are not presenting their
position as "anti-Israeli," in fact they are saying: Give me Israeli citizenship
and Israeli freedom. They are aware that using the term "bi-national state"
would not be popular because they also cannot find examples of successful and
peaceful bi-national states.

But democracy is a different ball game. Who can oppose democracy? The people who
support this program have already adopted and promulgated the term "apartheid
wall." They are very well aware of the connotation that it is meant to arouse in
the minds of the listeners. Israel, they say, is the new apartheid South Africa
and it must be brought to accept democracy in the same way that the apartheid
regime of South Africa was brought down.

WHAT THE supporters of this plan fail to understand is that the only hope for
peace in this land has always been based on the concept of partition. This is
the only way to move beyond an existential conflict of either "us or them."
Partition allows for the conflict to be focused on issues: borders, sovereignty,
Jerusalem, economics, water, etc. The demise of partition as an option brings us
back into an existential conflict - a zero sum game where the focus of the
conflict is "identity" and not borders.

If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict moves back into existential terms, then
Israel/Palestine turns into Bosnia of the 1990s. In that Balkan conflict about
150,000 people were killed in 10 years. That is what will happen here if the
conflict is about identity, because then it is a conflict of everyone against
everyone. There is no escaping the conflict - it becomes all encompassing and
completely intractable. Israelis and Palestinians are not ready now or at any
time in the foreseeable future to share the same national home. We both need a
physical territory in which we can claim sovereignty and express our own
national identity.

Olmert's soul searching of the new year should be a collective soul searching in
which we all reach the same conclusions. If we will not find the way to allow
the Palestinians to gain their freedom and to end our occupation over them, in
the not too distant future, we will be atoning for our loss of our own freedom
in our own state and wondering how we missed the opportunity for peace.

www.ipcri.org

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GRAPHIC: Photo: EHUD OLMERT's soul-searching should be a collective
soul-searching in which we all reach the same conclusions. (Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

October 7, 2008 Tuesday

The convenient war against the Jews

BYLINE: Caroline B. Glick

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1882 words

HIGHLIGHT: Our World

In the end, the global jihad, and the West's fickle response to radical Islam's
assault on its civilization, is about hating Jews. This truth, never wholly
hidden from view, was exposed in all its ugliness in recent months with
startling disclosures by former Italian president and Senator-for-life Francesco
Cossiga.

In a letter to Italy's Corriere della Serra in August, Cossiga acknowledged that
during the early 1970s, then Italian prime minister Aldo Moro signed an
agreement with Yassir Arafat's PLO and affiliated organizations that enabled the
Palestinians to field terrorists, operate bases and store weapons in Italy in
exchange for immunity from attack for Italy and Italian interests worldwide.
Cossiga also acknowledged that even when the Palestinians murdered Italians, the
government still protected them. Indeed, he admitted for the first time that the
largest terror attack ever to take place on Italian soil - the bombing of the
Bologna train station in July 1980 which killed 85 people - was the work of
PLO-affiliated terrorists from George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine.

At the time of the bombing, Cossiga was Italy's prime minister. Right after it
occurred, he blamed the atrocity on neo-fascists. In his words at the time,
"Unlike leftist terrorism, which strikes at the heart of the state through its
representatives, black terrorism prefers the massacre because it promotes panic
and impulsive reactions."

In August, he claimed that it was the work of the PFLP and asserted that the
bomb exploded inadvertently. That is, the Palestinians hadn't meant to kill
non-Jews - so Italian authorities protected them.

On Friday, Cossiga expanded on his disclosures to Corriere della Serra in an
interview with Yediot Aharonot's Rome correspondent Menachem Ganz. Cossiga
admitted that it wasn't just Israeli targets that Italy permitted the
Palestinians to attack with impunity, but Jewish targets as well. Indeed, in at
least one and probably two incidents, the Italians colluded with the
Palestinians in their attacks against Jews. On October 9, 1982, six terrorists
opened fire on worshippers leaving Rome's Great Synagogue. Dozens of Jews were
wounded and two-year-old Stefano Tache was murdered. Hours before the attack the
Italian police detail charged with securing the synagogue was withdrawn.

Then too, in December 1985, Palestinian terrorists opened fire on the El Al
ticket counter at the Rome airport. Ten people were killed. Another seven people
were murdered in a simultaneous attack against the El Al ticket counter at the
Vienna airport. According to Cossiga, Italian intelligence agencies received
prior warning of the attack but didn't bother to share the information with
Israel.

Cossiga explained to Yediot, "No Italian targets were hit. They attacked the
Israeli airline at the airport. The murdered were all Israelis, Jews, and
Americans."

Then there was the hijacking of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro off the
Egyptian coast in October 1985. Palestinian terrorists led by Abu Abbas
commandeered the ship. They shot wheelchair-bound American Jewish passenger Leon
Klinghoffer and threw him overboard while he was still alive. The Egyptians
freed the hijackers and sent them off on a flight to Libya. American jets forced
a plane to land at a NATO base in Sicily. The Italians refused to permit the
Americans to take the hijackers into custody and freed Abbas. The Italians cast
the standoff as a victory against American bullies. But it really amounted to a
surrender to Palestinian murderers. As Cossiga explained, "Since the Arabs were
capable of harming Italy more than the Americans, Italy surrendered to them."

COSSIGA ALLEGES that his country's agreement with the Palestinians has recently
been expanded to include Hizbullah. After the Second Lebanon War, Italy agreed
to command the UNIFIL force charged with preventing Hizbullah from reasserting
control over southern Lebanon and blocking its re-armament efforts. Yet Cossiga
asserts, "I can state with absolute certainty thatÉ Italy has a deal with
Hizbullah according to which UNIFIL forces turn a blind eye to Hizbullah's
rearmament so long as no attacks are carried out against soldiers in the force."

Ganz notes ruefully that although Cossiga's statements provoked the Italian
Jewish community to demand that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi investigate the
government's collusion with Palestinian terrorists, no such investigation is
likely to be forthcoming. Ganz explains that Berlusconi himself is not immune to
the anti-Semitism that caused his predecessors to abstain from protecting
Italy's Jewish citizens. When he addresses Italian Jews, Berlusconi often calls
the Israeli government "your government," and so exposes his adherence to the
view that Jews are not true citizens of any country other than Israel.

The anti-Semitic belief that all Jews are Zionists and therefore all Jews are
fair game in the war against Israel - itself simply another round of the age-old
war against the Jews - allows anti-Semites to obfuscate the fact that their
anti-Israel rhetoric is simply warmed over Jew- hatred. People like Iranian
leaders Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei, and Palestinian terrorists from
the PLO and their progeny in Hamas and Hizbullah nearly always limit their
threats to "Zionists," and so pretend that they aren't actually anti-Semites.

Their razor-thin deception is eagerly embraced by their fellow travelers in the
West - from university professors like Juan Cole, Steven Walt and John
Mearshimer, to policymakers like Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, to
Western decision-makers and European heads of state, and an alarming number of
American politicians.

This deception is par for the course of anti-Semitism. Throughout history
anti-Semites have used Jew-hatred as a way to rally their troops. By attacking
Jews as the collective enemy, tyrants have given their people a convenient, weak
culprit to attack to deflect criticism away from their own failures or to hide
real enemies from pacifistic publics uninterested in fighting. Anti-Semitism
appeals to people's basest instinct. But people don't like to acknowledge how
much they hate Jews, and Jews have always preferred to deny that they are hated.

So anti-Semitic leaders have disguised their appeal to base instinct by
pretending that they are actually appealing to sublime aspirations. In the case
of the Nazis for instance, Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels appealed to Germanic
pride and love for the Fatherland. Today, the Left appeals to people's
aspirations for peace and justice. It is only by permitting and indeed enabling
Jews to die and the Jewish state to be destroyed that "peace" can be secured and
the Palestinians can receive "justice."

THIS STRATEGY appeals to European - and to greater and lesser degrees American -
policymakers for two reasons. First, as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner
made clear in an interview with Ha'aretz on Friday, while the West understands
that Islamic jihadists seek the destruction of Europe and the US, they believe -
in part because their own anti-Semitism leads them to exaggerate Jewish power -
that they will get away with coddling the Arabs and Iran because Israel will
protect them.

Referring to Iran's nuclear weapons program, Kouchner said that no one is
particularly worried about Iran's nuclear threat because everyone believes that
Israel will attack Iran for them. In his words, "I honestly don't believe that
[a nuclear arsenal] will give any immunity to Iran. First, you [Israel] will hit
them before [they acquire nuclear weapons]É Because Israel has always said that
it will not wait for the bomb to be ready. I think that they [the Iranians]
know. Everybody knows."

What is ironic about this view is that it exposes the inversion of anti-Semitic
rhetoric. Five years ago, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamed told
an approving audience of Islamic heads of state, "The Jews rule the world by
proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

But the West's belief that Israel will protect it from Iran shows that the
opposite is true. The West is absolutely certain that Israel is its proxy, and
that Jews will fight and die protecting it from the forces of global terror and
jihad.

THE SECOND reason the Western champions of "peace" have opted to sell Israel and
the Jews out to the jihadists is because as anti-Semites, Western
"anti-Zionists" fear Jewish power and therefore want us to be weak. So it is
that for the past 40 years, European governments and the US State Department
have bankrolled anti-Zionist groups in Israel like Peace Now, B'tselem and Four
Mothers. So it is that they have blamed Israel for Palestinian terrorism. And
even when Israel succumbs to all their demands for territorial withdrawals, they
always manage to demand still more.

In the same interview with Ha'aretz for instance, Kouchner on the one hand
praised Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for their
willingness to surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians, but
argued that this is still not enough. Israel must also accept the free
immigration of the hostile descendants of the Arabs who left Israel in 1948.
That is, Israel must also agree to its own destruction in order to pave the way
for "peace." In his words, "The main problem is the refugees and Jerusalem, but
more the refugees. Olmert and Livni do not have the perception of this."

Kouchner for one is certain that Livni will come around to recognizing the need
to allow hostile foreign- born Arabs to move here. "I think she will change.
This is always the case for people that are in charge for politics and for
life," he claimed.

Kouchner soothed the reporters' fears of national destruction by claiming that
he's probably not talking about more than 100,000 hostile Arabs immigrants. But
that's today.

If Livni does form a government and comes around to this view, leave it to the
West to explain that placing "arbitrary" limits on Arab immigration is a human
rights abuse, and that Israel's Zionist racism is compelling the Arabs and Iran
to kill Jews and Westerners around the world.

AND THIS brings us to perhaps the greatest irony of the West's collusion with
the Arabs and Iran in their war against the Jews. The logical outcome of the
twin delusions of anti-Semitism - that Jews are all powerful and that the Jews
must be cut down to size - is the destruction of Israel. And if that happens,
the West will find itself in jaws of the Islamic jihadists they have been
feeding the Jews to for four decades.

The West's subversion of the Israeli elite has fomented a situation where many
Israeli leaders have embraced their anti-Semitic views of Israel. Leaders like
Livni and Olmert, and the media and academia in Israel, have largely accepted
the notion that Israel is to blame for the global jihad. Today these leaders
uphold Jewish weakness as an ideal. The longer these Western-supported elites
remain in power, the larger the chance that Israel won't attack Iran and that
Israel will allow itself to be destroyed in the interest of pursuing "peace"
with Palestinian terrorists.

And if Israel is destroyed, the West won't be able to depend on us Jews to fight
and die for them anymore. They will be all alone.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The Synagogue in Rome. As Cossiga explained, 'Since the Arabs
were capable of harming Italy more than the Americans, Italy surrendered to
them.' (Credit: Bloomberg)

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October 6, 2008 Monday

Sergei's Courtyard

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 706 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Ehud Olmert is off to Moscow today in what may well be his last overseas visit
as prime minister. He will arrive at the Kremlin bearing a valuable gift - or
more accurately, a concession - one the Russians have been adamantly demanding
as their due.

Olmert will turn over to the Russians nine acres, known as Sergei's Courtyard,
inside the Russian Compound in the heart of downtown Jerusalem.

The courtyard is named for and dominated by a sumptuous guest house constructed
in 1890 for aristocratic pilgrims by grand duke Sergei Alexandrovich, then
president of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IOPS). Sergei was the son
of Tsar Alexander II, brother of the infamous Tsar Alexander III and uncle of
the last tsar, Nicholas II.

The entire compound was chartered by the Russians from the Ottomans in 1858 to
be used for pilgrim welfare. Then, during World War I, the Turks confiscated the
lot.

After the war the British Mandate requisitioned the premises. They came into
Israel's possession after independence in 1948.

All the while, White and Red Russian churches vied for the deeds to the
courtyard.

In 1964, Israel purchased most of the Russian Compound from the Red Church for
$3.5 million worth of oranges. But the Orthodox Palestine Society continued to
function in Sergei's Courtyard, which was not included in the "oranges deal."
The site became, in effect, a KGB base.

After 1967 it was taken over by Israel, and since then it has housed various
government offices, as well as the Society for the Protection of Nature in
Israel.

WE CAN understand why Russian leader Vladimir Putin would like control of the
site. It would have great symbolism for Russia, as a further manifestation that
the Russian empire is resurgent.

What we do not understand is the Israeli government's willingness to accede to
Moscow's demands, especially since we have not been told what Israel is getting
in return. We do not buy into the premise that Israel should trade territory for
improved diplomatic relations.

One reported pretext for this goodwill gesture to Putin is that Olmert would
then be better positioned to entreat him not to equip Iran with
equilibrium-upsetting S- 300 ground-to-air missiles.

But Moscow, which is playing high-stakes superpower poker with Washington, would
not in any case set aside its interests for a piece of Jerusalem real estate, no
matter how prestigious. Israel's position should simply be that Teheran's regime
must not be supplied with such weaponry under any condition. Sergei's Courtyard
shouldn't figure in the equation.

Such a handover could, moreover, whet the appetites of other international
actors. To cite just three examples, the Greek Orthodox Church owns the land on
which the Knesset, Prime Minister's Residence and parts of the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem stand. Some of the leases are due to expire, while others will
remain in effect until the middle of this century.

Our position is that just as the government may reasonably exercise eminent
domain vis-a-vis local residents, it may do so with regard to relics of
yesteryear's imperialism.

Russia's claim to being Sergei's legal heir is feeble. His holdings here were
explicitly stipulated by the Turks as private, and not state-owned.

If Russia can inherit Sergei's property, couldn't Israel claim the property the
self-same Sergei forcibly took from 30,000 Muscovite Jews whom he cruelly
expelled from the city mere months after his Jerusalem guest house went up?

THERE IS no reason the Jewish state should regard Sergei's Courtyard as
sacrosanct and turn it into what could possibly amount to a de facto
extraterritorial Russian toehold in our capital.

And capitulation to Moscow in this matter, apart from being unlikely to purchase
Russian goodwill on the critical Iranian issue, could well open up a Pandora's
Box of other territorial demands.

Those who oppose the gesture are now expected to turn to the High Court of
Justice to try and stop it. They will argue, in part, that such a significant
concession should not be made by a premier who has already tendered his
resignation.

Regardless of Olmert's caretaker status, our view is that the premier has failed
to make a compelling case that handing over Sergei's Courtyard is in Israel's
interest.

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October 6, 2008 Monday

Letters

BYLINE: Edith Ognall, Cyril Atkins, Arnold Sullum, Shira Twersky-Cassel, Howard
Wolfe, David Katcoff, Yisrael Medad, Tova Landau, Barbara Brown

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1155 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

They couldn't wait...

Sir, - The fact that the police have said the 19-year- old Palestinian shepherd
found dead in the West Bank this week was killed in an accidental explosion, and
not by settlers, should have been front-page news for all to see ("Resist the
rush to judgment, Editorial, October 5). The masses just could not wait to put
the blame on the settlers.

It usually works this way: Arabs murdered, blame the settlers. Settlers
murdered? Tough, they brought it on themselves.

EDITH OGNALL

Netanya

...to judge

Sir, - It is an unfortunate and well-known fact that Arab and left-wing Israeli
NGOs are unreliable and guilty of using what Winston Churchill called a
"terminological inexactitude" - in plain English, lies. Once these lies are
pronounced it is impossible to correct them.

CYRIL ATKINS

Beit Shemesh

Sir, - A related problem: The tardiness of IDF and government spokesmen in
presenting the facts. How to remove this inertia?

ARNOLD SULLUM

Jerusalem

Reality 101

Sir, - My appreciation to Caroline B. Glick for her weekly dose of good sense.
With pristine logic she sets out in straightforward prose a basic picture of
Israeli reality. Courageously she outlines the grotesque behavior of our leaders
and the many dangers that confront us in the hope that an understanding of what
is being socked to us may wake us out of our slumber.

Her October 3 review of Ehud Olmert's offer to declare the bankruptcy of our
nation was a prime example ("Olmert's parting blows," October 3).

SHIRA TWERSKY-CASSEL

Jerusalem

Of tenuous deals

Sir, - David Horovitz's "all for one and one for all" column was very rah-rah
stuff ("National maturity," October 3). However, he imploded his own reasoning
when he stated: "Time is of the essence, especially given Palestinian leader
Mahmoud Abbas's tenuous grip in the West Bank."

What can Israel achieve by concluding a deal with an ephemeral "partner" who
carries no weight except his own? Israel has a history of tenuous deals. Deals
are worthwhile only if made with stable governments such as Jordan and Egypt,
with Israel negotiating from a position of strength.

The reality is that for any agreement to be concluded, it's not Israel that
needs national maturity but the Palestinians, who have yet to demonstrate their
ability to grasp and embrace the concept of life and peace rather than death and
war.

HOWARD WOLLE

Toronto

Smokescreen

of Durban II

Sir, - The way to neutralize the impact of Durban II is to view it as an Islamic
propaganda stunt based on Durban I's performance ("US Congress joins fight on
Durban II," Gerald Steinberg, October 5). The themes of Durban I may have
ostensibly focused on "racism," but they really followed Shari'a, or Islamic
legal, principles.

First, there was the demonization of Israel for alleged human rights abuses - in
violation of the obligation of religious minorities to accept dhimmitude, or
inferior status, under Islamic sovereignty. Then there was the denunciation of
blasphemy, under the cloak of religious tolerance. Blasphemy is a capital
offense under Shari'a, which does not tolerate religious dissent.

These are the benighted rules that have led to unrelenting warfare against
Israel and to riots and death threats against writers and cartoonists.

Once this ideological framework is understood, the conference's pretentious use
of the language of human rights will be seen as a mere smokescreen for its
reactionary agenda.

DAVID KATCOFF

Jericho, Vermont

Blind, or just respectful?

Sir, - David Kimche made a sweeping generalization in "Breaking the law"
(October 3). He wrote: "When Menachem Begin was prime minister, it was well
known among those working closely with him that one of his weaknesses was his
blind idolization of anyone in uniform."

Blind? Kimche should reconsider. Equally well known is that Begin tweaked Ezer
Weizman, sardonically putting him down as "my mischievous general."

Indeed, Begin exhibited more outward respect for the army, its ensign and its
generals than other politicians; but then again, he also wore a tie regularly,
probably more in one week than David Ben-Gurion wore in his lifetime.

"Blind" is too extreme an adjective. And Kimche would surely tremble at being
thought extreme.

YISRAEL MEDAD

Shiloh

Theater of...

Sir, - Israel once again proves its uncanny ability to shoot itself in the foot
by denying Jose Portuondo-Wilson the right to become an Israeli citizen
("Chicago Orthodox convert fights Interior Ministry in bid for recognition,"
October 5). One would imagine that in the case of Anusim who can trace their
lineage back to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, every effort would be made
to welcome them back into the fold.

Non-Jews married to Jews have been granted Israeli citizenship simply by virtue
of spousal relationship, even though many never become Jewish. If Mr.
Portuondo-Wilson were to marry a nice Jewish girl who was born into the faith
without any halachic complications, he would have few problems in making aliya -
an absurd situation.

Why can't he simply appear before a committee appointed by the Chief Rabbinate
for reconfirmation of his Jewish knowledge and commitment to Judaism? If he
passes the test, he can then be issued with documents attesting to the fact that
his conversion in his home country has been confirmed in Israel. It would save a
lot of time, money and heartache.

Though haredi communities worldwide boast large families, Jewish demography has
still not recovered from the losses sustained during the Holocaust and via
assimilation.

Under the circumstances, one would imagine that someone who sincerely wanted to
be Jewish, who had given up an easier lifestyle and devoted several years to the
study and practice of Judaism could be assured of membership in the House of
Israel.

How can our so-called great rabbis ask the Creator for compassion during this
solemn period when they show no compassion themselves?

TOVA LANDAU

Jerusalem

...the absurd

Sir, - Around five years ago, my dear mother, an elderly Orthodox Holocaust
survivor, wife of a known cantor in Montreal and mother of a community leader,
had her aliya delayed because the letter she had to bring from her rabbi,
attesting to her Jewishness, had gotten lost. (Incidentally, the Aliya
Department staff knew my family personally from shul and could have attested to
her Jewishness without any letters, making the entire situation more absurd.)

Openly non-Jewish, sometimes even anti-Semitic Russians have been granted
citizenship status with no problem - and now Chicagoan Jose Portuondo-Wilson, a
descendant of Anusim and a perfectly kosher observant and committed Jewish
convert, is being denied oleh status.

It is about time those appointed to decide who merits returning to the Jewish
homeland were relieved of this onerous decision-making. We need fair-minded and
halachically knowledgeable people in the position.

I look forward to hearing about Jose's imminent aliya - God willing, very soon.

BARBARA BROWN

Beit Shemesh

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October 6, 2008 Monday

Just be our friend

BYLINE: BARRY RUBIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 981 words

HIGHLIGHT: In its first encounter with an Islamic regime, the US government make
itself appear a pitiful, helpless giant. The Region. The writer is director of
Global Research in International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East
Review of International Affairs Journal.

In response to a casual question, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates dropped a
historical bombshell, an offhand remark telling more about how the Middle East
works than 100 books. And a former US Marine commander added an equally big
revelation about long-ago events quite relevant for today.

Almost 30 years ago, president Jimmy Carter tried to show what a nice guy he was
by pressing the shah of Iran not to crush the revolutionaries. After the monarch
fell, national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski met top officials of the new
Islamist regime to pledge US friendship to the government controlled by
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. At the time, I wrote that by approaching some of
the milder radicals, the administration frightened the more militant ones.
US-Iran relations must be smashed, they concluded, lest Washington back their
rivals. In fact, as we'll see in a moment, the Carter administration offered to
back Khomeini himself.

Three days after the Brzezinski meeting, in November 1979, the Islamist regime's
cadre seized the US embassy and its staff as hostages, holding them until
January 1981. This was our introduction to the new Middle East of radical
Islamism. Carter continued his weak stance, persuading the Teheran regime that
it could get away with anything.

So we've long known that undermining US allies, passivity toward anti-American
radicals and inaction after a massive terrorist act against Americans doesn't
work. The hostages were only released because Iran was suffering desperately
from an Iraqi invasion and feared Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, as someone
likely to be tougher.

THE LESSON of being strong in defending interests and combating enemies has not
quite been learned. Today, the mainstream prescription for success is just the
opposite, and the US may be about to elect a president whose world view
parallels the way Carter worked.

Here's where Gates comes in. On September 29, while giving a lecture at the
National Defense University in Washington, someone asked him how the next
president might improve relations with Iran. Gates responded: "I have been
involved in the search for the elusive Iranian moderate for 30 years." Then
Gates revealed what was actually said at Brzezinski's meeting, in which he has
been a participatant, summarizing Brzezinski's position as follows: "We will
accept your revolution... We will recognize your government. We will sell you
all the weapons that we had contracted to sell the shah... We can work together
in the future."

The Iranians demanded the US turn over to them the fugitive shah, whom they
would have executed. Brzezinski refused. Three days later Iran seized the
embassy and forever changed the Middle East. The road thus paved led to the
Iran-Iraq and Iraq-Kuwait wars, the power of Hamas and Hizbullah, September 11,
2001, and a great deal more. Many thousands would die due to American timidity
and Iranian aggressiveness.

Had the US been a mean bully in its treatment of the new Islamist Iran? On the
contrary, Washington did everything possible to negotiate, conciliate and build
confidence. We'll do almost anything you want, Carter and Brzezinski offered,
just be our friend. Far from being appeased Iran demanded total humiliation -
turning over the fatally ill, deposed shah for execution - which even the Carter
administration couldn't accept.

Far from persuading Khomeini that the US was a real threat, the US government
made itself appear a pitiful, helpless giant, convincing Teheran - as Khomeini
himself put it - that America couldn't do a damn thing. His revolution and
ideology were too strong for it.

SO WHY should we expect such a tactic would work today? How long does it take to
get the message: This is an ideological revolution with huge ambitions to which
America is inevitably a barrier. Appeasement, talks, apologies,
confidence-building measures won't convince Teheran that America is its friend,
only that it's an enemy so weak as to make aggression seem inevitably
successful.

The only US precondition has been that to get a high- level dialogue, Iran must
first stop its drive for nuclear weapons, at least temporarily. Gates
understands what happened: "Every administration since then has reached out to
the Iranians in one way or another and all have failed... The reality is the
Iranian leadership has been consistently unyielding over a very long period of
time in response to repeated overtures from the United States about having a
different and better kind of relationship."

This situation is quite parallel to efforts to have reasonable preconditions
with the Palestinians - stop terrorism, incitement, clearly accept a two-state
solution, or with Syria - stop sponsoring terrorism, cease trying to take over
Lebanon and accept normal relations with Israel as the outcome of peace. Similar
bargains have been offered Hamas and Hizbullah. Yet even this is too much for
the other side and too much for those who continue trying to undermine any
Western leverage on radical forces.

If the other side won't give anything, they insist, merely offer more. And if
the other side takes those concessions, pockets them, gives nothing in return
and continues its behavior, this merely proves you have to give still more.

Here's more evidence why that's wrong. Former US Marine Col. Timothy Geraghty
was Marine commander in October 1983 when suicide bombers attacked the barracks
of US peacekeeping forces in Beirut, killing 242 Americans. He now reveals that
a September 26, 1983 US intelligence intercept showed Iran's government ordering
the attack through its embassy in Lebanon. The timid response to that operation
set a pattern leading directly to the September 11 attack.

Three decades after the miserable failure of the make-
friends-with-Islamist-Iran policy - including offering Khomeini continued US
arms' supplies - isn't it time to learn this simple lesson?

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: DEFENSE SECRETARY Robert Gates revealed last Monday that the
Carter administration tried to appease the new Khomeini regime in Iran with
offers of weapons - only to have the hostages seized three days later. (Credit:
AP)

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October 5, 2008 Sunday

Resist the rush to judgment

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 712 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Last week, the media both at home and abroad swallowed - hook, line and sinker -
allegations propagated as fact by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR)
to the effect that on September 27, a young shepherd from Akrabeh, south of
Nablus, had been shot and abducted by settlers from Gitit in the Jordan Valley.

The fact that Gitit, near Mechora, is hardly an extremist hotbed didn't serve to
mitigate the instantaneous condemnation. But then both police forensic teams and
the autopsy performed on 19-year-old Yihya Atta Bani-Minya revealed that not
only were there no signs of the victim having been shot, death was in fact
caused by his having handled an unexploded 40mm-shell.

The fact that the very dubious claims made by PCHR - which is hardly known for
veracity and has glaring propagandistic ulterior motives - were so casually
taken at face value even inside Israel is grave cause for concern.

For two days, leading politicians and journalists linked the shepherd's
accidental death to the attack on Prof. Ze'ev Sternhell and even the Rabin
assassination - without waiting for the investigators' conclusions. These
unproven accusations, moreover, received considerable resonance, particularly in
the electronic media, while the forensic findings weren't accorded commensurate
attention.

ALACRITY to convict, regardless of the evidence, can never be justified. This is
true even if it's argued that the settlers' record is far from sterling and that
the PCHR version sounded believable to some. The fact that it was Gitit in the
dock should have given pause, as well as the fact that cases of Jews mowing down
Arabs without provocation are rare.

A more worrying aspect yet is that PCHR continues to feature the unamended story
on its Web page, omitting all reference to the police probe.

PCHR, its "report" says, "utterly condemns this heinous crime and reiterates
that the neglect of complaints submitted by Palestinian civilians against
Israeli settlers, plus the protection provided by the Israeli Occupation Forces
to the settlers, have encouraged the settlers to continue launching attacks
against unarmed Palestinian civilians."

But that's not all. "According to eyewitnesses," continues the still-circulated
PCHR account, "the body had been hit by about 20 bullets to the neck, chest and
legs." PCHR continues to demand that "the perpetrators be brought to justice"
and that "all Israeli settlers be disarmed."

Such rush to judgment, especially when garnished with falsehoods, isn't of
negligible significance. It can be incendiary. Disseminating untruths can be
like tossing lit matches into a tinderbox.

PERHAPS PCHR wishes to inflame passions among local Arabs and instigate
vendettas for a crime-that-wasn't. The sad fact is that PCHR boasts extensive
ties with Israeli academics and human rights organizations and has cosponsored
the campaign to try Israeli ex-generals - including Shaul Mofaz, Moshe Ya'alon
and Doron Almog - for war crimes.

More reckless yet is the role of Israelis who uncritically echo such spurious
charges. We must all be wary of repeating the Halhoul calumny of 1995 in which
then Meretz head Yossi Sarid contended from the Knesset podium that a "settler
underground" had murdered a Halhoul Arab. Eventually it emerged that bogus
"credit" for the homicide was assumed by Shin Bet agent provocateur Avishai
Raviv, and that the real killers were neighboring Arabs.

When wholesale blame is attributed to entire settlements, the majority of which
are comprised of law- abiding citizens, widespread alienation and growing
isolation results. This alienation from their fellow Israelis breeds the very
extremism which the settlers' political antagonists censure.

When whole groups are pilloried as outcasts, some among them are pushed into
dark corners where pent-up steam seeks outlets, even illicit ones. It is
therefore to the very real benefit of the undivided Israeli aggregate that
extreme self-control be exercised and the temptation to cast complete
collectives in the same offensive mold be strongly resisted.

The last thing this society needs is more polarization, more radicalization,
spurred by whichever element, and for whatever reason. What we most need are
cool heads and moderation, even at the price of passing up political gain.

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October 5, 2008 Sunday

US Congress joins fight on Durban II

BYLINE: GERALD M. STEINBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 774 words

HIGHLIGHT: The House of Representatives finds a wide consensus for calling on
the US government to prevent the human rights conference from again being turned
into a platform for anti-Israel attack. The writer is the executive director of
www.ngo-monitor.org. and chairman of the Political Science Department at
Bar-Ilan University.

The plan to hold a second Durban conference in April 2009, eight years after the
first catastrophic UN meeting, has led to slowly growing opposition. The
government of Canada led the challenge to the exploitation of human rights in
waging political war against Israel by declaring that it will not participate in
the 2009 conference. Israeli and American officials also expressed opposition to
a repetition of the anti-Semitism and incitement, but in the midst of an
election campaign, the US government did not follow Canada in declaring a
boycott.

However, Congress has spoken out strongly on the Durban Review Conference, in
the form House of Representatives Resolution 1361 adopted on September 23. This
resolution calls on the US government to "lead a high- level diplomatic effort"
aimed at "defeating the campaign by some members of the Organization of the
Islamic Conference to divert the United Nation's Durban Review Conference from a
review of problems in their own and other countries by attacking Israel,
promoting anti-Semitism and undermining the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights."

The detailed text highlights the enormous damage to human rights that resulted
from the 2001 conference, and particularly the NGO Forum, which "misused human
rights language to promote hate, anti-Semitism, incitement and divert the focus
of the conference from problems within their own countries to a focus on
Israel."

Reflecting the analysis provided by NGO Monitor, the text emphasized the damage
done by the "NGO Declaration" that contained abusive language, branding Israel
an "apartheid state" that is guilty of "racist crimes against humanity."

The importance of this resolution, which was written in the Foreign Affairs
committee, results in part from the wide consensus involving different political
constituencies. In a highly partisan political era, this initiative gained the
active support of Rep. Howard Berman, the leader of Democratic majority on the
committee, and the Republican leader, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. A total of 24
co-sponsors signed their names to the text, including leading Afro-American
political figures such as Rep. John Conyers.

This broad-based approach reflects opposition not only to the attacks against
Israel that are embodied in the Durban process, but also the disastrous impact
on genuine human rights concerns that results from these activities.

IN SOUNDING the warning, the congressional resolution also highlights the
declared intention of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to use the
conference to again attack Israel, and to focus on "global blasphemy," which
"would legitimize arbitrary restrictions of freedom of thought, conscience and
religion, and the freedoms of expression and opinion, all in the name of
protecting religions from 'defamation' and 'blasphemy.'"

On this foundation, the resolution goes on to propose a 15-point operational
plan, including calling on "the president and the secretary of state to lead a
high-level diplomatic effort to ensure that the Durban Review Conference focuses
on the implementation by states of their commitments to combat racism" and "to
defeat any effort by states to use the forum to promote anti-Semitism or hatred
against members of any group or to call into question the legitimacy of any
state."

It advocates pressure on US allies, such as Egypt (head of the African Group and
very active in promoting the demonization of Israel, in violation of the 1979
peace treaty), to "ensure that the Durban Review Conference does not become a
forum for anti-Semitism, incitement or hatred..."

While not calling explicitly for a boycott, the authors commend governments,
including Canada, "that have declared their intentions not to participate in
any... conference that... promotes hate, undermines human rights standards,"
etc. European governments are singled out for mention, reflecting the concern
that, as in 2001, when the US and Israeli delegations demonstrably walked out of
the conference, their officials will stay and ignore clear evidence that this
review conference is again heading for catastrophe. Europe, unlike Canada and
the US, appears to have learned little from the Durban experience.

Congress does not make foreign policy, but this broad- based resolution fills
the leadership vacuum on this issue during the US election campaign and lays out
clear guidelines for the next president. This is not a narrow "pro-Israel
statement," but rather reflects the consensus understanding that the Durban
process, and the strategy of abusing human rights rhetoric, is immoral and has
been responsible for the destruction of these core values.

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October 5, 2008 Sunday

Ahmadinejad isn't too impressed

BYLINE: JONATHAN S. TOBIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1174 words

HIGHLIGHT: Iran deserves a stronger response from the candidates, the country
and the Jews. The writer is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in
Philadelphia.

On the threat from Iran, we got some good news, bad news and even worse news
last week.

The good news: Both US presidential candidates think the prospect of Iran going
nuclear is a bad thing.

Republican candidate John McCain went straight to the bottom line in the first
presidential debate last week when he flatly stated, "We cannot allow a second
Holocaust." Should Iran gain nuclear capability, he declared, it would be an
"existential" threat to the existence of the State of Israel, as well as a
danger to the rest of the world.

Moments later, his Democratic rival Barack Obama echoed some of those sentiments
when he, too, asserted, "We cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran. It would be a game
changer. Not only would it threaten Israel, a country that is our stalwart ally,
but it would also create an environment in which you could set up an arms race
in the Middle East."

A bipartisan consensus that Iran is a genuine threat to world peace is
essential, and the fact that both candidates affirmed this stance, while
disagreeing about just everything else, was an important step toward building
support for action on the issue.

The bad news is that there is no such consensus as to what can be done about
Iran.

McCAIN SPOKE of tough sanctions to be enforced by his pet notion, a "league of
democracies," led by the US and its principal Western allies, which would bypass
the UN and inflict so much economic pain on Teheran that it would give up its
nuclear ambitions.

Obama dismissed McCain's "league" idea, saying that for sanctions to work, we
would need non-democratic nations, such as Russia and China, to help us. He
believes direct diplomacy with both those nations, as well as Iran, can do the
trick.

But neither option ought to inspire much hope.

McCain's "league" is a grand idea, but the notion that Britain, France and
Germany, not to mention the rest of Western Europe, will abandon the UN as the
instrument of policy on this question is unrealistic.

If push comes to shove on Iran - and it almost certainly will - what the world
will need is an America that is not willing to be fettered by our feckless
allies. Anyone waiting for Europe, even democratic Europe, to take action before
that "existential" problem is resolved hasn't been paying attention to the
continent recently.

As for Obama's blind faith in his ability to win over China and Russia, let
alone Iran, the kindest thing one can say is that he's a trifle optimistic. The
Iranians have used every meeting with the West (including one that was the
result of a recent humiliating retreat on the part of the Bush administration)
as evidence that they can't be stopped. Both Beijing and Moscow have also been
crystal clear that they will not allow the UN or the US a free hand on the issue
and haven't the slightest intention of backing the sort of crippling sanctions
that could actually bring the Iranians to their knees.

WHAT COULD be even worse than that? The fact that, while the presidential
candidates were talking tough on Iran, the object of their rhetoric spent a
triumphal week in New York City addressing the UN, CNN and even a Quaker dinner
- to applause.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used his speech before the UN General Assembly, as well as a
typically fawning interview with CNN's Larry King, to spout Holocaust denial and
other anti-Semitic lies about Zionism, Israel and the Palestinians.

Even after all this, there is still some debate about how seriously to take the
Iranian. Obama rightly pointed out in the debate that he is not actually the
most important person in Iran and that his diatribes are mere "nonsense" that
ought not to prevent us from sensible diplomatic outreach.

But while he may appear to be a clown to Americans, Ahmadinejad is serving his
role of front man for the Islamist ayatollahs quite well.

More to the point, his provocations are showing the Islamic world that America
can do nothing about him.

Iranians who chafe under the despotic rule of the Islamists could take no
comfort from the way the UN and the press failed to hold Ahmadinejad accountable
for his threats of genocide against Israel. Indeed, the night before the
presidential debate, he was feted at a Ramadan dinner sponsored by Mennonite,
Quaker and other religious groups, including the American Friends Service
Committee.

These "humanitarians," who seem to share Teheran's disdain for Israel, were
joined at their party by the president of the UN General Assembly, Miguel
D'Escoto Brockmann, a Nicaraguan diplomat and Catholic priest. Jewish groups
protested his presence, but did anyone expect that either the world body or the
Quakers would shun a Jew- hater like Ahmadinejad?

UNFORTUNATELY, THE mass demonstration planned by Jewish groups to protest
Ahmadinejad's presence in New York illustrated that, even among Jews, there is a
lack of urgency or even a real sense that a crisis is at hand.

How else to explain the backbiting over the question of who would speak at the
rally, to which both leading Democrats and Republicans were invited?

When the GOP produced vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as its
representative, Sen. Hillary Clinton, the leading Democrat slated to appear,
refused to honor her commitment. Rather than face the possibility of a replay of
a now-famous Saturday Night Live comedy sketch featuring the two women, Clinton
ditched the rally. And instead of matching Palin with her Democratic
counterpart, Sen. Joseph Biden, or trumping her with Obama, the Democrats within
the leading Jewish groups sponsoring the event forced the organizers to
"disinvite" Palin.

In the end, the rally went off with no star power and had little effect. Those
who justified shunning Palin claim that the vice presidential nominee would have
"politicized" the event, or that her appearance would have violated their
tax-exempt status (even though nonprofit groups are often addressed by
politicians in election years without causing trouble). But the truth is, her
appearance only became a partisan bone of contention because some Democrats
preferred to sabotage the rally rather than let her take part.

So, if even the Jews couldn't rise above the partisan rage of the moment to
advance the cause of isolating Teheran, how can we expect Washington or Europe
to heed our warnings?

Though many will take comfort from the candidates' pledges on Iran, vague talk
about diplomacy should reassure no one. Iran's steady progress toward its goal
of acquiring nuclear weapons continues, with no effective monitoring in place
from the UN or anyone else. And, as Ahmadinejad's week in New York proved, the
campaign to isolate the Iranians is failing miserably.

That is a reality that the next president will have to confront in the next four
years, whether he'd prefer to ignore it or not. Soon the question will no longer
be whether to meet Ahmadinejad, with or without "preconditions," but whether the
next president will have the courage to make good on his promise to prevent Iran
from possessing nukes after diplomacy has predictably failed.

Time is running out.

jtobin@jewishexponent.com

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GRAPHIC: Photo: THE PRESIDENTIAL candidates following last week's debate. While
they talked tough on Ahmadinejad, the object of their rhetoric spent a triumphal
week in New York. (Credit: Bloomberg)

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October 5, 2008 Sunday

Letters

BYLINE: Meir Abelson, Yoram Getzler, Joshua J. Adler, Lionel Mallach, Mendel
Bernstein, Olga P. Wind

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 917 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Fools, indeed

Sir, - Robert Rozett's "The lessons of Munich" (September 29) fascinated me. As
a teenager in the 1930s I watched with helpless horror as the Western powers put
their trust in Hitler. My reaction was to join the British Royal Air Force
Volunteer Reserve and take part in the war I was convinced was inevitable.

Today, I not only have the same foreboding, but in addition a feeling of utter
incredulity that the lesson of those years is being ignored. World leaders,
including our own unelected misleaders, are willing to negotiate with those who
have clearly stated their aim of world domination and whose tools - Hamas,
Hizbullah and the PLO - have proved ever since 1993 that their agreements are,
like Hitler's, not worth the paper they are written on.

As always, Shakespeare had a word for it. Puck, in A Midsummer Night's Dream,
exclaims: "Lord! What fools these mortals be."

MEIR ABELSON

Beit Shemesh

The conceptual gap is all

Sir, - In "Misreading Abbas," his September 19 interview with well-known US
Middle East diplomatic expert Dennis Ross, David Horovitz quoted Ross as using
the phrase "conceptual gap" three times to explain the differences between
Mahmoud Abbas and PM Ehud Olmert.

The first "conceptual gap" relates to the issue of territory, where the "the
difference between the sides may be only a few percent." Then there's the
differences over settlements, but it too is only a "conceptual gap." The third
area where a "conceptual gap" is all that seems to stand in the way of living
happily and peacefully ever after is the connection between settlements and
territory; how the exchange and compensation will work - but not to worry, it
too is only a "conceptual gap."

Mr. Ross: The basis of all these years of discord and violence is the
"conceptual gap."

That is all it's about.

Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian people and most of the broader Arab-Muslim world
believe that we Jews came here with no legitimate justification, our only
purpose being to take Arab land. To this day, they continue to teach that we are
thieves who stole their land.

Our concept is that we are returning to our ancestral home, the only place on
this planet to which we can have any legitimate claim, the land from which we
were exiled by a cruel and violent European power.

That is the "conceptual gap" preventing us from achieving the reconciliation
necessary for living here in peace and prosperity.

Without some kind of common understanding about our presence here, the
"conceptual gap" will continue. Even withthe perceived best of intentions, no
matter the content of any agreements signed, it will be the basis of constant
provocation and violence!

YORAM GETZLER

Moshav Aminadav

Why we can't do more

for our Arab citizens

Sir, - I was surprised at the charge by Chancellor Eisen of the Jewish
Theological Seminary that Israel isn't doing enough for its Arab citizens ("JTS
chancellor to 'Post': Zionism must find a place for Arabs," September 22).

The fact is that there are almost a dozen Arabs in the Knesset, with one even a
minister in the government. A large number of Arabs are being trained in
Hadassah and other medical institutions in Israel to become doctors, nurses,
dentists and pharmacists.

Preventing Israel from doing much more for the "stranger in our midst" is the
fact that the overwhelming majority of Israeli Arabs refuse to do even civilian
National Service (e.g., helping the aged), and that a sizable percentage of
Israeli Arab citizens supports acts of terror against Jewish Israelis, with many
terrorists themselves holding Israeli citizenship.

Chancellor Eisen should have directed his words at Israel's Arab population, and
not only its Jewish one.

JOSHUA J. ADLER

Jerusalem

The real Israel?

Sir, - It was with great sadness that one read of the rude awakening of new
immigrants after all the fanfare of their arrival ("Immigrant shipments are
'held hostage' after port sanctions," September 24). Sadly, this is the reality
for most citizens in all aspects of daily life: ripped off by all and sundry.

May things only improve for the new olim after this severe shock.

LIONEL MALLACH

Haifa

Frank's Torah

Sir, - Arnold I. Kisch, in his letter of September 23 ("Unmanly mission"),
asked: "Whatever happened to the old- fashioned idea that 'love and marriage go
together like a horse and carriage'?"

While the issue he raised is certainly worthy of consideration, I should like to
point out that the Jewish understanding of marriage comes from the Torah, and
one should not be too surprised to discover that Da'at Torah and Da'at Frank are
not always in complete agreement.

MENDEL BERNSTEIN

Ramat Beit Shemesh

Musical talk

Sir, - Re "Second-language stutter" (Health, September 28): My son wanted his
first child, a boy, to speak three languages - Hebrew with him and us, his
grandparents; Spanish with his mom, and English in kindergarten in the US.

I speak four languages, but was afraid of such early start. So I consulted a
professional psychologist, whose children happened to speak three languages.

He explained that it wouldn't cause any problems, that it would be, for the
child, akin to listening to music.

Up to age three, he said, those speaking to to him in Hebrew should stick to
Hebrew only, and the child would associate the speaker with the sound. It would
be like, say, listening to classic music. Spanish and English would be like
listening to other, different kinds of music.

Today Daniel, 14, and Talia,10, speak and write happily in three languages. No
stuttering.

OLGA P. WIND

Holon

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October 3, 2008 Friday

Sounding the alarm

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 731 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

One of the numerous falsehoods peddled by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
in the course of his address to the UN General Assembly last week was the
assertion that his country's nuclear program is "peaceful," and that the
International Atomic Energy Agency has issued "repeated confirmation of the
fact."

In fact, the IAEA has done nothing of the kind. Last month, indeed, it presented
to a closed meeting of its 35- nation board photographs and documents showing
that Iran has been trying to refit its long-range Shihab-3 missile to carry a
nuclear payload. It further reported that Iran may have benefited from "foreign
expertise, helping in experiments on a detonator applicable to an implosion-type
nuclear blast occurring at high altitude."

When Iran, predictably, protested its innocence and asked for the evidence to
support the IAEA's claims, the Agency's Nobel peace prize-winning
director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, retorted that instead of dismissing the
allegations as fabricated, Iran should provide "access to relevant documentation
and individuals."

Last week, ElBaradei warned more urgently about the need to address the Iranian
nuclear program. He spoke of a "whole list of countries that possess the
ingredients to assemble an atomic weapon in a matter of a few months, that
possess fissile material or the technical means to create it." Iran, he added
ominously, "is also on this path."

This assessment stands in sharp contrast to last year's American National
Intelligence Estimate, which sanguinely concluded that Iran had frozen its
nuclear weapons program in 2003.

THE IAEA has been trying to establish the true nature of Iran's nuclear program
for the past six years, without definitive success. Its mission, always
complicated, was made still harder when Iran limited IAEA inspectors' access to
its nuclear facilities after the matter was referred to the UN Security Council
two years ago. Iran is now threatening to limit IAEA access still further,
following the latest Security Council demand that it suspend its uranium
enrichment process.

As of last month, the IAEA was reporting that Iran now has nearly 4,000
centrifuges at work, and has produced nearly 1,000 pounds of low-enriched
uranium. (The US and Israel believe Teheran may be 12-24 months from a bomb;
David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International
Security, which tracks the Iranian program, estimates as little as six months.)

ElBaradei, heading an international agency charged with inhibiting the use of
nuclear energy for military purposes, is no alarmist. Even in assessing the
danger posed by Iran, he did not sound hostile. "We live in a world in which
atomic weapons promise power and prestige," he noted in a German newspaper
interview. Iran's desire for the bomb was a consequence of "an underlying
feeling of insecurity and the desire to be recognized as a regional power."

But he was raising the alarm, nonetheless - echoing years of anxious warnings by
Israel. The concern is that it is still falling on deaf ears.

ElBaradei's IAEA is woefully short of funds - blighted, he told his board, by a
failing infrastructure and a worrying dependence on voluntary support. Limited
by both its budget and its leverage in preventing the spread of nuclear
weaponry, it has nevertheless been deeply critical of Israel for taking matters
into its own hands in bombing Syria's nuclear facility last September - an
action ElBaradei condemned on Thursday as "a gratuitous use of force" that
complicated IAEA efforts to establish precisely what the Syrians were up to.

But the case of the Syrian nuclear program is instructive. The IAEA's bid to
thoroughly investigate Syria's activities has been complicated by Syrian foot-
dragging - limited access to key individuals, sites and documentation - and
even, as ElBaradei acknowledged last week, the recent mysterious killing of
Syria's liaison official with the IAEA. "Our interlocutor has been assassinated
in Syria," ElBaradei revealed - apparently referring to Syrian security chief
Mohammed Suleiman.

Resisted by the regimes its inspectors attempt to probe, the IAEA is fighting an
uphill battle as it bids to prevent rogue nations from achieving their nuclear
goals. What it can do is draw world attention to key threats, and demand
concerted international focus. That is precisely what it is now doing in the
case of Iran.

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The Jerusalem Post

October 3, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Marvin R. Goldfarb, Diana Schiowitz, Aharon Rosenbaum, Steve Kramer,
Elisheva Lahav, Michael Plaskow

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 883 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Famous stutterers

Sir, - Re "Second-language stutter" (Health, September 27): I want to recommend
a brochure entitled "Stuttering and the bilingual child," available on the Web
site of the nonprofit Stuttering Foundation (www.stutteringhelp.org). The site
offers downloadable brochures and streaming videos as well as the organization's
many books and DVDs.

I hope all people who stutter and their families will check out the site. It
helped me find the speech therapist who led me to fluency. My favorite part is
the fascinating list of Famous People Who Stutter.

MARVIN R. GOLDFARB

New York

Sweet sell

Sir, - The Israeli discovery of a cure for the virus associated with Colony
Collapse Disorder might have been a more fitting front page headline for your
Rosh Hashana edition than the usual mostly depressing fare.

Sometimes good news does sell papers!

In any case, I hope it's a sweet year for everyone ("Israelis discover cure for
deadly bee-colony virus," September 29).

DIANA SCHIOWITZ

Jerusalem

T.S. Eliot's

anti-Semitism

Sir, - I have no problem with Sarah Honig's prediction of Kadima's imminent
demise ("This is the way Kadima ends," UpFront, September 26). In fact, I have
yet to hear what I consider an intelligent comment by Tzipi Livni.

What upset me was Ms. Honig's use of a poem by T.S. Eliot as the framework for
her article. I have always regarded Eliot as an anti-Semite. And after reading
Anthony Julius's book on Eliot, I realized he was so violently anti-Semitic that
any quotation, in the ordinary way of things, from his writing seems
inappropriate.

AHARON ROSENBAUM

Petah Tikva

We're not so bad

Sir, - Re "Moral ambiguity versus moral clarity" (UpFront, September 26): David
J. Forman has done it again, joining the long list of pundits who erroneously
call Gaza "one of the most densely populated land masses in the world." For his
information, Gaza has 3,900 residents per sq. km. By comparison, Tel Aviv, with
5,050 residents per sq. km., ranks only 44th on the list of the world's most
densely populated places.

Gaza is crowded, yes, but it doesn't even come close to places like Cairo and
Baghdad (21 and 22 in world ranking), each with more than 9,000 residents per
sq. km.

Forman also dredged up his 1990 comparison between an Israeli soldier
accidentally shooting a youthful Palestinian demonstrator and the infamous photo
of a Viet Cong boy being executed by a South Vietnamese officer. He even finds a
comparison with Abu Graib, when Israel recently protected 100 Fatah members from
their murderous Palestinian Hamas rivals.

It's time for some soul-searching, and the realization that although Israelis
are imperfect, we're not the bad guys here. We happen to be fighting a people
intent on our destruction.

STEVE KRAMER

Alfei Menashe

Shooting ourselves

in the foot

Sir, - "Health Ministry warns of alarming decline in numbers of doctors, nurses"
(September 22), was surely extremely informative for those unaware of the dismal
future of medical care in our country.

While Judy Siegel mentioned that in 2007 medical licenses were granted to
Israeli graduates of schools in Hungary, Romania and Italy, it is worth noting
that the number of Israelis studying in those countries (especially Hungary,
where our son is a third-year medical student) is mind-boggling. In the
University of Debrecen's international medical (and dental and pharmacy)
programs, almost half of the approximately 600-700 students are Israelis.

The expense of these students' medical studies - less than it would be in the US
but more than it would cost in Israel - is prohibitive for many young Israelis
who would make fine doctors but just cannot scrape together the necessary funds.
If they could be accepted by Israeli medical schools, they would not have to go
abroad.

Something preposterous: The grant soldiers receive upon discharge (around NIS
20,000) can be used for education, to start a business, etc. - but it cannot be
used for education abroad for the first five years (after which it can be used
it for anything).

Our son, a Magen David Adom volunteer through high school, an army medic who
served in the Second Lebanon War and who volunteers in our local hospital
whenever he can, has always wanted to be a doctor. He took himself off to
Debrecen as soon as he got out of the army - but he couldn't use his discharge
money for the studies there.

Why haven't scholarships or special grants been made available for these
students, and why can't the Defense Ministry make an exception for using the
grant toward medical studies abroad?

Indeed, our medical system is in dire need of treatment - both emergency and
long-term.

ELISHEVA LAHAV

Jerusalem

No fireworks.

Good works

Sir, - Re "Night owls help recycle left-over food for needy"' (September 29): I
would like to propose that in the coming year there be no firework displays
whatsoever, the money instead being earmarked for the underprivileged. I am sure
tourists will appreciate our efforts and not miss those 10 minutes of sheer and
utter waste.

I felt the same way with the Beijing Olympics. Millions were spent while
millions in China lacked the bare necessities for everyday living.

In Netanya, for example, we try to raise thousands of shekalim so that children
who live below the poverty line can have sandwiches to eat at school.

MICHAEL PLASKOW, Netanya

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October 3, 2008 Friday

Olmert's parting blows

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1814 words

HIGHLIGHT: COLUMN ONE

Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has never been a shrinking violent. And on
Monday, he made clear that he has absolutely no intention of leaving the public
stage quietly.

In a Rosh Hashana interview with Yediot Aharonot, Olmert admitted for the first
time that he is negotiating deals with Syria and the Fatah-led faction of the
Palestinian Authority committing Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights, from
dozens of neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, as well as from all
or nearly all of Judea and Samaria.

Olmert noted that he is the first prime minister to state explicitly that he
supports Israel's geographical contraction to the 1949 armistice lines. Indeed,
none of his predecessors were ever so explicit. And his likely successor in
office - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni - loses her voice every time she is asked
whether she believes that Israel should withdraw from Jerusalem, the Golan
Heights and all of Judea and Samaria.

Olmert's willingness to spell out the expanse of the territorial handovers he
supports makes him unique among Israel's premiers. But his stated view that
Israel has no choice other than to withdraw from almost all the lands it took
control of during the Six Day War has been the common view of every Israeli
prime minister except Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu since 1993. Yitzhak Rabin,
Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon all signaled their support for this
view. Indeed, all of their central policies while in office were predicated on
it.

THE QUESTION is, why has this been the case? Why is it that for the past 15
years, at a certain point in their tenures every prime minister aside from
Netanyahu has come to the conclusion that Israel must turn over its land to
those sworn to its destruction?

Like Rabin, Peres, Barak and Sharon before him, Olmert makes no rational
argument for withdrawal. He simply asserts it. And like his predecessors, Olmert
uses three rhetorical tricks to support his assertion. First, he notes the
uniqueness of his position as prime minister. Olmert knows Israel must surrender
its land simply because he is prime minister. Sharon expressed this most clearly
when he intoned, "What you see from here, you don't see from there."

Second, Olmert and his predecessors - and his likely successor Livni - all claim
that "everybody knows" that Israel must withdraw. That is, you have to be
completely out of your mind not to agree with me because every right- minded
person agrees with me.

Olmert made this intellectually intimidating point explicitly on Monday in
reference to the Golan Heights when he said, "I want to see if there is one
person in the State of Israel who believes that it is possible to make peace
with Syria without conceding anything on the Golan Heights."

Finally, Olmert and his predecessors - and his likely successor - argue that it
is inevitable that Israel withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines. And since it is
inevitable, it might as well be done right now. As Olmert said - again of the
Golan Heights, - "I put it to you, say in the next year or two a regional war
erupts and we find ourselves in a military confrontation with Syria... I ask
myself, what happens after we beat them? First of all we will pay a price [for
victory] and it will be painful. And after we pay what we pay, what will we say
to them? 'Let's talk.' And what will the Syrians say? 'Let's talk about the
Golan.'"

The assertion that a prime minister knows more than regular people is true. But
no secret information in the world counterbalances empirical evidence that is
open for all to see. While it may or may not be true that Israel can live at
peace with the Palestinians and Syrians without returning to the 1949 armistice
lines, it is manifestly true that neither the Syrians nor the Palestinians are
interested in living at peace with Israel. So while an interesting theoretical
question, the issue of whether Israel needs to give up land for peace is
completely irrelevant today.

Both the Syrians and the Palestinians know that Olmert - like his predecessors
since Rabin - is willing to go back to the 1949 armistice lines in exchange for
peace. And operating on this knowledge, over the past 15 years, both societies
have gravitated into the Iranian axis.

Today, at the same time as Syrian President Bashar Assad holds indirect talks
about an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights, he has amassed 25,000 soldiers
on his border with northern Lebanon. He is rebuilding his nuclear program with
Iranian money and North Korean scientists. He has pledged to the Iranians that
he will continue arming Hizbullah and Hamas and that his negotiations with
Olmert will be coordinated ahead of time with Iran.

As for the Palestinians, at every stage of their relationship with Israel for
the past 15 years, every one of their leaders - from Fatah, Hamas and Islamic
Jihad alike - has been categorical in his refusal to accept Israel's right to
exist. Moreover, insofar as Fatah is concerned, the violent conflict with Israel
was supposed to have ended in 1993. In 1993, Yasser Arafat pledged that from
then on, all of the Palestinians' issues with Israel would be resolved through
negotiations and that terror would be combated, not fostered.

While calling for immediate territorial surrenders to enemies uninterested in
peace, Olmert - like his predecessors - also claims that the risk involved in
surrendering the Golan Heights, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem is minimal because
Israel is so strong. As Olmert put it, "We are stronger than they are. I tell
you, Israel is the strongest country in the Middle East. We can handle all our
enemies and we can handle all our enemies together and win."

Yet Olmert - like his predecessors - fails to acknowledge that if we give up the
lands we took control over in 1967 we will be much weaker. And our ability to
deter our enemies from joining together to attack us will be severely curtailed.
He ignores the fact that it was Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000
that inspired the Palestinians to attack us in September 2000. He ignores the
fact that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 inspired Hizbullah to attack us
in 2006. And he ignores the fact that Israel's failure to defeat Hizbullah in
2006 inspired Hamas to take control of Gaza in 2007. And in all of this, he
ignores the fact that Hamas, Hizbullah and Syria are controlled by Iran.

AS FOR Iran, when the issue of Teheran's nuclear weapons program comes up, the
leader who says we can beat all our enemies at once is suddenly singing another
tune. Israel, "the strongest country in the Middle East," is crazy if it thinks
it can defend itself against its most formidable foe.

In Olmert's view, "Part of our exaggeration of our power and our lack of any
sense of proportion is found in the statements being made here about Iran... The
assumption that if America, Russia and China and Britain and Germany don't know
how to handle the Iranians that we the Israelis do know - this is an example of
a loss of proportions."

So Olmert, like Sharon, Barak, Peres and Rabin before him, has made the
determination that the only strategy that Israel can follow is one of utter
defeatism and surrender. And he - like they before him - has made this strategic
calculation in the face of empirical evidence that shows that whatever the costs
of retaining the status quo - or of actually defeating our enemies - the cost of
surrender and defeatism is surrender and defeat. That is, the cost to the
country of following their lead to surrender is higher than the cost of not
surrendering or subcontracting our survival to outside powers.

SO IF the view that Israel's only option is surrender has no basis in empirical
evidence, what accounts for Olmert's baseless assertions?

The answer, unfortunately, is clear. Quite simply, life is easier for premiers,
and much better for former premiers on the Left than on the Right.

As Olmert considers his options going forward, he knows two things. First, he
knows that the international lecture circuit is eminently more generous to
former Israeli prime ministers who speak ill of Israel than it is for former
premiers who defend Israel. Second, he knows that if he ever hopes to return to
politics, he will only be able to return as the head of the Left. His explicit
statements on the need for Israeli capitulation will serve him well in both
ventures.

Then there is the issue of Olmert's legal woes. While Olmert's policy decisions
are the same as all of his predecessors, the circumstances in which he is
leaving office are analogous only to those that confronted Ehud Barak.

Like Olmert, Barak left office under a cloud of criminal probes. And in his
final months in office, he cast all remaining vestiges of strategic rationality
to the seven winds in his desperate negotiations with Arafat. Despite the fact
that his government had already collapsed, neither the Supreme Court nor the
Attorney-General's Office told him he lacked the legal right to concede Israel's
sovereignty over Jerusalem. And in recognition of his embrace of post-Zionism,
once Barak was out of office, all the criminal probes against him were quietly
closed.

Like Barak, Olmert probably won't be around long enough to conclude the
surrenders he strives for. But that doesn't mean that his statements are not
dangerous for the country.

Far-left politicians and their counterparts in the media claim that Olmert is
brave to speak as openly as he has. And this is true. It does take some bravery
to stick your finger in the eye of the general public - which doesn't support
your views.

Olmert's statements and actions, which contradict the pledges he made to voters
in 2006, are a slap in the face of the Israeli electorate. Unfortunately, the
public has grown all too used to such blows. Rabin, Barak and Sharon were all
elected on the basis of hawkish platforms. And they all abandoned their
platforms after they were elected. This constant deceit has made the public
cynical and engendered a sense of powerlessness among Israeli citizens. This
sense is merely exacerbated by the sight of Livni working madly to avoid
standing for election by attempting to form a new government. This is all the
more true given that she rests her claim to governing legitimacy on her narrow
victory in a tiny primary race riven by allegations of corruption.

So by ignoring the basic reality of Israel's strategic challenges and speaking
of irrelevant concessions to imaginary peace partners while demonstrating his
abject contempt for the public, Olmert is causing us great harm. He is
reinforcing our belief that we have no option other than deceitful leaders who
ignore our rights and reality. And this is a dangerous delusion. Because the
truth is that not all of Israel's leaders are defeatists. There are still
leaders who put the country first. They are simply not friends of Olmert's.

caroline@carolineglick.com

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October 3, 2008 Friday

National maturity

BYLINE: DAVID HOROVITZ

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1258 words

HIGHLIGHT: EDITOR'S NOTES. We prevailed in our past wars here because our
enemies were divided while we were united in the battle for our very existence.
The danger now is of roles reversed

At 60 years old, the State of Israel should be exhibiting signs of maturity. But
in this season of soul- searching and internal reckoning, we are acting like a
rabble of spoiled children, picking fights with one another rather than taking
shared responsibility.

This is a vicious, ruthless region, and has been throughout the six decades of
our modern statehood. We have managed, near miraculously on occasion, to
frustrate various enemy efforts to achieve our destruction. But seldom have
those who seek to wipe us out been as confident as they are today that our
elimination is close at hand.

The further Iran progresses along the road to a nuclear capability, the more
emboldened its leaders become to incite and encourage our demise. Leaving
rhetoric aside, those leaders are also acting, cunningly and concertedly, to
empower the Islamists of Hamas on our southern border and their proxy army,
Hizbullah, in Lebanon to the north.

And while the army, under the refreshingly understated leadership of Chief of
General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, does seem to have internalized the
failures of the war against Hizbullah two years ago, our political system is as
unworkable as ever, our political leaders are as disingenuous as the worst of
their predecessors and possibly as incompetent, and the public is trending
toward indifference, despair or bitter toxicity.

The recent potentially murderous attack on left-wing political science professor
Ze'ev Sternhell in Jerusalem, coming hard on the heels of settler extremist
attacks on Palestinians, prompted outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to warn
that "an evil wind of extremism, of hatred, of malice, of violence, of
lawlessness is blowing through certain sections of the Israeli public and
threatens Israeli democracy."

Right-wing political opponents of Olmert and his Kadima Party, in response,
deride the very notion of an allegedly corrupt prime minister giving anybody
lessons in democracy, and point to the dubious process by which Kadima crowned
Tzipi Livni his designated successor as anything but democratic.

Left-wing critics, for their part, assert that Olmert has himself helped
legitimate lawlessness in the territories, by failing to act decisively to
dismantle dozens of outposts peppered across the West Bank that have been
established illegally and that he has repeatedly vowed to remove.

We have not yet returned to the kind of hysterical political climate that
produced a prime ministerial assassin just 13 years ago, but the danger is
emphatically still there. And it is both unconscionable and terribly
self-defeating that we have not found the wisdom to ensure, in the course of
those 13 years, that a similar decline will be avoided.

For a start, 60-year-old Israel is crying out for an electoral system that
provides genuine accountability. As with so many things Israeli, the answers
exist, alternative systems have been drawn up and calibrated, but what is
lacking is the will for their implementation.

More substantively, 60-year-old Israel should long since have reached a
consensus on a 40-year-old dilemma: What to do with the territory captured in
the 1967 war - and foremost Judea and Samaria, the liberated biblical heartland
that is also home to so many Palestinians.

Perhaps, had millions more Diaspora Jews chosen to make their lives in the
Zionist homeland, this dilemma would not have become as acute. But they did not.
And without more Jews here, we barely hold a majority between the Jordan River
and the Mediterranean Sea. While we claim a divine or historical right to all of
Judea and Samaria, exercising that right in full threatens to spell the end of
Israel as an overwhelmingly Jewish state. Relinquishing all of that territory,
however, and returning to the narrow contours of pre-1967 Israel, is an all-too
proven recipe for disastrous vulnerability.

Ancient precedent shows that we can flourish as the sovereign authority in our
homeland only when we act as one in our own best interests, and that internal
divides and poisonous rivalries lead inevitably to our downfall.

Can there be any doubt that the sovereign Jewish state of 5769 would be stronger
if we could achieve a consensus over the dimensions of the country we need to
retain? Can there be any doubt that senseless hatreds and vituperative
delegitimizations across the political spectrum are hindering that vital process
of consensus building?

Tellingly, Iran's autocratic leaders have a clear-cut, unified agenda. They
intend to attain a nuclear weapons capability, and then to dominate this region
through its intimidatory use. Our leadership, democratically elected and free to
vigorously debate the national good, is unfortunately too often skewed by narrow
feuds, personal agendas and expedient duplicities.

THE CHALLENGE, most especially at this time of year, therefore, is both for the
Israeli leadership and the public.

Tzipi Livni is currently trying to build a new coalition government. Let her
tell us, please, which Israel it will strive to represent - as regards social
policy, economic direction, religious orientation, negotiations with Syria and,
most critically, the talks she has been heading with the Palestinians. Is it an
Israel retaining all of the territories, none of them, three major settlement
blocs, four, the Jordan Valley?

The argument that Israel should not publicly disclose its negotiating cards has
long since become absurd. The Palestinians are inflexibly demanding 100 percent
of the disputed territory. Only the Israeli government is vague and uncertain as
to its own red lines.

Let Livni's opponents, from left and right, stake out their own contrary
positions. And let the public, in a mature and non-vitriolic debate, resolve
this rending dilemma once and for all.

Time is of the essence, especially given Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas's
tenuous grip in the West Bank. So Livni will doubtless want to keep the
negotiations going with Abbas in the hope of achieving a substantive
breakthrough. But she must make clear that, in the highly unlikely event that
such a breakthrough comes, it will require specific ratification by the public,
in the shape of a referendum or general elections.

Our abiding uncertainty over the dimensions of our own country prevents us from
efficiently allocating our limited resources. It also prevents us explaining our
vital needs to our friends around the world, and mounting a more effective
defense against those who seek to harm us. Instead, we have different lobby
groups pushing for different, sometimes conflicting Israels. We can no longer
indulge the false luxury of such confusion.

This is an extraordinary country. We have drawn every ounce of possibility from
our narrow strip of ancient land. We have revived a language and served as a
place of refuge for millions of our people. We have flourished intellectually
and economically.

But we have yet to reach true national maturity. Such a state requires
confronting the most acute of our dilemmas. The longer we leave it unresolved,
the more threatening our internal climate becomes.

We prevailed in our past wars here because our enemies were divided while we
were united in the battle for our very existence. The danger now is of roles
reversed - of a unified enemy bent on our destruction and a divided Israel at
war with itself. Our rifts leave us vulnerable to our ruthless enemies, who are
smacking their lips as they contemplate our elimination.

Maturity requires making hard choices, and taking collective responsibility for
them.

It's time for Israel to grow up.

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October 3, 2008 Friday

Breaking the law

BYLINE: DAVID KIMCHE

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1174 words

HIGHLIGHT: When settlers transgress, the security forces usually look the other
way

In the days when Menachem Begin was prime minister, it was well known among
those working closely with him that one of his weaknesses was his blind
idolization of anyone in uniform. He loved his meetings as defense minister with
the top echelons of the IDF. His special love, however, was reserved for the
handful of senior officers who had served with him in the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the
clandestine organization that Begin led before the establishment of the state.

One of them was Paul Kedar, a colonel in the air force. Begin described him as
"one of our 'fighting family,' for whom the teaching of Jabotinsky had always
been close to his heart." Kedar believed wholeheartedly in the need for a strong
and secure Israel, and spent his working years in the service of his country.

Today, at the ripe age of 83, he is still active, though in a different
capacity. Together with his wife, Ruth, he stands at the head of Yesh Din, an
organization active in Judea and Samaria, dedicated to the maintenance of law.

Yesh Din challenges the transgressions of the law committed daily by settlers,
and often by the security forces, which should be defending the law but
sometimes act in defense of those settlers who thumb their noses at the law.

To those who accuse him of having betrayed his past ideals, Kedar replies
indignantly: "I am as much a patriot and a Zionist as I was then. I still
believe in the need for a strong and secure Israel, but what we are doing in
Judea and Samaria is weakening Israel, not strengthening it. What, you accuse me
of being a leftist? Is the belief in the law limited to leftists? Does the Right
believe that breaking the law doesn't count as long as it is done against
Palestinians?"

For Kedar, the maintenance of law is paramount. If the law is not applied
equally to all, the country's inner strength is undermined.

Kedar's wife, Ruth, regularly visits the territories to see first hand the
transgressions of the law committed by settlers - cutting down olive trees,
killing donkeys and cattle, terrorizing villagers, smashing property, stealing
private land... The list is long.

It should be stressed that most of the settlers are law abiding. Yet lately
settler violence has increased at an alarming rate, committed mainly, but not
only, by youth manning the illegal outposts and by the settlements known for the
extremist attitude of their inhabitants, such as Yitzhar, Kfar Tapuah and the
settlers of Hebron.

Last Friday, Yediot Aharanot printed a graphic, surrealistic account of a unit
of reservists who had been sent to protect an outpost called Yad Yair in the
vicinity of Ramallah and who were viciously attacked by the youth in that
outpost and by others from settlements and outposts in the vicinity that they
were sent to guard. "I still see the hatred in their eyes, their faces contorted
by fury and hostility," the company commander recounted.

The reservists, veterans from the Golani and Givati infantry brigades, had left
their jobs and their families to act as a shield against attacks on the
settlements. Yet they were set upon after six soldiers escorted an official of
the civil administration who wished to visit Yad Yair. The youths came from all
sides, many of them with kerchiefs hiding their faces. "Let the dog loose," one
of them shouted, and a minute later the company commander was bitten in his leg.
More and more settlers streamed up the hill.

"If we had been attacked by Palestinians we would have known what to do. But
this was different," one of the soldiers said afterward. "They cursed us, called
us Nazis, punctured all our tires..."

As more soldiers came to the scene the settlers pelted them with stones and then
attacked them. Among those hurt was the deputy commander of the battalion, whose
hand was broken.

If the law had been respected and maintained in the territories there should
have been immediate action taken against the settlers of Yad Yair and the
neighboring settlements of Dolev, Horesh Yaron and others who took part in the
fracas. Not surprisingly, nothing of the sort happened, just as nothing is done
against settlers who regularly enter Palestinian villages, smash property and
beat up villagers. The law is, rightly, vigorously upheld when Palestinians
transgress, but when the settlers break the law the police and the defense
forces usually look the other way.

FROM THE prime minister down - all prime ministers: Labor, Likud and Kadima -
there has been a silent, unwritten understanding, which says, "Don't mess with
the settlers." The law, according to this understanding, does not always apply
to them.

Not a single member of the first Jewish underground, who attacked and killed
innocent Palestinians, is still behind bars. They were pardoned by president
Chaim Herzog. "There is no such thing as an innocent Palestinian," their
defenders had said, and the fact is that they got away with murder after having
spent time in prison but then having their sentences canceled. They were caught
as they were about to place bombs in Arab buses that would have killed dozens of
Palestinians.

"For me, a Jewish terrorist is as bad as an Arab terrorist, only more
dangerous," said the head of the Shin Bet at the time, when a number of
ministers, mainly from the religious parties, appealed to him not to have them
convicted. "They are fine people, the salt of the earth," the ministers told
him.

The violence of the more extreme among the settlers and their disregard for the
law that characterizes the situation in the West Bank have, apparently, spawned
a second Jewish underground movement that this time is targeting Jews. The
attempt last week on the life of Prof. Ze'ev Sternhell, coupled with the
leaflets distributed in Jerusalem offering a NIS 1 million reward to anyone who
kills a member of Peace Now, provide a chilling warning of the danger
confronting Israel when a segment of society considers itself above the law.
That is how fascism is born; that is how the democratic nature of our society is
endangered.

This brings us back to the Kedars and to Yesh Din. They are reviled by such
groups as NGO Monitor that believe that any person or group that criticizes any
deed by Israelis in the territories is automatically acting against the
interests of Israel.

They could not be more wrong. There are many organizations, NGOs, that
automatically criticize Israel for anything and everything that Israel does -
because they hate us, and because they would love to see Israel disappear off
the face of the earth; NGO Monitor is doing an excellent job in unmasking their
true intentions.

This is not the case with a number of organizations that criticize the goings-on
in the territories for good reason, and it is certainly not true of Yesh Din.
The group should be commended for its role in defending the rule of law and for
standing up for the Palestinian victims of settler violence. There is a straight
line going from that violence to the bomb that was meant to kill Prof.
Sternhell. That deed should act as a wake-up call for all of us before it is too
late.

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October 3, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: J. Halperin

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 105 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

TWO COURAGEOUS WOMEN

For some time now I have wanted to to write to In Jerusalem to tell the story of
my friend Micky and her sister, who in my eyes are two very courageous women.

They decided together, after some deliberation, to undergo a preventive
(prophylactic) mastectomy or a surgical removal of both breasts. It is done to
prevent or reduce the risk of breast cancer in women who are at high risk of
developing the disease.

I think that they are examples of women who value life more than anything else,
and went to the extremes to make sure that they had done their utmost to prevent
breast cancer.

J. Halperin, Mevaseret Zion

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October 3, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Isaac Holder, I. Kemp, Thelma Jacobson, Mordechai Kramer

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 581 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Patriotism, here and there

Sir, - It is a little hard to understand Jonathan Rosenblum's preoccupation with
Barack Obama's patriotism, or lack thereof ("Identity deficit," September 19).
"Attitudes toward military service," he writes, "are a rough litmus test of
pride in the United States and belief in its exceptionalism. For much of the
Democratic base, military service, like pregnancy, is something that happens to
you if you are too dumb to know better. The ban of voluntary ROTC (Reserve
Officers Training Corps) on most Ivy League campuses and San Francisco high
schools is one expression of that disdain."

If you make some slight substitutions like "Israel" for "the United States,"
"haredim" for "the Democratic base" and "elite yeshivot" for Ivy League
campuses, you will understand Mr. Rosenblum's crowd thinking. Every fortnight in
these same pages we learn about haredi children being taught that serving in the
Israeli army is a waste of their talents, better spent in studying Gemara and
living off our taxes.

Is patriotism a virtue only in defense of the good old US of A?

ISAAC HOLDER

Ra'anana

Not much self-censorship

Sir, - It is no surprise that the BBC has decided not to show the unabridged
version of The London Bombers. The network comes over as pro-Muslim, pro-Left
and sympathetic to Islamist terrorism in its reporting, especially where Israel
is concerned.

This view is supported by Trevor Asserson, a leading British litigation lawyer,
who has produced evidence of a systematic bias by the BBC, especially where
Islam is concerned, and a distortion and omission of facts relating to Israel
and the Palestinian conflict. Among Mr. Asserson's findings: The BBC is
"increasingly developing from an organization that reports news into an
organization that manufactures it" ("Self-censorship and the BBC," Nick Cohen,
September 5).

I. KEMP

Nahariya

Man-eating tigers

Sir, - "Creature discomforts" (Books, August 29) was offensive. Dimi Reider,
talking about a zoo in Kalkilya, wrote "caged by the caged who are caged by the
once caged and are now masters." Obviously, the author didn't live here through
the last intifada, when we had ferocious beasts prowling our streets. They would
enter a restaurant and, like man-eating tigers, turn it into a charnel house.
After inspecting and stalking their prey, they would get on a bus and blow its
innocent passengers to smithereens.

Until the Palestinians can show us they are willing to rejoin the family of man
and forsake the ways of terror, they most definitely need to be walled off. And
since it is impossible to differentiate between the man-eating "tigers" and the
regular kind, they all, unfortunately, must be inconvenienced. But it's an
inconvenience they have brought on themselves.

THELMA JACOBSON

Petah Tikva

Shamir: 'A crazy idea'

Sir, - In the review of Yitzhak Shamir: As Solid as a Rock, Shimshon Arad wrote:
"[Shamir] felt that he and his small group of followers had the divine right in
1940 to try to establish contact with Fascist Italy and even with Nazi Germany,
believing that these contacts would be helpful in attaining Jewish independence"
("Unknown virtues," Books, September 19).

I was present at a meeting of high school students with Yitzhak Shamir, and I
questioned him concerning his role in this episode. He told me and the whole
auditorium that he was totally against any such contacts. He thought the whole
idea was crazy, and said he told his fellow Lehi members as much.

MORDECHAI KRAMER

Kochav Ya'acov

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October 3, 2008 Friday

'Unetaneh Tokef'

BYLINE: SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1008 words

HIGHLIGHT: In the Diaspora

For two days earlier this week, as many of us stood in synagogue, we recited one
of the most famous and challenging passages in the Rosh Hashana liturgy, the
acrostic poem of "Unetaneh Tokef." At the very outset, the text reminds us we
are in the "awesome and terrible" time of judgment. For those who fall short,
the verses declaim a variety of hideous deaths: by beast, plague, stoning,
famine, earthquake, sword.

In its refrain, however, "Unetaneh Tokef" offers the formula for survival.
U'teshuva, u'tefilla, u'tzedaka ma'avirin et ro'a hagezera, go the words.
Repentance, prayer and righteousness can avert the evil decree.

As American Jews, we're not particularly vulnerable these days to famine or
beasts, and stoning was something we gladly partook of in college. We need
deliverance more from hypocrisy, a hypocrisy bred by comfort. Hearing the Rosh
Hashana service, it was hard to conceive of a more appropriate focus of New Year
soul-searching than Agriprocessors.

By now, the scandal of Agriprocessors has been chronicled from Stephen Bloom's
book Postville to Nathaniel Popper's investigative reports in the Forward to
Julia Preston's coverage in The New York Times to the muckraking blogger
FailedMessiah.com. No sensate American Jew has any reason to be unfamiliar with
the rudiments of the case: The largest kosher meat plant in the nation has been
charged with violating federal or state laws on pollution, workplace safety,
child labor and the employment of illegal immigrants.

Early on in the series of exposures, Morris Allen, a Conservative rabbi in St.
Paul, Minnesota, began campaigning for a new designation of kashrut called
hechsher tzedek that reflected how a food producer treated its human employees
as much as its animal raw material. With the explosion of news about
Agriprocessors since last spring, when federal authorities swooped down on the
Iowa plant to arrest several hundred Hispanic immigrants, the hechsher tzedek
proposal has gathered momentum from its base in the Conservative movement to
Reform and even certain Modern Orthodox quarters. Just in the last few weeks,
the Orthodox Union threatened to withdraw its valuable hechsher from
Agriprocesssors' meat unless the company replaces its CEO. The Rabbinical
Council of America, the major association of Orthodox rabbis, announced it would
form a task force to determine ethical guidelines and practices in producing
kosher food.

SO, WHILE I hardly was in the position to take a field survey, I would guess
that hechsher tzedek and Agriprocessors figured prominently in a great many Rosh
Hashana sermons. Which is all to the good. And at the same time, I've become
aware of a dismissive counterargument that portrays hechsher tzedek as an easy
issue, a lofty stance that costs nothing to the person holding it. That premise
I deeply dispute.

At a minimum, an American Jew who refuses to buy Agriprocessors' meat is willing
to be inconvenienced because its distribution network is unmatched in the
industry. If there is indeed a kosher-meat shortage in parts of the country, as
has been reported, then prices will almost certainly rise.

Paying that kind of literal price is the least important cost of conscience. Far
more importantly, the Agriprocessors situation requires us to look into
ourselves, our values. America as a whole has been unwilling to acknowledge the
elephant in the room - the illegal immigrants, given no plausible way to become
legal, who babysit our kids, mow our lawns, bus our tables, build our homes. No,
the discussion on the subject consists of one side: the fantasy of walling off
Mexico and shipping all the illegals to the far side.

Agriprocessors offers our own specifically Jewish version of this American
embarrassment. The biggest producer of the meat we consider to be holy was doing
so by taking advantage of the desperate and the weak.

IT ISN'T Agriprocessors' fault that Congress has repeatedly caved in to the
nativist lobby and failed to enact a rational reform of immigration law. But it
is Agriprocessors' fault, enabled by our complicity at the cash registers, that
the powerlessness of its workforce, the inability of the exploited to protest
against their own exploitation lest they be uncovered and deported, made
possible all the other forms of workplace abuse. To endorse and live by and buy
by hechsher tzedek would require you (or me) to look unflinchingly at the casual
hypocrisy that lets you separate what you consume from how it got to your plate.

What kind of religion cares more about how a cow's neck is slit than about child
labor? Imagine if, after the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, the prevailing
Jewish concern hadn't been about the young seamstresses locked into a burning
factory but whether the clothes they made had mixed wool and linen.

One of the lasting shames of the Triangle fire is that it was the company's
Jewish owners who exploited its Jewish workers. In the case of Agriprocessors,
the Jewish owners, the Rubashkin family, have had plenty of defenders among the
Orthodox. One delegation of rabbis, having taken a plant tour paid for by the
company, pronounced the facility state-of-the-art - as if the issue here were
the age of the equipment, not the conditions of the workers. Lenin had a phrase
for that Orthodox delegation: "useful idiots."

It will be far from an easy issue to have an intra-Jew battle over hechsher
tzedek. A lot of liberal American Jews, who never before showed much concern
about kashrut, will have to make a persuasive case. Surely, the Rubashkins and
their apologists are counting on their Jewish critics to lose energy, drift
away, alight on some other cause du jour. Even if Agriprocessors changes its
CEO, as the Orthodox Union has insisted, the shift could prove purely cosmetic
unless sustained pressure on the company to rectify its day-in, day-out
practices continues.

When it comes to Agriprocessors and hechsher tzedek, tefilla is the easy part,
the lip service. Tzedaka and teshuva, righteousness and repentance - those
demand action.

www.samuelfreedman.com

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October 3, 2008 Friday

Then what's the alternative?

BYLINE: SARAH HONIG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1235 words

HIGHLIGHT: Another Tack

The days preceding Yom Kippur are devoted to soul- searching and apologies. I
have loads to atone for, like irresistible meanness to the two Ehuds, Tzipi and
their assorted expedient sidekicks and agenda-pushing boosters. But, as incoming
mail indicates, I've also offended (albeit unintentionally and without malice)
some readers. So I'll hereby seek to explain, by way of making amends.

Lately there's a marked resurgence of complaints about my failure to supply
concrete proposals for how I would run the country. I plead guilty, but it's no
sin of inadvertent omission or careless neglect. It's not up to me to compose
detailed substitute policies for the incontrovertible mess our inept/delinquent
leaders have made of things. I wasn't elected to office, possess no clout or
access to resources and executive authority. Hence, it's unfair, misleading and
intellectually insincere to taunt me to deliver what I patently cannot - and
shouldn't be asked to.

To draft decision-making guidelines nobody would ever implement is as much a
waste of time as constructing castles in the air. Such pointless pursuits negate
or enfeeble efforts to rouse some public opinion against catastrophic schemes,
utter bamboozlement and/or corruption. Warnings delivered in time can save
lives.

That's my reply particularly to those who took me to task after I dared assert
(on September 12) that Oslo was a fiasco on so grand a scale that it met all of
Barbara Tuchman's criteria for woodenheaded statecraft and merited inclusion
(were she only alive then) in her March of Folly. In response, one reader
wondered whether I prefer to avoid publicizing my recommendations and another
took things a step further and asked: "What have Honig and the settlement
fanatics ever offered instead of Oslo?"

These questions aren't new, as isn't the "fanatic" epithet. I've encountered
these galling diversionary gibes with cyclical regularity. But besides being
specious, such provocations are also exceedingly common in Israeli discourse.
They're often reverted to by the intellectually indolent, but just as frequently
are willfully used to derail relevant discussion. Because the "alternative-
baiting" tactic is so widespread, it's exasperatingly effective and dangerous.

OCCASIONALLY I attempt to highlight the absurdity and shallow harassment
inherent in aggressively demanding to know "what's your solution?" The query
suggests to unsuspecting minds that no other available courses of action exist
apart from the government's gross mismanagement of our most crucial affairs. Yet
there's no obligation to behave like imbeciles. Sometimes it's enough just not
to be rash and stupid.

A decade ago I illustrated the point with the story of an impoverished peddler
from a distant Southeast Asian archipelago. The restless fellow pondered his
inauspicious condition, pined for better things and hatched plans to improve his
lot. He was intent on taking his wares to a far-off island where they'd be rare
and fetch lucrative prices. He was elated by the adventure, the opportunities
beyond the horizon and, most of all, by the prospect of breaking loose from a
dead-end existence.

He had the minutest details worked out - all except one - the boat that would
ferry him and his merchandise across the water.

The authentically self-delusional among our homegrown purveyors of bliss and
peace - those who aren't outright shysters - might recognize him as a fellow
dreamer. They too have everything worked out except the most key element - a
genuine, able, willing and honorable peace partner.

Our resourceful young entrepreneur eventually concocted a creative contrivance -
about as practical as Oslo. He set sail in a discarded old tub. It soon emerged,
though, that his makeshift vessel wasn't seaworthy. The visionary seeker of
fortune would have drowned were he not rescued by passing fishermen. They were
bewildered by his senseless risk. Amazed by their lack of insight, their utter
failure to think out of the box, he exclaimed: "How else could I go after my
dreams?"

Translated into Israeli political parlance, his incredulous retort would be:
"Then what's the alternative?" Subtext: If there's nothing but a death trap
contraption to sail in, you embark on the fateful journey in the death trap
contraption for lack of any floatable alternative.

Here's the essence of Osloite logic. Perhaps the underhanded negotiators, who
illicitly contracted their deal behind the nation's back, might have been
excused in 1993 for letting unjustifiable optimism and wishful thinking becloud
their judgment. But, 15 years later, with the benefit of hindsight wisdom -
after having witnessed how disastrous Oslo proved to be in every possible sphere
- there's no condoning continuing self-deception. At this point, obstinate
cognitive dissonance can willy-nilly lead to self-destruction.

There'll be no friendly fishermen to pluck Israelis from the Mediterranean were
the self-inflicted weakening of Israel to reinvigorate genocidal temptations and
reinforce Arab proclivity to "throw all the Jews into the sea." Even under very
different circumstances, a great deal of circumspection is warranted before any
vital strategic assets are surrendered in a land as tiny and as vulnerable as
ours.

Considering their past treachery, all Arab interlocutors - even if they regale
us with honeyed blandishments - should be treated with more than a little
suspicion. But we have no sweet flattery to worry about. Our neighbors openly
rehash their hate, refuse to recognize Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state and
won't renounce their "right" to inundate it with untold millions of hostile
so-called refugees.

THAT SAID, I do favor an alternative. It's encapsulated in Ze'ev Jabotinsky's
Iron Wall. "The peace- mongers among us," he wrote in 1923, before we became
ogre occupiers, indeed before we won independence, "have induced us to believe
that all our troubles are due to misunderstanding... If we only clarify to the
Arabs how moderate our intentions really are, they will immediately extend to us
their hand in friendship."

Way back then he judged that "this belief is utterly unfounded," because "there
is no likelihood of a voluntary agreement with the Arabs. Those who regard a
peace accord as a sine qua non for Zionism may as well say 'non' and withdraw
from Zionism... There will never be a voluntary peace as long as there remains
in Arab hearts a spark of hope to be rid of us. They will refuse to relinquish
this hope... because they are not a rabble but a living people. This people will
yield only when there is no longer any hope of doing away with us, when our Wall
of Iron cannot be breached."

Israel's most imperative alternative is to become stronger, not weaker. By
poking holes in our proverbial Iron Wall we invite enmity, not further the
prospects of coexistence. Our conscious choice must be not to take existential
risks. Suicide is not a national option and avoiding it is alternative enough.

There might be something to not taking to the high seas in a leaky tub, even if
we terribly hanker for the crossing, even if alluring promises beckon. There's a
lot to be said for just staying alive. Where healthy self- preservation
instincts prevail, survival takes precedence over pipe-dreams - be they for
regional peace or personal prosperity. Staying on dry land is the only option in
the absence of a boat. There simply is no other alternative.

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October 3, 2008 Friday

Of man and beast

BYLINE: JONATHAN ROSENBLUM

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1130 words

HIGHLIGHT: Think Again

Talk of reclaiming the Jewish bookshelf - the canonical texts that are the
heritage of every Jew - is in the air. I cannot imagine a better guide on that
path than Rabbi David Fohrman.

Rabbi Fohrman has been teaching mixed groups of secular and religious Jews for
years. And he has now produced a rare work that will equally delight those who
have been studying Torah with the classical commentaries all their lives and
those lacking even knowledge of Hebrew.

The Beast that Crouches at the Door is a close reading of two of the best known
biblical stories: Adam's and Eve's eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and
Evil, and Cain's murder of his brother Abel. The book is philosophically deep,
psychologically acute, hypersensitive to the nuances of the biblical text and
reads like a mystery. Each short chapter ends with the reader hanging on the
edge of the cliff eager to proceed.

By focusing on stories whose basic outlines are familiar, Fohrman demonstrates
how we are all prone - learned and unlearned alike - to the "lullaby effect"
when confronting well-known texts. No one ever thought to ask why a baby would
be comforted by a song about a cradle crashing down from a tree top. And
similarly, we fail to note obvious questions in the biblical texts.

Fohrman forces us to pay attention. We would be appalled by a mother who
responded to two children eagerly offering her their drawings: "Rachel, yours is
beautiful; your use of colors is exquisite. Ya'acov, your stick figures are
beneath contempt." And we would be even more horrified if she failed to
apologize or offer any consolation to Ya'acov after he burst into tears of
humiliation.

But isn't that just what God did with the offerings of Cain and Abel? Well,
actually it's not. But Fohrman is not afraid to ask the question.

NOR DOES he shy away from the big philosophical issues. Why would a perfect God
need to create the world? If Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil, why
were they punished for eating from the fruit of the tree? And if they did have
such knowledge, what changed as a consequence of their eating?

He does not even fear arousing feminist wrath, noting the parallel between God's
curse of Eve - "your desire will be to your husband, yet he can rule over you" -
and His words to Cain just before he murders Abel - "its [the yetzer hara's]
desire is unto you, yet you can rule over it." Does the Torah mean to analogize
woman to the evil inclination? Again, no. Fohrman cites a midrash that links the
two desires mentioned above to the desire of rain for the land and God for
humanity. Clearly, the midrash did not mean to analogize God to the yetzer hara.
Rather it hints at a type of desire that emanates not from the absence of
something but from an overflow that seeks to join and give to another.

In that reading, the yetzer hara is not a devil in a bright red suit whispering
in our ear but the sum total of our desires, passions, and ambitions -
particularly the desire to create. (Yetzer is a variant of yotzer, to create.)
Thus our Sages describe Torah as the spice giving direction and taste to the
yetzer hara, which is the "meat" of life.

The Beast that Crouches at the Door is an extended meditation on what it means
to be human and the nature of desire. The primordial snake, in the biblical
account, stands upright, reasons and speaks. In what sense, then, was he not
human? The key lies in his question to Eve, usually translated, "Did God really
say that you may not eat from any of the trees of the garden?" Fohrman,
following Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, however, offers a more literal
translation: "Even if God said do not eat from any of the trees of the garden...
[so what]?"

The snake argued that the same God who commanded Adam and Eve not to eat also
imbued them with their desires and instincts, and that the latter are a no less
authentic voice of God. And so it is for animals - they really do "listen" to
God by following their instincts. Only humans hear God's word and are commanded
to take their desires and fashion them into something more than unbridled
instinct.

The snake's argument will be familiar to anyone acquainted with the works of
Princeton ethicist Peter Singer. The view of man as nothing but a more
sophisticated, pleasure-seeking animal has entered the zeitgeist.

THE KEY clue buttressing Fohrman's interpretation of the snake's argument is an
anomaly in the biblical text. The snake's dialogue with Eve follows a seeming
digression describing Adam's naming of all the animals and attempts to find a
partner among them. Chronologically that section should have preceded the
creation of Eve.

It is interjected out of order, Fohrman argues, to provide the motivation for
the snake's efforts to convince Eve to eat of the Tree. The snake wanted to
reclaim Eve for the animal kingdom that Adam had rejected. In the words of our
Sages, he wanted to kill Adam and marry Eve.

In a subtle analysis of Eve's misstatement of the divine commandment with
respect to eating from the tree, Fohrman explicates the various ways desire
gains the upper hand: by overstating the importance of the object of desire -
Eve moves the tree to the "center" of the garden; by minimizing the significance
of what is permitted - Eve omits God's permission to eat of "all" the other
trees; by overstating the extent of what is prohibited - Eve adds a prohibition
on "touching" the tree; and by trivializing the consequences of giving in to
desire - Eve does not mention that death will become an immediate and inevitable
reality on the very day of eating.

Adam's and Eve's eating of the forbidden fruit, and the diminution in the
distinction between human and animal that follows, led directly to Cain's murder
of Abel. The biblical text emphasizes the thematic connection. The consequences
of Cain's act parallel the punishment of Adam, only in an intensified form. Adam
hides from God; Cain senses he will spend the rest of his life hiding from God.
Adam is exiled from the garden: Cain proclaims that he will be a wanderer all
his days. Adam is cursed that he will henceforth bring forth food from the
ground by the sweat of his brow; Cain is told that the land will not give of its
strength to him at all.

Cain senses his descent further toward the animal kingdom. He is afraid that all
who find him will kill him, and the greatest of the biblical exegetes, Rashi,
explains that his fear is specifically of the wild beasts, for the animals'
natural awe of a human being has now been lost. Our Sages tell us that Cain was
killed by his seventh generation descendant Lemech after being mistaken for an
animal.

Such delights fill every page of The Beast that Crouches at the Door. I cannot
think of a better way to begin the new cycle of the Torah than with a copy of
this book.

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October 2, 2008 Thursday

The local vote

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 716 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Few Israelis are cognizant of the fact that 11/11 has been designated Election
Day. Perhaps their indifference largely arises from the fact that on that date
we will be electing mayors and city councils rather than a premier and a
parliament, and that the issues bandied about are refuse collection and local
development plans rather than defense, foreign relations and the state of the
national economy.

City billboards and road junctions appear to be the only arenas in most
localities where the low-key local bouts are at all visible. Apart from the
banners and placards, there's frequently little else to attest to a campaign.

Most recent municipal contests have stayed dull and sleepy all the way through
to polling day. Voter turnout has reflected a lack of interest. In 2003, only 45
percent nationwide bothered to cast ballots. The upcoming November elections,
the pundits say, are poised to generate an even lower turnout.

Yet the ostensibly lesser issues at play can shape our daily reality and the
overall quality of our lives far more - and certainly with greater immediacy -
than the grander existential decisions of the central government. Decisions
taken by the country's 260 local authorities can affect our environment, the
quality of education and even the value of our real estate more profoundly than
the actions of the ministries in Jerusalem. What we most often gripe about is
primarily down to the municipalities; they also tend to be the first addresses
to which we turn when peeved.

Though this should heighten interest, the reverse is true.

IN Jerusalem, the fact that Aryeh Deri's candidacy is likely to be stymied and
Arkadi Gaydamak has yet to convincingly demonstrate that he's mounting a real
campaign may mean a dearth of flamboyant and controversial contestants. Yet the
issues - in a city where, to give just two examples, the rising Arab and
ultra-Orthodox demographic spells a critical challenge and where the mishandled
light-rail system has directly affected almost every resident - are so
self-evidently important that public apathy is incomprehensible, and
self-defeating.

Labor and the Likud, which once vied mightily for each city council seat, only
exacerbate the disinterest by no longer bothering to field candidates - in
Jerusalem and plenty of other locales as well. The decision in both cash-
strapped parties is to save whatever they can for the Knesset showdown.

By contrast, Kadima, better-heeled financially, is investing heavily in some
local campaigns. It has less of a party infrastructure and is more dependant on
the mayors it drew to its side upon its inception three years ago. Additionally,
Kadima's hold on the Interior Ministry gives it clout.

OVERALL, however, Israel's municipalities are still stuck in the same mire as in
Mandatory days. They remain highly reliant on central government budgets and are
devoid of true independence even in cities that keep their books balanced and
their administrations running relatively smoothly. At the same time, the mayors,
once they form their coalitions, are virtually unopposed.

This, coupled with the citizenry's apathy, can facilitate unethical practices
and even corrosive corruption - which has been all too evident in parts of the
Arab sector and some development towns which have sunk ever-deeper in the red,
failing to render services or even pay their staff.

Even in cities boasting shining veneers, there are sometimes real problems
deeper down that require residents' attention. In Ra'anana, for instance,
development is so rapid and so all-encompassing that little agricultural land is
left, less greenery survives and overcrowding is beginning to be felt.

Overcrowding is arguably the biggest issue in Tel Aviv, too, though it is rarely
addressed directly. The nearly 100-year-old city is so unprecedentedly popular,
so powerful a magnet to young Israelis drawn by its urban excitement and
sophistication, that its rents are fast becoming unaffordable. Haifa, in stark
contrast, has invested heavily in makeovers and infrastructure, is livelier than
ever, yet witnesses an exodus of its younger generation.

Tackling each locale's specific challenges requires input and involvement from
residents.

First and foremost, change is possible via the ballot box. But not if you don't
bother to vote.

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October 2, 2008 Thursday

Dying on the streets

BYLINE: DANIEL DORON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 943 words

HIGHLIGHT: Local media are mounting a dangerous campaign to roll back economic
reforms and return the banks to their former dominance as an all-powerful cartel

'People die on the streets," the anchorman of Politica, Oded Shahar, screamed at
the sober (The Marker's) Meirav Arlozorov. She reminded him that yes, we are in
a terrible crisis, but his gleeful assertion that capitalism was dead was a bit
premature. The fact is, Arlozorov pointed out, that markets - despite
imperfections and downturns - managed to correct themselves, to survive and even
prosper.

Indeed, the alternatives promoted by Shahar and his anti-market academic and
media colleagues - a return to socialism and greater government control of the
economy - were tried, several times and in several places. They always failed.

Politica - a populist political talk show - is a venue for wild assertions
("Markets are savage, violent and inconsiderate," Shahar fumed), a shout-fest
where arguments are clinched by bullying your opponent, with the anchorman's
help. Unfortunately Politica reflects public discourse in Israel, which is
shaped by leftist indoctrination, especially in economic matters.

Israelis were convinced by their pundits that the present crisis is the result
of a basic flaw in capitalism, its tendency to encourage cutthroat competition
in which the greedy and dishonest always win at the expense of the poor and
weak. No one even suggested that these flaws - yes, they do exist - are not
created by the market but reflect the imperfect human nature that mars all human
institutions (marriage or democracy, for example). Markets check these flaws
best (not perfectly) by promoting competition and by enabling customers to
identify and avoid dishonest practitioners.

Regulation, entrusted to bureaucracies, mostly does not work. All major "market
failures" - that Israeli economists and pundits gloat over - have been the
result of government failures. That great symbol of capitalist failure, the
Great Depression, was caused, Milton Friedman demonstrated, by the failure of
the Fed to inject liquidity into the banking system so that a run on the banks
could be checked. Instead the Fed recklessly contracted the money supply so
badly that the banks were strangled and failed. The rest is history.

THE PRESENT crisis too is government made. Holding the erroneous notion that
governments, through the central bank's monetary policy, are able to "heat" or
"cool" an economy, the Fed after the dot.com debacle pursued a policy that
flooded markets with cheap credit.

Cheap money had unintended consequences: a meteoric rise in commodity prices,
especially oil (with an assist from Iranian-sponsored terrorism). It probably
distorted exchange rates and undermined the value of the dollar, the universal
currency and store of value.

Cheap money also made possible the great proliferation of junk mortgages - a
practice started not by greedy Wall Street capitalists but by the "socially
minded" Bill Clinton. He put his cronies at the head of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac
and instructed them to grant mortgages to anyone, without demanding personal
liability. Controlling half the US mortgage market, a whopping $6 trillion,
these two giants recklessly leveraged their debts 50 to 1. Commercial banks
followed. Those considered the culprits, the "greedy" Wall Street financiers,
were the last to join the party. Fact is, commercial banks were hit first by the
debacle, except that - unlike the Wall Street giants - they were bailed out by
the Fed.

Without cheap money and the prevalence of junk mortgages, then, the crisis could
not have developed, voracious Wall Street sharks notwithstanding.

Pinning the blame on greedy Wall Street sharks - who are the authentic
representatives of the free market system, of course - in terms reminiscent of
old Soviet propaganda, is the sweetest opportunity for the Israeli left to
pronounce capitalism, and its cruel "Thatcherite" Israeli offshoot (they
fantasize), dead.

In cahoots with some prominent pundits, who have fought in the service of the
bank cartel against the Bachar Commission financial market reforms, the
left-dominated media are mounting a dangerous campaign to roll back these
reforms and to reinstitute the banks to their former dominance in the economy as
an all powerful cartel. If one can at the same time smear Binyamin Netanyahu,
the progenitor of these reforms, all the better, of course. Outright lies
("Netanyahu screwed the poor" when in fact he saved the country from a collapse
that would have destroyed the poor) and dangerous - almost criminal - scare
tactics, are used by some commentators to foment a panic and have customers
withdraw their savings from "dangerous" private funds and deposit them in the
"safe" banks.

But before the Bachar reforms, the banks were on the verge of bankruptcy (their
problematic loans topped 130 percent of their capital). They granted most credit
to cronies (70% to 1% of lenders) and created a dangerous credit crunch for the
rest. Denial of credit, especially to medium and small businesses (the large
crony monopolies got all the credit they wanted), resulted in two decades of
non-growth, heavy recessions and the economic decline of the Negev and the
Galilee, where only small businesses exist.

Fact is that since the Bachar commission reforms, which, though incomplete, have
revived financial markets, the country enjoyed a stunning growth spurt averaging
5% a year.

The red professors who dominate the universities, especially the social sciences
and the humanities, and their media friends who have sold their souls to the
bank cartel are impervious to these facts. All they want is to destroy the
little economic freedom that Israel has started enjoying recently and plunge it
back to its former socialist dark ages.

They must not succeed.

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October 2, 2008 Thursday

Letters

BYLINE: Gershon Harris, Stuart Pilichowski, Daniel Kowbell, Josef Gilboa,
Jonathan Reich, Leonard Zurakov, Necha Freundlich, Steve Kramer, Stuart &
Hadassa Palmer, Sylvia Weissmann, Nancy Milgram

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1144 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

As time goes by

Sir, - Herb Keinon's "Rosh Hashana relations" (September 28) really hit home.

When my wife and I made aliya in 1979 we had no really close family here, a
situation which continued for six years. Then, thank God, my wife's parents and
all her siblings moved to Israel.

However, this is not true of my side: I am still the "lone wolf" of my family
here Israel. And, like Mr. Keinon's son, my children were disappointed and
confused as to why "Grandma" and at least "Aunt Marcia" didn't come to more
family functions. They made it to our oldest son's bar mitzva and wedding - but
that was it. Three more weddings, two bar mitzvas and four bat mitzvas saw no
immediate Harris family representatives from abroad; and that hurt.

But you know what? Over the years, our original number of seven children grew to
11, as four got married. I still miss my immediate family in the US and
continually cajole them to come visit; but now, with six grandchildren, we are
building a rather formidable clan of our own!

As time goes on, the Keinon adults and children will also discover the joy of
watching their families grow and, in many ways, make up for those missing.

GERSHON HARRIS

Hatzor Haglilit

A real mentsch

Sir, - Aside from Paul Newman's artistic prowess, certainly the subject of
review for many years to come, his reputation as a mentsch and quiet
philanthropist, particularly with regard to needy children, will long live on as
a legacy we all can strive toward - particularly during this season of renewal
and reevaluation ("Paul Newman, iconic actor who personified cool, dies of
cancer at 83," September 28).

STUART PILICHOWSKI

Mevaseret Zion

Sir, - Iconoclastic, quintessential America at its best, Paul Newman touched our
lives in so many ways that played out like a kaleidoscope of all that is good in
this world. A consummate actor and human being, his death is our loss.

DANIEL KOWBELL

Toronto

Palin's church

Sir, - Yoel Sivan dismisses Sarah Palin's support of Israel without mention of
her decades-long attendance at an Assemblies of God church, a Pentecostal
denomination and one of the most passionate of Christian Zionist groups ("Sarah
Palin, pro-Israel by default?" September 24).

During my career as a tour guide of Christian pilgrims, I worked with dozens of
their pastors and thousands of their congregants. They oppose all territorial
concessions and support Jewish settlement in the entire Land of Israel. Pastor
John Hagee, for example, the head of Christians United for Israel, from whom
John McCain had to distance himself, was ordained in an AoG seminary. They
believe that to be against Israel is to be against God.

I have been expecting anti-Israel groups to attack Palin on this issue. If she
has a problem, it is tiptoeing away from her long association with this church
in order to prove that she can be objective in her approach to the region's
problems.

Sivan, like so many other leftist journalists, is badly in need of a white cane
and a seeing-eye dog.

JOSEF GILBOA

Jaffa

Sir, - Yoav Sivan wrote of American Jews who would be horrified to vote for a VP
with no foreign policy experience. Why, then, did so many vote for John Edwards
in 2004? He had less foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin has now.

Contrary to Mr. Sivan's opinion, Ms. Palin's TV appearance did not demonstrate
incompetence. Quite the contrary. She may not have known Charlie Gibson's
terminology, but her position on Israel and foreign policy were clear.

Barak Obama flip-flopped on Israel's capital and demonstrated clear incompetence
in asking for even- handedness in dealing with Russia's invasion of Georgia,
then recommending the UN Security Council solve the matter. Surely the
Democratic candidate for president knows Russia has a veto in the UN Security
Council?

JONATHAN REICH

Lakeland, Florida

Sir, - Three cheers for Yoav Sivan. His piece on Sara Palin was right on! Her
Neanderthal-type philosophy is not the sort most Jewish Americans can easily
stomach. Palin could never lead America, at least not the America I know and
love.

LEONARD ZURAKOV

Netanya

Shoots, eats...

Sir, - I agree with Larry Derfner ("'Feh' on hunting," September 25) that
hunting purely for sport is rather barbaric. However, let's be fair: Eating the
food you hunt is not really different from eating steak from a cow slaughtered
by someone else. Only vegetarians can claim the high moral ground in regard to
animal rights.

NECHA FREUNDLICH

Nahariya

...and believes

Sir, - Larry Derfner might be interested to know that caribou are known as
reindeer in Europe and that "Alaskan hunters shoot about 22,000 caribou each
year for food. A few thousand other hunters, primarily from the lower 48 states,
Europe, and Mexico, travel to Alaska to experience caribou hunting each fall.
[They] contribute significantly to the economy of the state, particularly in
rural areas. Meat from caribou taken by these nonresident hunters is also
required to be used for food" (Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game Web site).

In Alaska, it's commonplace to be a hunter.

I don't hunt, and I don't eat meat. Derfner evidently eats steak - but does he
think meat is grown in a cellophane patch? Just because Jews aren't big hunters
isn't an excuse not to vote for the Republican candidate.

STEVE KRAMER

Alfe Menashe

Fragmentation...

Sir, - "Racism in the name of religion" (September 24) disgusted us. What kind
of society do we live in when parents and a school can disobey a High Court
ruling and continue a discriminatory agenda without fear of punishment?

Our granddaughter, at age three, was also subject to these rulings by the Beit
Ya'acov school system. Our daughter is married to a Sephardi and we can
certainly learn a lot from their "internal and external values."

STUART & HADASSA PALMER

Haifa

Sir, - This op-ed explained why we don't have the rebuilt Temple, why we are
surrounded by enemies, and why we are not respected as a nation. It is said that
God treats the Jewish people as they treat each other.

And this from a people that ought to know better.

SYLVIA WEISSMANN

Jerusalem

...and harmony

Sir, - I agree with Elana Maryles Sztokman that discrimination in school, on any
basis, is deplorable. However, I am witness to 11 of my grandchildren attending
national religious schools in Samaria (and in the former community of Netzarim)
where children from all backgrounds are beautifully integrated and treated
equally.

Here in Nahariya, where I tutor new olim, I am also witness to full integration
of children from all backgrounds in the national religious schools. I pray in
two synagogues whose members represent Sephardi and Ashkenazi traditions.
Sometimes the Torah is read with the Sephardi cantillation and sometimes with
the Ashkenazi one; all appreciate the beauty of both.

Hopefully, this harmonious trend will spread to all Israeli schools and
community institutions, secular and religious.

NANCY MILGRAM

Nahariya

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October 2, 2008 Thursday

Don't fear a McCain Supreme Court

BYLINE: DAVID BENKOF

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 653 words

HIGHLIGHT: No matter who the appointees, neither the end of abortion nor the
introduction of Christian prayer in public school would be the outcome.
Fabulously Observant

I've spoken to a few centrist and liberal Democratic American Jews who like Sen.
John McCain and would consider voting for him "if not for the Supreme Court."
This fear is mostly unfounded. Voters who trust McCain's foreign policy
experience, who think he's better on Israel or even who simply don't think Sen.
Barack Obama is ready to be president can rest assured that one or two McCain
appointees to the Supreme Court will not be able to unilaterally impose some
kind of scary conservatism on the country.

First of all, many presidential terms pass without a single Supreme Court
appointment. Not a single justice died or retired during Jimmy Carter's sole
term, Bill Clinton's second term or George W. Bush's first term. That's nearly
40 percent of the last several presidential terms. Further, nobody can be
appointed to the court without Senate confirmation, and everyone expects the
next Senate to include anywhere from four to eight additional Democrats. That
means a far-right appointee is unlikely to be nominated, much less confirmed.

THEN, LOOKING at the individual issues Democrats are concerned about, it becomes
clear that the dangers are more imagined than real:

* Abortion - I asked a Jewish pro-choice Democrat what would happen if Roe v.
Wade were overturned, and she said, "The end of abortion as we know it."
Certainly not! Roe v. Wade created a federal constitutional right to abortion.
If it is overturned, each state will set its own abortion laws. That means for
the majority of the population, the right to an abortion will remain solid. In
some states, abortion will be limited in some ways - the ways that residents of
that state find most offensive - like late- term abortions, for example. A few
states, like South Dakota, may ban abortions altogether.

The well-funded pro-choice movement (Planned Parenthood alone has an annual
budget of more than $1 billion) will then have lots of options. It can lobby for
and try to elect legislators who support abortion rights in states considering
abortion restrictions. It can offer to transport women who say they need an
abortion to a state where such a procedure is available. It can even try to
amend the Constitution to guarantee abortion rights to all women.

No matter what one thinks of abortion, it is not a good thing for the Supreme
Court to declare that a right exists which is nowhere to be found in the text of
the Constitution. I would be pleased on some level if the Supreme Court declared
a federal constitutional right to medical marijuana and ferret ownership,
because those issues are important to me. But I'd also be concerned that those
subjects aren't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, and if my personal
issues can be federalized by a runaway court, what issues that I don't agree
with are next?

* Church and state - Many left-of-center Jewish voters are afraid of the erosion
of the separation of church and state, most particularly when it comes to school
prayer. As an Orthodox Jew, I would not be pleased to find Jewish schoolchildren
invited to say a sectarian Christian prayer in public school.

But Supreme Court rulings rarely implement completely new law out of thin air.
Because of the principle of stare decisis (let the ruling stand), change is more
incremental, with previous trends intensified or reined in. Recent precedents
suggest that changes in church-state doctrine are likely to welcome not
Christianity but rather a variety of religious traditions, or generic religious
sentiments (think menorot next to Christmas trees on public land, or the daily
prayer that starts the day in Congress).

Besides, would generic school prayer really be so bad? Our public schools are
breeding grounds for immorality - violence, cruelty, the drug culture. Perhaps
the entire society would benefit if schoolchildren started their day with three
to five minutes of reflection about morality and higher things.

DavidBenkof@aol.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: THE CANDIDATES and their wives before the debate on Friday. If
Roe v. Wade is overturned, each state will set its own abortion laws. (Credit:
AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

October 2, 2008 Thursday

Leibler misses the mark

BYLINE: RUTH KLEIN, Isi Leibler responds

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 928 words

HIGHLIGHT: After a short visit to this country, he seems to be entering into a
major confrontation with the Canadian Council on Israel and Jewish Advocacy.
Right of Reply The writer is national director of advocacy for B'nai Brith
Canada.

Isi Leibler, the former senior vice president of the World Jewish Congress and
the organization's harshest critic, never hesitates to take up the gauntlet. He
embarked on a path leading to the downfall of WJC's executive director, and the
subsequent departure of Edgar Bronfman. Following a brief visit to Canada last
month, Leibler has now set his sights on the Canadian Council on Israel and
Jewish Advocacy (CIJA) in a frontal attack against that organization.

While we have often agreed with the positions that Liebler articulates vis-^-vis
Israel and its foreign policies, we find it disturbing that, after a short visit
to this country, it appears he is now preparing to enter into a major
confrontation with CIJA. As well, to support his thesis that Canadian Jewish
advocacy is in a sorry state, he underestimates the tremendous strides that have
been made in terms of Canada-Israel relations and the major part that B'nai
Brith Canada has played in these advances.

It is apparent from Liebler's writings that he has not done any significant
research on his subject matter. He appears oblivious to the fact that the
Canadian government today is certainly among Israel's strongest allies - if not
the strongest - in the battle against political Islam. The government of Prime
Minister Stephen Harper was among Israel's staunchest defenders during the
ill-fated Second Lebanon War against Hizbullah terrorist forces. It was the
first of the Western powers to cut off direct aid to a Hamas-led PA government.
It is all too often the sole voice of opposition at the United Nations, the UN
Human Rights Council and the Francophonie on resolutions targeting the Jewish
state.

Liebler should also be aware that Canada's Israel advocacy efforts were not the
purview of Canadian Jewish Congress, as he suggests, even prior to 2004.
Canada-Israel relations were governed under the committee known as the
Canada-Israel Committee comprised of B'nai Brith Canada, the Canadian Zionist
Federation, the federations and Canadian Jewish Congress. B'nai Brith Canada was
a most active participant in this body, representing the interests of grassroots
Canadian Jewry.

WITH THE creation of CIJA, the Canada-Israel Committee was disbanded as a
coalition body consisting of Jewish community organizations. Instead, it
reconstituted under the same name, as a committee of ad personam appointees that
take their policy direction from CIJA. It was at this juncture that B'nai Brith
Canada, which chose to retain its independence, decided to continue its own
grassroots Israel advocacy pursuits.

This "plucky" organization has been at the forefront of Jewish advocacy in this
country. Our strong pro-Israel voice is clearly heard in the corridors of
Ottawa, with the influential Embassy Magazine citing Frank Dimant, B'nai Brith
Canada's executive vice president, as one of "top 40 names influencing Canada's
foreign policy."

B'nai Brith Canada's prominent position at the vanguard of the Jewish
community's advocacy agenda is widely acknowledged. It was the only Jewish
organization to call on the Canadian government to boycott Durban II. Only after
our voice was heard and the government pulled out - even before Israel and the
US - did others follow our lead.

For years, we have publicly demanded that governments live up to their
responsibility to protect all communities by providing necessary additional
funding for security for Jewish institutions. We pleased to be able to relate
that such funds have now been made available by the government.

For years B'nai Brith, through the Canada-Israel Committee, worked to change the
policy of the government as it pertained to the boycott of the Israeli arms
industry, depriving Canadian soldiers of the best possible armaments simply
because Canada insisted on being "neutral" when it came to the conflict in the
Middle East. Following recent discussions that B'nai Brith Canada conducted with
the current political leadership, the government has just announced, for the
first time, the acquisition of Israeli drones for our armed forces in
Afghanistan.

CIJA and the Canada Jewish Congress will undoubtedly speak for themselves, but
your dismissive reference to B'nai Brith Canada simply has no place in the
reality of Canadian pro-Israel advocacy.

Isi Leibler responds:

The author totally misread my article. I expressly distinguished between the
CIJA and the Bnai Brith, whom I praised together with the CIJR as "plucky
organizations." My criticisms were targeted against the Canadian Jewish
establishment which has allowed professional PR operators to effectively hijack
official Hasbara activities under the rubric of the CIJA and assume a "Sha,
shtil" approach, unwilling even to protest against those promoting moral
equivalency between Israelis defending their country and terrorists. My views
are shared by the Israeli ambassador and many Canadians, especially pro-Israel
activists, including a former president of the Canadian UIA and Canada-Israel
Committee. I also praised Stephen Harper's government for its courageous support
of Israel but predicted that if the official arm of Canadian pro-Israel advocacy
promotes policies exemplified by the obscene "10 commandments," the Jewish
community should not be surprised if the tide turns against them, and their
children opt out of Israeli advocacy. I would therefore urge Jewish
organizations and individual Canadian Jewish activists who assured me that they
condemned the "Sha Shtil" approach, not to remain silent but to openly repudiate
such attitudes and demand a change in policy.

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The Jerusalem Post

October 2, 2008 Thursday

Medical treatment with a heart

BYLINE: ANN GOLDBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 808 words

HIGHLIGHT: An ode to Terem, Jerusalem's wonderful emergency care centers. The
writer is a freelance journalist.

'Sit here Avrum. Just relax I'll be with you in a minute." One of the nurses on
duty at a Terem Medical Center was talking to the agitated young man with the
kindness that seemed as if she could be his aunt. As I waited my turn to see the
doctor, it became obvious that Avrum was a regular here. Maybe he really was
sick or perhaps he came for the company, maybe for some attention or to get out
of the cold, but whatever the reason he was treated as an old friend.

The Romema headquarters of the Terem emergency care centers (its Hebrew acronym
stands for urgent medical care), until recently housed in the same Jerusalem
building as Magen David Adom, is a well-known landmark. It is familiar to local
Jerusalemites, tourists and youngsters from abroad spending a summer here or a
year at yeshiva or seminary. When kids think they may have dehydrated in the
sun, got an unexplained fever in the middle of the night or maybe twisted an
ankle climbing Masada at dawn, typical events which you hope won't happen but
frequently do, the call of "Don't worry, we'll go to Terem" is the usual
response.

When I heard that the Romema Terem had at last moved to more worthy, spacious
and hi-tech facilities, it brought back many memories of night-time visits
throughout the years since we came to live here.

WHEN I firsted visited the newly established Terem about five years ago, I still
had outdated memories of Magen David Adom circa 1980s with hour-long waits
outside (unless you had protektzia, that ubiquitous Israeli trait of knowing
someone who can help you jump the line). In those days, once you were in you
were scared of getting lost in the shuffle of the seemingly chaotic cacophony of
impatient patients, and you were never quite sure you hadn't been forgotten.

Now, thanks to the late Dr David Applebaum, who set up the new, totally
computerized Terem before he was tragically murdered in a terrorist attack, the
place is a model of efficiency. From the minute you arrive your details are on
the computer, and you know you won't be forgotten.

I had had reason to be at Terem several times within a space of a few months
recently, and each time the warmth and caring are what struck me, apart from the
first-rate speedy medical attention. I mean if you've got to have emergency
middle-of-the-night medical treatment, then I can't think of a nicer place to
be.

When one of my married daughters cut her chin while overeagerly indulging in
Pessah cleaning, I traveled in the cab to Terem with her and my son-in-law, as
he looked greener and sicker than she did and I was worried that he too would
need treatment. She was quickly seen and assessed. The wound was cleaned and
within a few moments we were on our way in another cab to Hadassah-University
Medical Center to see a plastic surgeon for the stitching. Yes, the doctor
explained, they could have stitched her up, but a young woman with a cut on her
face deserves the best treatment, not just the quickest.

A few weeks later I was back at Terem with the same son-in-law, who had
dehydrated while walking to Shaare Zedek Hospital on Shabbat to visit
above-mentioned daughter after she gave birth to their third child. As he sat in
a quiet corner, hooked up and absorbing the much needed liquid infusion, I
wandered around looking at all the plaques commemorating those whose generosity
and wisdom had helped provide us Jerusalemites with this incredible service.

WHEN I myself ended up in Terem not long afterward after falling and landing
very painfully on my foot in a very unnatural position, I asked the girl at the
reception what the charge was for the visit. "Well," she quipped. "If you're
lucky and it's only a sprain, then we charge you. But if you're unlucky and it's
broken, you get all the treatment free of charge." You can't help but smile with
a greeting like that..

When an X-ray showed that I was indeed going to get free treatment, the doctor
who put the temporary cast on my foot was delighted that he had a captive
British-born audience for his British royal family take-off. No matter that this
doctor and all the staff had possibly been on duty for many hours and had more
to go, their helpfulness, sense of humor and the care they give always takes the
edge of what is inevitably a not-too-pleasant experience.

Whatever language you speak, there's always seems to be someone there who can
understand you, if not among the staff then among other patients who are only
too happy to translate, and if you don't share a common mother-tongue then a bit
of Yiddish or a bit of Jewish always helps things along.

I'm delighted that Terem has at long last transferred to a much larger home
worthy of the wide-reaching, first- rate service it offers.

But even if it had remained where it was, its warm heart would always have
ensured the best treatment for all those who entered its wide doors.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: THE TEREM branch in Romema. If you've got to have emergency
middle-of-the-night medical treatment, there's not a nicer place to be. (Credit:
Courtesy)

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October 2, 2008 Thursday

Leave the unsolvable, target the possible

BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1081 words

HIGHLIGHT: For most Israelis, the real waste of time would be for the government
to throw itself into trying to solve conflicts they currently deem unsolvable,
at the inevitable expense of domestic problems they deem genuinely critical.
Civil Fights

Two weeks ago, a column by Haaretz diplomatic correspondent Aluf Benn offered
Ehud Olmert's replacement the following advice: While negotiations with the
Palestinians and Syrians pose difficulties, "an attempt to freeze everything,
conduct sterile diplomatic negotiations and focus on domestic issues such as
'governmental reform' or 'the war on corruption' until the external
circumstances change will turn the prime minister into someone who is just
whiling away time on the job."

Benn's view is hardly unique; virtually all Israeli leftists concur - which
makes you wonder whether they inhabit the same country as the rest of us. After
all, as Benn himself admitted, "the public does not believe a [Palestinian] deal
is possible." It is equally skeptical about a Syrian deal, though he omitted
that detail. Thus to most Israelis, the real waste of time would be for the
government to throw itself into trying to solve conflicts they currently deem
unsolvable, at the inevitable expense of domestic problems they deem genuinely
critical.

For instance, while Benn dismisses "the war on corruption" as "whiling away
time," most Israelis disagree: In a January 2007 Peace Index poll, a large
plurality gave this issue top billing, its weighted grade of 31.5 out of 100
compared to 22.1 for the second-place issue (rehabilitating the IDF) and a mere
10.8 for making peace with the Palestinians. And that was before the worst
corruption scandals broke, including most of Olmert's cases, then-finance
minister Abraham Hirchson's alleged embezzlement and the discovery that
well-connected businessmen were dictating senior Tax Authority appointments.
Thus the issue's importance has presumably only grown.

And with cause: In Transparency International's latest corruption index,
published last week, Israel fell to 33rd place, down from 30th last year and an
all-time best of 16th in 2001. This leaves us tied with the Dominican Republic,
behind Chile and Uruguay and well behind the Western countries that are our main
competitors, thereby threatening our long-term economic viability.

OR TAKE another issue Benn dismisses: governmental reform. Nothing endangers
democracy more than a public conviction that the system is broken. Yet more and
more people feel that way, and are therefore opting out of the democratic
process. The evidence is incontrovertible: Voter turnout, after holding steady
for decades at about 80 percent, plummeted to 69% in 2003 and 64% in 2006.

This disenchantment stems partly from governmental corruption, but there is
another, even more critical factor: We are the last remaining Western democracy
where voters elect party slates chosen by party hacks rather than individual
parliamentarians. Thus people have no real say over who represents them; no way
to "throw the bums out" (since the "bums" are usually popular enough with the
hacks to secure safe seats on their party's slate); and no way to influence
their representatives, who answer to the hacks rather than the voters.

Ordinary Israelis understand this: Another poll last year found that 61% want
MKs elected directly. But only a very determined government could enact this
reform.

THEN THERE are all the issues Benn did not mention - like education, where we
are dropping steadily in international rankings. The last international
assessment tests ranked Israeli 15-year-olds below 28 of the 30 OECD members in
reading, math and science. Incredibly, according to an OECD study published two
weeks ago, these poor results occurred even though Israel provides more hours of
classroom instruction than 19 of the 22 OECD countries for which data exists.

The gravity of the educational decline (and we have not even mentioned our
crisis-ridden universities) cannot be overstated. This country's only natural
resource is its citizens' brainpower. Without nurturing this brainpower, our
economy will wither, people will flee, we will be unable to finance our defense
and the nation's very existence will be imperiled.

Moreover, failing schools perpetuate yawning gaps between rich and poor. The
well-off compensate by providing supplemental, private education for their
children. But that leaves children of the poor with no chance of escaping the
cycle of poverty through the time-honored means of education.

Israelis care about nothing if not their children, and I have yet to meet a
parent who is satisfied with his children's public-school education. Thus this
issue is of great concern to most Israelis.

OR CONSIDER our dysfunctional police. Underworld assassinations are killing
innocent bystanders on the streets, yet police have not managed to indict a
single leading gangster: The only underworld kingpins facing charges (the
Abergils and Ze'ev Rosenstein) were indicted by US authorities in American
courts. Police admit that only one in 100 break-ins results in prosecution; the
protection racket is reportedly rampant nationwide; and horrendous snafus are
routine, from the 2006 escape of serial rapist Benny Sela to the policeman who
stood and watched while a terrorist slaughtered students at a Jerusalem yeshiva
this March.

Indeed, it is a standing joke that people file police complaints only to collect
their insurance. And since police performance affects everyone's personal
security, this clearly matters greatly to most Israelis.

Reforming the police is a complex problem, but there are some obvious starting
places. The population has tripled since the 1960s, while the police force has
grown by only 50%; consequently, it is now badly understaffed by Western
standards. According to Insp.-Gen. David Cohen, Israel has only 2.7 policemen
per 1,000 citizens, compared to five per 1,000 in Europe. Moreover, low salaries
and long hours make retaining good people difficult. Both are problems only the
government can solve.

These are only a few of many pressing domestic issues. But all have a common
root: For 15 years, successive governments have devoted themselves mainly to
either negotiating with the Palestinians or suppressing the terror that these
negotiations produced. Domestic problems were consequently neglected, and they
festered.

Tzipi Livni could thus give her country no better gift for the new year that
began this week than to ignore the advice of Benn and his ilk, make do with
managing the conflict and devote her energies to domestic problems.
Unfortunately, nothing in her record suggests that she will do so. Thus most
likely, domestic problems will keep right on being neglected.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: EHUD OLMERT votes in Kadima primary. We are the last remaining
Western democracy where voters elect party slates chosen by party hacks rather
than individual parliamentarians. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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The Jerusalem Post

October 2, 2008 Thursday

Militias in the mirror

BYLINE: LARRY DERFNER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1119 words

HIGHLIGHT: Whoever's in power in Jerusalem or Washington, the occupation keeps
getting stronger. RATTLING THE CAGE

As I write this, Sunday morning, a teenage Palestinian shepherd has been found
shot to death near Nablus, which is surrounded by more Baruch Goldstein wannabes
than anyplace else in the country except for maybe Hebron. Some Palestinian
witnesses say they saw a white car with settlers in it chasing the shepherd.
Recently I interviewed a Palestinian shepherd near Nablus who said the settlers
in the area harass him all the time, killing his sheep. He complains to the
police, the police do nothing. I'm sure they'll do nothing this time, too.
Another unsolved murder of a Palestinian in Israel's "heartland." "Nationalistic
motives" - Jewish "nationalistic motives" - are suspected. What's new?

On Friday there was a story in Yediot Aharonot about an IDF reserve unit that
had just gotten back from a month of guarding Yad Yair, one of the illegal
outposts near Yitzhar, the jewel in the crown of the Kach-minded settlements
near Nablus. Yad Yair is officially slated for evacuation, and after the
reservists dared accompany a Civil Administration official there on a visit, the
soldiers were repeatedly set upon by mobs of hooded "hilltop youth." One soldier
had his hand broken, another was bitten by an attack dog. They were beaten,
chased, had their tires slashed, their water line cut, their guard post
blockaded.

This, too, is nothing new. The "Wild West Bank" is an old, old cliche. People
think the settlers, especially the young generation, have snapped since the
disengagement three years ago, but they were more violent and dangerous in the
early 1980s, when the Jewish Terror Underground went on a killing spree and
plotted to blow up the Temple Mount. They were more dangerous after the signing
of the Oslo Accord, which started the clock running down on Rabin's
assassination.

The bomb that just wounded leftist Prof. Ze'ev Sternhell, and the NIS 1.1
million reward for the murder of a Peace Now leader - whatever you want to call
it, don't call it new. Right-wing extremists have been killing, trying to kill
and threatening to kill leftists in this country for 30 years - longer,
actually, but 30 years in earnest. Thirty years in loosely organized fashion by
the fanatical, lawless, violent wing of the settler movement. (Yigal Amir was
not a settler, but he was most definitely part of the settler movement.)

HOW MANY millions of words have been spoken and written against the Jewish
militias of the West Bank? How many pledges have been made by politicians and
law enforcement officials to crack down on them once and for all? How many times
has an Israeli prime minister promised the Bush administration to remove the
illegal outposts - the cutting edge of the movement - only to watch them keep
growing in number, area and population?

In the face of this, though, people all over Israel and the rest of the world
keep on thinking and talking about the chance of peace, of dividing the West
Bank between the Palestinians and Israel. Do you think Livni can do it? What
effect do you think Obama will have, or McCain?

I know that hope is a basic human need; I need it as much as anybody. But there
comes a time when you can't fool yourself anymore, when you can't lie to
yourself anymore, because reality has been going in the opposite direction for
so long that you can no longer will yourself to believe. The time to stop lying
to ourselves, I'm afraid, is way overdue for everyone here and in rest of the
world who hopes for an end one day to Israeli rule over the Palestinians.

It's not going to happen. It would require kicking 50,000 to 100,000 of Israel's
fiercest Jews out of their homes, which they built in some of the holiest places
in the land; what government, what army, what police force is going to do that?
Look at what's going on in the West Bank; is such a thing even conceivable?

Everyone talks about a Palestinian state, but in the real world of actions, not
words, the land available for it keeps on shrinking. Everyone else talks; the
settlers act.

This, of course, is nothing new, either; the cliche "facts on the ground" was
coined during the Begin era.

Sharon's disengagement was the exception, the exception that proves the rule -
and he removed only about 9,000 settlers, and relatively moderate ones, and from
the Gaza Strip, not Judea and Samaria, and there ain't nobody like Sharon around
anymore.

After 41 years of Israeli colonization of the West Bank and military rule over
the Palestinians, it's a little ridiculous to go on speaking of the occupation
as if it's a temporary thing that hasn't been decided yet, that this is the way
things are for the time being, until they change.

The only thing that's going to change in the West Bank, the only thing that has
changed during all the peace processes, especially in the Oslo years, is that
there are going to be more settlers living there. Whoever's in power in
Jerusalem or Washington, the occupation keeps getting stronger.

And this has zero to do with Israeli security. If all the Palestinians suddenly
became mentally and physically incapable of lifting a finger against another
human being, the settlers would still want more West Bank land. And they would
get it - because who has ever stopped them?

SO LET'S stop pretending, let's stop lying to ourselves because we don't want to
face what Israel has become - not what it's in danger of becoming, what it's
become. What it is.

Israel is the democratic world's last colonial power - the only democratic
country that still rules an alien population by force of arms. Judea and Samaria
are not occupied territories, they are part of Israel. Yitzhar is an Israeli
town - and Nablus is an Israeli city, as is Ramallah, Jenin and all the others.
The 250,000 West Bank settlers live in Israel - and so do the 2.5 million West
Bank Palestinians.

Israel is a country in which 7 million people live as citizens of a democracy,
and 2.5 million people live as colonial subjects under military rule. This
places a very large, black asterisk after Israel's democracy. As the Palestinian
population keeps growing, the asterisk will get bigger.

We didn't have to become such a country. From the day after the Six Day War,
Israel could have withdrawn from the West Bank and defended itself militarily.
If what it wanted was security, it didn't have to build a single settlement.

We built the settlements because we wanted the land. Nobody forced us to become
the Palestinians' ruler; we chose it because we wanted the land.

That's who we are, that's who our children will be, and so on and so forth.
There's no occupation; there's only Israel. Yesha is here. Have the guts to look
at what's going on around Nablus, in Yitzhar and elsewhere. Yitzhar is us, and
Nablus is, too. Get used to it.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The settlement of Shiloh. Can Tzipi Livni divide the West Bank
between the Palestinians and Israel? (Credit: Bloomberg)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 29, 2008 Monday

A New Year reminder of mutual responsibility

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 708 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

On this Rosh Hashana Eve, which also marks the end of the Sabbatical - shmita -
year, the Torah teaches an important lesson about greed and trust, a lesson
which resonates particularly loudly today as America, and much of the rest of
the world, grapple with a major financial crisis.

The coincidence is impossible to ignore: On Monday, the last day of the present
seven-year shmita cycle, Jewish law dictates that all outstanding debts be
cancelled. At the same time, US Congressional leaders and the Bush
administration prepare to perform perhaps the largest cancellation of debts -
shmitat ksafim - in US history, a financial bailout that will cost America $700
billion.

True, financial disasters often happen in September. The inevitable financial
crash often gets postponed until after the slow summer vacation months. Still,
the concurrence of the end of the shmita cycle with the financial crisis is
striking.

According to Jewish law, a creditor who has not collected a loan before the Rosh
Hashana following the seven-year shmita cycle must relinquish it. The rabbis
looked favorably upon debtors who insisted on paying back their debts anyway.
But there is no obligation.

Later, after being conquered by the Romans, the subjugated Jewish people, living
in the land of Israel in a constant state of political and economic instability,
began to refrain from extending loans out of fear they would lose their debts.
Hillel the Elder, who died in 10 CE, responded by instituting a legal loophole
called a prozbul that circumvented the shmita.

But the ultimate ideal, according to the original biblical commandment and the
teachings of the rabbis, is to foster a society built on mutual trust in which
debtors are not obligated to creditors at the end of the shmita year.

Obviously, the US bailout plan is not identical to the biblical commandment to
relinquish debt. American legislators and regulators who rescued Fannie Mae,
Freddie Mac and AIG from financial collapse are motivated by a self-serving
desire to head off a domino effect that could topple the US economy. In
contrast, shmitat ksafim is to be performed regardless of any personal benefit.
The impetus should be a desire to build a more just society in which individuals
are responsible for one another and no one is subjected to the ignominy of
living in eternal debt.

An important lesson can be learned from shmitat ksafim, as relevant as ever in
this age of unencumbered free-market economies fueled by greed and
self-interest. Human beings, says Judaism, should not be a bunch of essentially
selfish individuals who do nothing but seek to maximize their material
well-being. Greed might drive economies, but, unchecked, it can spiral out of
control and wreak havoc - as it is currently doing in the US banking and
mortgage industries.

Shmitat ksafim teaches that, sometimes, a feeling of solidarity and support for
the community should override narrow individual interests.

THIS MESSAGE is pertinent for the Jewish state as it prepares to celebrate Rosh
Hashana.

Disturbing trends plague our society - including a high level of socioeconomic
polarization between rich and poor, and a large percentage of children living
under the poverty line.

Underlining the distress, according to data released recently by Yedid, the
Association for Community Empowerment, this year approximately 3,000 Israeli
homeowners were evicted from their homes for failing to meet mortgage payments,
up from about 2,500 last year.

Banks and other large creditors should not be expected to make a wholesale
cancellation of debts. And debtors should not be allowed to get off scot-free.
But exceptions can be made when the debtor is sincerely willing to work hard and
make painful changes in spending and saving habits, and the creditor can safely
agree on a compromise without risking financial instability.

This would foster a greater feeling of trust and mutual responsibility, in
keeping with the true spirit of shmitat ksafim.

Our society is far from the ideal, but it is our obligation to strive for the
sense of mutual responsibility sought by the framers of Jewish law - an
obligation underlined by the remarkable coincidence of the ancient enlightened
shmita provisions and the current bitter financial crisis.

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September 29, 2008 Monday

When violence replaces democracy

BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1070 words

HIGHLIGHT: It is probably too late to change the minds of those fomenting the
current violence. But if we do not want their ranks to keep swelling, we must
restore the younger generation's faith in democracy. Civil Fights

There has been a spate of attacks by settlers on both soldiers and Palestinians
recently. This is not random violence, but calculated policy: The goal,
activists say, is to "exact a price" whenever part of a settlement or outpost is
dismantled, in the hope of persuading the authorities that dismantling
settlements is not worth the cost.

While only a minority of settlers supports this tactic, the number is growing,
and defense officials believe the violence will only escalate.

This is something no society can tolerate, and better law enforcement is clearly
part of the necessary response. Yet law enforcement alone cannot solve the
underlying problem - which is that growing numbers of settlers have justifiably
concluded that democratic action is pointless, leaving violence as the only
rational option.

IF THAT sounds outrageous, consider the following: In 1993, the Knesset approved
the Oslo Accords, even though Yitzhak Rabin won election promising no
negotiations with the PLO. But the ensuing surge in terror disillusioned many
Oslo supporters, thus rightists saw a real chance of defeating Oslo 2 in 1995.
So they did exactly what good democrats are supposed to do: They lobbied Shas
and Labor MKs, and succeeded in garnering enough votes for victory - until
Rabin, thumbing his nose at the rules, openly bought two MKs elected on a
far-right slate, thereby securing a 61-59 majority. And since the offered bribe
(a ministry and deputy ministry, with all attendant financial benefits) was
illegal at the time, he then used his newly purchased majority to amend the law
so he could pay up.

Worse, this perversion of democracy enjoyed monolithic support from journalists,
leftist MKs, academics and other self-proclaimed champions of the rule of law.
The lesson was obvious: Playing by the democratic rules is pointless, because
the other side has no qualms about scrapping them whenever they prove
inconvenient.

It is no accident that the worst incident of political violence in Israel's
history, Rabin's assassination, occurred a mere month later. If democratic
alternatives are blocked, violence becomes the only recourse. And someone will
inevitably take it.

FAST FORWARD to the 2003 election, when Labor championed a unilateral withdrawal
from Gaza and the Likud's Ariel Sharon campaigned against this idea. Again,
rightists did what good democrats are supposed to do: They threw themselves into
electing Sharon. And they succeeded: The Likud won by a landslide. Yet 11 months
later, Sharon U-turned and adopted Labor's platform.

Nevertheless, he offered a democratic escape route: an internal party
referendum. So rightists again did what good democrats are supposed to do: They
canvassed door-to-door among Likud members.

And they won again: Though polls predicted an easy victory for Sharon, his plan
lost by a 60-40 margin.

But Sharon ignored his party's verdict, despite having pledged to honor it. He
also refused to submit his plan to any broader democratic test - new elections
or a national referendum. And of course, these decisions were cheered by the
left's self-proclaimed champions of democracy.

Thus the right won two democratic victories, the 2003 election and the Likud
referendum, only to see both prove worthless.

Once again, the lesson was clear: Playing by the democratic rules is pointless.

After Sharon junked the referendum results, rightists protested by blocking
roads around the country. That, while illegal, is a time-honored Israeli
tradition. The Histadrut, for instance, blocked roads nationwide for months to
protest the emergency economic program in 2003; disabled activists demanding
increased funding once paralyzed the entire capital by blocking major roads. Yet
neither union activists nor the disabled were ever arrested.

Anti-disengagement protesters, however, were arrested in droves, and routinely
jailed for lengthy periods. Here, too, the lesson was clear: Rightists will be
jailed for using tactics that other protesters can use with impunity. In short,
democracy is not a level field, so playing on it is pointless.

LEFTISTS FREQUENTLY charge that even if all the democratic rules were honored,
settlers would not accept an adverse outcome. That may be true for a tiny
minority, but certainly not for the vast majority - as was proven during Ehud
Barak's premiership.

Barak won election in 1999 by promising a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon and
final-status negotiations with the Palestinians. He duly quit Lebanon in May
2000; two months later, he offered sweeping concessions to the Palestinians at
Camp David.

Clearly, he had a democratic mandate for both withdrawal and negotiations.
Moreover, the Knesset for once did its democratic job properly. By forcing him
to call new elections, it enabled the public to approve or reject the specific
concessions he made at Camp David, and later at Washington and Taba.

And, miracle of miracles, there was virtually no violence, though rightists
opposed both withdrawal and negotiations.

Faced with a true democratic mandate and a true democratic ratification process,
settlers honored the rules of the democratic game.

Unfortunately, Barak's term was the exception. And while Rabin's term could have
been a one-time aberration, Sharon's term proved that it was not.

Thus growing numbers of settlers, especially the young, no longer believe in the
democratic process - and with cause. What is the point of winning elections or
referenda if the results will simply be ignored? What is the point of lobbying
Knesset members if any successes can be overturned by vote-buying?

It is probably too late to change the minds of those fomenting the current
violence. But if we do not want their ranks to keep swelling, we must restore
the younger generation's faith in democracy.

Legislation - such as a bill now heading for final reading that mandates a
referendum, elections or a two- thirds Knesset majority before ceding sovereign
territory - is vital to this effort. But changing the country's political
culture is equally vital. And that will only happen if all the journalists,
academics, jurists and MKs who so loudly proclaim their devotion to democracy
stop whitewashing its perversion in the name of "peace" and instead demand that
the rules be respected, even if that results in setbacks for their side.

Otherwise, we are liable to witness an ever-expanding circle of violence that no
amount of law enforcement will be able to suppress.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Jewish children playing on the outskirts of Shiloh. How can the
young be taught to honor elections or referenda if the results will simply be
ignored? (Credit: Bloomberg)

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September 29, 2008 Monday

The lessons of Munich

BYLINE: ROBERT ROZETT

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 660 words

HIGHLIGHT: On the 70th anniversary of the Munich Agreement, are we any more
capable of nipping evil in the bud before it has fully flowered? The writer is
director of the Yad Vashem libraries, and author of Approaching the Holocaust:
Texts and Contexts, Vallentine Mitchell, 2005.

Seventy years ago on September 29, 1938, the leaders of Germany, Italy, France
and Great Britain concluded an agreement in Munich that has gone down in history
as one of the West's greatest political debacles. According to it, Hitler was
allowed to take over a region of the Czechoslovak Republic, known as the
Sudetenland, which contained a large ethnic German population. He had been
threatening to use force to achieve his ends, and the British and French
appeased him hoping to avoid a new and devastating conflict. Of course the
agreement did not foster peace: rather it paved the way to World War II. The
failure of Munich has become so ingrained in our collective psyche that,
whenever our leaders hesitate in the face of a threat, pundits immediately
accuse them of repeating the blunder of Munich.

The lessons of Munich are plain, but what is much less obvious is when and how
to apply them. From Munich we can learn that radical evil must be nipped in the
bud, but recognizing it, before it has blossomed, is no simple matter. British
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his French counterpart fdouard Daladier
totally misjudged Hitler. Hence Chamberlain's infamous statement upon returning
to England: "My good friends this is the second time in our history that there
has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is
peace in our time."

The scene, where he makes the statement with the signed agreement fluttering in
the wind, causes Chamberlain to appear na·ve. We know that Hitler's word would
carry no more weight than a piece of paper. At the time, however, Chamberlain
and Daladier did not grasp that Hitler's mindset was vastly different from their
own. They imputed to him their own aversion to war and their own code of honor.
They were not able to think outside of the box, which is what they would have
needed to do to comprehend Hitler's emerging evil. In part this was because of
their wishful thinking, but in part it was because Hitler's evil had not yet
matured.

GIVEN THE forces of radical evil arrayed against peace today, we must ask
ourselves if we are assessing them judiciously. Most people throughout the West
did not grasp the nature of Al Qaida until its evil was no longer embryonic, but
had come into flower as a purveyor of mass death and destruction. Iran under
Ahmadinejad is currently poised to develop nuclear capability, and the burning
question for most of the rest of the world is: will Iran use that capability to
launch a war? Is the regime of Ahmadinejad evil on a par with Hitler and Nazism,
and therefore must be treated accordingly?

Chamberlain's second infamous statement during the Munich crisis has also left
an indelible impression, because it appears to us to have been so hugely
misspoken. Loath to intervene with force, he declared: "How horrible, how
fantastic, how incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on
gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom
we know nothing." In the post-World War II era, we recognize that we live in a
global village. There are no people anywhere who are too distant for us not to
be concerned when they are faced with radical evil. We are perturbed when we
think such evil is rearing its head. But we are still not very good at
translating that concern into concerted and timely action, or risking our own
lives and fortunes to come to their aid. Darfur stands before us as a searing
example of our deficiency.

Over two millennia ago King Solomon wrote: "Everything has an appointed season,
and there is a time for every purpose under the heaven. A time to love and a
time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace." Our challenge is to
constantly assess our season and take appropriate action, lest our mistakes tar
us with the same brush of failure as the policy of appeasement and enable new
destruction on a scale that approaches that unleashed by Hitler in the wake of
Munich.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: 'PEACE IN our time.' Neville Chamberlain did not grasp that
Hitler's mindset was vastly different from his own. (Credit: Yad Vashem archive)

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September 29, 2008 Monday

Christmas comes on Rosh Hashana

BYLINE: DOUGLAS M. BLOOMFIELD

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 987 words

HIGHLIGHT: One of the first victims of the McCain policy would be aid to Israel.
Washington Watch

While Sen. John McCain, in Friday night's debate with Sen. Barack Obama, was
threatening to veto any legislation crossing his desk containing earmarks if
he's elected president, their colleagues on Capitol Hill, in both parties and
both chambers, were putting the final touches on a $630 billion spending bill
that included 2,321 separate earmarks worth $6.6 billion.

It was the omnibus spending bill to keep the government functioning until March
and let lawmakers go back home to tell voters how indispensable they are to the
survival of the republic.

That legislation is technically called a continuing resolution, but on the Hill
its known as a Christmas tree because of all the ornaments lawmakers hang on it
for their friends, constituents, contributors and - here's the shocker - a lot
of very good causes.

They finished work on the CR just before Rosh Hashana, and they hope to complete
work on that $700 billion bank bailout bill by midweek, which should get them
home in time to pray for atonement on Yom Kippur.

McCain, the Republican nominee, has made zero tolerance of earmarks a
centerpiece of his campaign; Obama has vowed to reduce but not eliminate them.
To hear McCain tell it, remove the earmarks and you eliminate the deficit and
are halfway home to rescuing the economy.

WHILE $6.6 billion is an unfathomable amount of money for most of us (Google:
"billion" and "Dirksen"), it is barely 1 percent of the bill, and about the same
proportion of the entire $3 trillion federal budget, and removing every single
earmark would barely make a dent in the deficit. But it would do great harm to a
great many good programs.

One of first victims of the McCain policy would be aid to Israel, an earmark of
$3 billion in annual security assistance, plus millions more in other programs
in the defense, foreign operations and other parts of the federal budget. From
time to time administrations have tried to remove the Israel earmark to pressure
or punish Israel. Even a popular president like Ronald Reagan had to back down
in the face of strong bipartisan opposition from the Congress.

There's a lot more at stake for the Jewish community. United Jewish Communities
maintains a fulltime Washington lobbying (it prefers the term "advocacy" but
it's the same thing) office to help federations and their beneficiary agencies
get federal funding for their programs.

That's particularly critical at a time when these groups are facing a big drop
in contributions as a result of the current economic crisis, especially in real
estate, banking and Wall Street, a source of many of the biggest givers.

The UJC Washington office lobbied this year against cuts to Medicare and
Medicaid, for up to $125 million for the Emergency Food and Shelter Program, for
$65 million for security for Jewish communal institutions against potential
terror attacks, and other programs for the aging, homeless, elderly and
employment retraining in the wake of natural disasters.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, UJC and other Jewish organizations
annually bring thousands of citizen activists to Washington to lobby in support
of aid for Israel, for their local federations, social service agencies and
communities and other issues. And that usually means earmarks.

IT IS better to have elected lawmakers making "informed decisions" about the
needs of their constituents than "unknowing and unknown bureaucrats in
Washington," said William Daroff, head of UJC's Washington office. "UJC has
helped federations and their beneficiary agencies secure close to $30 million in
support of community-derived earmark projects since Fiscal 2002."

If McCain gets his way, another big loser will be Alaska, where his running
mate, Sarah Palin, has been governor for less than two years. Her state has the
distinction of being the largest per capita beneficiary of federal earmarked
spending, and her senior senator, Ted Stevens (R) is the undisputed king of
earmarks and pork barrel spending on Capitol Hill.

Palin, before her campaign battlefield conversion, was a true believer in
earmarks. She pushed for the infamous Bridge to Nowhere before she was against
it. She hired a former Stevens aide to lobby in Washington for nearly $750
million in earmarks she has called "incredibly important."

But hers may not be a true conversion - to her credit. She told ABC's Charles
Gibson that she doesn't want to eliminate them, only to make sure they are done
"in the light of day, not behind closed doors, with lobbyists making deals to
stick things in there under the public radar." That's not what McCain says - "I
will veto every bill with earmarks, until the Congress tops sending bills with
earmarks." - but it makes a lot more sense.

Of course, there are many abuses. And some strange spending. In this week's
spending bill alone, Stevens, who is currently on trial in federal court on
corruption charges, was able to insert 39 earmarks worth $238.5 million,
including one McCain likes to attack (without identifying the link to his
running mate) to study the hibernation of Alaskan ground squirrels and black
bears.

Three times in recent years, McCain's lists of "objectionable" pork spending
have included earmarks requested by his new running mate. The problem isn't
earmarks but the abuse of them. Selling earmarks in the defense spending bill
sent Rep. Duke Cunningham (R- California) from the people's house to the Big
House. But that doesn't justify McCain's indiscriminate obsession with tossing
the baby out with the bathwater.

He ought to listen to his running mate when she talks about transparency. What's
needed is a heavy dose of sunshine. Publish them, explain them, show who is
behind them and who benefits, and then vote and be counted. Don't hang special
interest pork barrel spending in the middle of the night like ornaments on a
Christmas tree in the rush to adjourn.

Not all earmarks are bad. Some of that pork can be glatt kosher.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: SEN. JOHN McCAIN. Running mate Sarah Palin told ABC's Charles
Gibson that she doesn't want to eliminate all earmarks only to make sure they
are done 'in the light of day, not behind closed doors.' (Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 29, 2008 Monday

Letters

BYLINE: Leah Wolf, Haim M. Lerner, Howie Kahn, Gloria Deutsch, David Teich, Josh
Hasten, Y. Peterseil, Miriam Nagel

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 941 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Like it is...

Sir, - One more thing to thank God for on Rosh Hashana is writers like Caroline
Glick. Thank you for sharing her brilliance with us Post readers. She's a breath
of fresh air in today's media jungle of delusion.

As hard as the truth is to read, enlightenment is better than naivete ("A road
paved on reality," September 26).

LEAH WOLF

Metar

...unfortunately

Sir, - Re "A spy confesses, and still some weep for the Rosenbergs," Sam
Roberts, The New York Times, September 28): We should all still weep for the
Rosenbergs! It's not a question of whether they were innocent or guilty, but
whether the punishment fit the crime.

The state killed two people, parents of young children, while giving a relative
slap on the wrist to others who committed similar crimes of espionage. The
Rosenbergs deserved to be punished, but they did not deserve to die.

In our day, too, we have a severe miscarriage of justice in the case of Jonathan
Pollard. Life imprisonment in a maximum security facility for a crime others
paid for with only several years' incarceration is rather too much for the
greatest democracy the world has ever known to mete out.

HAIM M. LERNER

Ganei Tikva

The love you take

is the love you make

Sir, - Kudos to David Horovitz for his articles on Paul McCartney's visit to
Israel. I forwarded his exclusive interview with Sir Paul ("Speaking words of
wisdom," September 21) to BeatleFans.com - the largest Internet collector of
media pieces about the Fab Four, and the editor replied: "Fantastic!"

In "Mahmoud or Macca?" (September 26) your editor masterfully compared
McCartney's message to that of Iran's Ahmadinejad: peace and understanding vs
hate and destruction. The final words Paul sang at his gig last week were: "And
in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

Re his use of a ukulele for the introduction to "Something" ("Glad he got us
into his life," September 28): This particular instrument was a personal gift
from George Harrison to McCartney years ago. The "Quiet Beatle," who passed away
in December 2001, was a ukulele enthusiast, a member of the George Formby Fan
Club who performed at its annual UK convention in 1991. Shortly after his
co-Beatle's death, Paul inserted the "Something" tribute into his world tour,
playing the entire song on this small four-stringed instrument. A year later, in
London, the full band arrangement was introduced at the "Concert for George"
organized by Eric Clapton on the first anniversary of Harrison's death. This was
the version Paul played Thursday night in Tel Aviv.

As he left the stage, he called out in Hebrew, "Lehitra'ot" - see you again. I
can only reply, "Lu yehi," or "Let it be."

HOWIE KAHN

Jerusalem

Sir, - I'd like to correct fellow-Scouser and Liverpool expert Gabriel Sivan's
interesting letter ("Paul's alma mater," September 25). Brian Epstein's family
davened at Greenbank Drive Synagogue, not Childwall, and were "machers" there.

I remember them well, wearing their top hats for services; not just father
Harry, but also Brian and his younger brother, Clive, whom I knew well.

David Benkof ("How Jewish were the Beatles?" September 25) referred to Brian
Epstein as "openly gay." Well, he certainly wasn't in those shul-going days, and
not really for a long time after he became famous.

GLORIA DEUTSCH

Kfar Saba

Sinai sojourns

Sir, - "As Israelis head to Sinai, Barak nixes idea to close border" (September
25) missed an important component to Israeli choice. If Israelis are going to
travel to the Sinai regardless of government warnings, the taxpayer should not
have to pay for rescuing anyone kidnapped or injured while there. Israelis who
decide not to pay attention to official warnings must learn that they are
responsible for their decisions.

We demand it of Arabs. We should expect it of ourselves.

DAVID TEICH

Rehovot

This comparison

is an outrage

Sir, - How dare Ellis Weintraub compare Michael Freund's vision of a renewal in
Jewish patriotism to the propaganda spewed by a Nazi ideologist? ("Blood, soil,
and Michael Freund," September 25.) Weintraub, who claims that "this land has
Arab memories too," obviously has little knowledge of the history surrounding
the Land of Israel; or has chosen to ignore its reality.

While the Jewish connection to Israel has remained unbroken for the past 3,000
years, where were the so-called Arab "Palestinians" in the year 1867, for
example, when Mark Twain visited Israel and reportedly found a "barren, empty,
desolate country with a small, impoverished, scattered population?"

Weintraub compares Freund's vision to "Eastern fascist movements." Yet nowhere
has Freund suggested that Israel's Arab minority be liquidated. However, calls
to genocide against the Jewish nation are emitted regularly by Iran and Hamas.
And incitement against Israel continues unabated in the media of even our PA
"peace partners."

JOSH HASTEN

Jerusalem

Sir, - Ellis Weintraub wrongly assumes the "Right" is trying to take land away
from the Palestinians. Not at all. It's trying to give them land.

Was Mr. Weintraub here when Gush Katif was evacuated and the Gazaites entered
and made a garbage heap of everything? He would have countered with, "That's
their right." True, but it isn't their right to launch Kassams to kill Jews.

When it comes to the Palestinians, we're not talking about Greater Israel, but
Any Israel (at all).

Y. PETERSEIL

Jerusalem

Sir, - What a rare pleasure to read an article and agree with every word! Thank
you, Michael Freund, for reminding us of why we are here.

By giving up the Greater Land of Israel, our right to the small land of Israel
that will possibly be left will be more and more tenuous.

MIRIAM NAGEL

Ofra

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September 28, 2008 Sunday

Timely protection

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 710 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

As of this week, we are promised, clear legal stipulations will attach specific
price-tags to our time. A recently enacted law, which now goes into effect,
guarantees explicit recompense when technicians and repairmen keep us waiting
too long. Effectively implemented, this legislation could be the harbinger of a
very desirable change imposed on those who otherwise demonstrate contempt for
our time.

The notion that time is money dates back to antiquity. In 430 BCE, the Greek
orator Antiphon argued that "the most costly outlay is time."

But in Israel it's hardly ever the universal maxim. While value is certainly
ascribed to the time of some - governmental agencies, pricey professionals,
commercial firms, organized labor and service-givers, all of whom keep ordinary
citizens at their mercy - the precious moments of Mr. and Ms. Average Israeli
are frequently treated as having negligible, if any, worth.

Gripes about losing entire work days while waiting for tardy workmen aren't new.
In a previous attempt to address the issue, clauses were incorporated into the
existing Consumer Protection Law requiring service providers to show up within
two hours of the promised appointment.

But this statute is a rarely enforced dead letter. Companies ignore it with
impunity and impudence.

TO CORRECT this flagrant disregard for the law, MKs Gilad Erdan (Likud) and
David Tal (Kadima) initiated Amendment 24, popularly dubbed the Technicians Law,
which will levy a NIS 300 fine for a two-hour delay, without need to prove
damages, and a NIS 600 fine if the technician is three hours late. The
service-provider may offer other compensation, but the consumer's consent is
required.

The service provider may also reschedule ahead of time - but no later than 8
p.m. the previous evening, and only on condition that an alternative appointment
is fixed within "reasonable parameters."

Even this law offers wiggle room: Those who have hitherto abused consumers'
rights and time might now "adjust" by offering appointments too many days away,
or hiring more staff to meet more stringent timetables, but then passing on the
higher overhead to the clientele.

But whatever the outcome, the amendment represents a praiseworthy attempt to
move away from a culture of utter disdain for the public's time and patience -
the same sort of disdain that the latest labor dispute at Ben-Gurion Airport so
deplorably illustrates.

To those dependant on airport services, it doesn't matter who's right in this
particular tussle. Some quarrel or other occurs with cyclical regularity at the
airport and nobody can routinely count on departing or arriving as planned.

SOME 900,000 passengers will pass through Ben-Gurion in the course of this
holiday season. A foretaste of the feared chaos was served up for most of last
Wednesday in the form of a deliberate slowdown by employees, from baggage
handlers to flight controllers. As anticipated, all operations ground to a
near-halt.

The Histadrut Labor Federation has, moreover, declared an official work dispute
at the airport and threatens more labor trouble unless the Treasury ratifies a
deal, initialed by management and employees, that calls for pay hikes and giving
tenure to temporary employees.

The bottom line in these seemingly perennial airport disputes, no matter what
their merits, is that travelers, most of whom are on tight schedules, are forced
to suffer for a cause that does not remotely concern them. Their time is toyed
with.

Sometimes, the Histadrut deems it tolerable to plunge the airport into
industrial disputes that don't even directly affect airport personnel - such as
a strike some years ago in solidarity with unpaid staffers in insolvent
municipalities.

Disrespect for the time of others is common to inconsiderate repairmen, striking
airport employees and those who are responsible for them. It's part and parcel
of the same phenomenon. That is why we welcome Amendment 24, albeit amid concern
that, as happened with earlier well- meaning consumer legislation, it will not
be effectively enforced.

The proof of the pudding will be not in the good intentions, but in the
implementation. Acted upon, Amendment 24 could considerably improve our quality
of life.

Respecting one another's time is a fundamental part of trust.

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September 28, 2008 Sunday

Rosh Hashana relations

BYLINE: HERB KEINON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 898 words

HIGHLIGHT: The lack of family dynamics - good and bad - means most immigrants
will have a different experience around their Rosh Hashana tables than
native-born Israelis. Out There

It's been more than three decades since I sat in a cushy, upholstered seat in
Denver's Beth Joseph Congregation and listened (and fidgeted) as Cantor Weiss
chanted the Rosh Hashana Musaf service.

Thirty years is a long time, a generation. Yet to this day it is his schmaltzy,
operatic rendition of "U'netana Tokef" that for me will always be associated
with the Days of Awe.

So much so that if I don't hear his tunes - and I haven't for the quarter
century I've been here - Rosh Hashana doesn't exactly feel like Rosh Hashana.
Something is missing.

Which means that this Tuesday, after sitting in shul for six hours, when I
finally do get home I'll sing to the family some of Weiss's greatest hits -
always a big favorite with the kids.

"Enough, Abba, enough, I can't take anymore," my daughter will moan, as she does
every year, unaware - yet - that the High Holy Day tunes of one's youth have a
soothing affect on the soul. "Didn't you get enough in shul?"

It's odd, actually. As a child you go to a certain synagogue, get used to the
way things are done there, get tired of the way things are done there, can't
wait to move on, and then spend the rest of your life searching for the melody
that reminds you of that shul, and the warm memories with which it is connected.

When I first came to Israel I was struck by a certain disconnect at this time of
year. True, there was definitely a Rosh Hashana atmosphere in the air: the sale
of big jugs of honey, the end-of-year reviews in the papers, the ubiquitous
"We'll do it after the holidays." But still, when the day itself came - not all
the surrounding atmospherics, but the day itself - it did not feel like Rosh
Hashana. There I was in Jerusalem, but oddly Rosh Hashana felt more authentic in
Denver.

It all had to do with what I was used to. Rosh Hashana here was a lot hotter
than it was supposed to be. I connected Rosh Hashana with walking to shul
through piles of golden leaves, not in a sweat-streaked shirt.

Then there was the service itself. There it was super long, distant, formal,
punctuated by the rabbi's keynote address. Here the services were shorter and
informal: You go, you daven, you come home. No bells, no whistles, no frills.
I've grown to appreciate that, but at first it seemed to diminish the gravity of
the day.

AND THEN, of course, there was the lack of relatives shouting around the
mealtime table. That took getting used to, since holidays are family time, and
when you're new here - well, the family is small.

For a decade we had a neighbor who every year knocked on our door before Rosh
Hashana to wish us a good year. She did this on her way down to the car before
she and her family drove to her parents or in-laws for the holiday.

It was a kind gesture, meant as such, but one that always left me a tad gloomy.
There was our neighbor off celebrating with her extended clan, while The Wife
and I remained - as we did every year - at home, without extended family,
celebrating the holiday with friends.

Friends are wonderful, but as wonderful as they are, they are not family.

The lack of family dynamics - good and bad - means most immigrants will have a
different experience around their Rosh Hashana tables than native-born Israelis.
Perhaps, as a result, our meals will be a less stress- filled, but that hamula
(clan) feeling - that secure sensation of being part of a large, protective unit
- is missing. This is not a complaint, just a statement of fact.

As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I grew up with a very small extended family
- no relatives on my mother's side; grandparents, two aunts and three cousins on
my father's. My childhood table never brimmed over with relatives. But I didn't
know the difference; it's what I knew.

But my kids have a different reference point. They see friends with relatives
spilling out the windows, and want some too.

"Why can't we have relatives," the youngest son asked once, using the same tone
he uses when asking for more ice cream. Indeed, the lack of a large clan is
hardest on him, something that has to do with his bar mitzva in six months.

Predictably, fewer kin will fly in for that event than made the trip for his
oldest brother's bar mitzva. That's just how things work. When the first kid
first talks, walks or goes into the army, it's a huge event. By the time the
fourth comes around, it's far less potent. Which is the challenge of parenting:
making that 60th fallen tooth, or that 100th school play, seem important.

A respectable contingent arrived for my first son's bar mitzva: my dad, in-laws,
sister, brother-in-law, even a great aunt. Granted, we didn't exactly have to
charter a plane, but by our standards this was an Italian wedding. For the
second boy's bar mitzva - because of aging and expense - we were down to my dad
and my sister. Come next March, I'll be thrilled if my father still makes the
trip.

"Don't cross me, or I might not show up," I joke to my son. But he doesn't
laugh, genuinely bothered by this situation and wanting loads of relatives -
even if he doesn't know them - at his celebration, just like his friends.

He didn't laugh, but his kids probably will when I tell them that story someday.
Or, more likely, they'll probably be jealous that when their father was a kid he
didn't have to spend every single holiday with cheek- pinching aunts,
overbearing uncles and little obnoxious cousins.

And then we will have come full circle.

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September 28, 2008 Sunday

Searching our souls in the spirit of Ben Azai

BYLINE: Moshe Kaveh

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 674 words

HIGHLIGHT: We must afford universal respect to all of mankind, since God created
all of us in His image. The writer is the president of Bar-Ilan University.

When Rabbi Akiva ruled that "loving your fellow person is a great principle in
the Torah," his young student- friend Shimon Ben Azai claimed that the Torah had
an even greater principle: "This is the book of the generations of mankind." He
saw the verses before his very eyes: "This is the book of the generations of
Man, In the day that God created mankind, In the image of God He made him, male
and female he created them. And God blessed them and called them Man on the day
they were created."(Gen. 5:1) In other words, before talking about loving a
specific person so dear to us, we must afford universal respect to all of
mankind, since God created all of us in His image.

The way the Midrash Bereshit Rabba portrays this polemic between the two sages
teaches us that the halacha of Ben Azai was not the same as that of his revered
teacher. The accepted doctrine of Judaism of giving respect to others in general
is a substantial and binding commandment; not so showing love to a specific
person. It is easy to understand this approach, not only on the conceptual
plane. There is no way we can create a "normative" love, because love, with all
its importance to our lives, is a personal issue. Moreover, love has an aspect
of total altruism that not everyone is able to reach. But it is possible to
conduct one's life by giving respect to every human being, and in teaching the
younger generation to live by this norm as well.

It is possible - and necessary. Especially in light of the long list of events
that took place over this past year, and to learn from the opposite term. It
was, in practice, and to my great regret, a year of disrespect. A year one could
describe, in fact, as one in which respect was exiled from Israel.

I AM not necessarily talking about national respect. In 5768, Israeli society
achieved no small number of intellectual, scientific and technological
accomplishments that instilled pride in all of us. But this year also witnessed,
over and over, horrific revelations of painful disregard of respect for one's
fellow man.

The pinnacle - or more accurately, the most horrifying levels - reached this
year were marked by acts of murder. Pedestrians were killed by criminal gangs
simply because they happened to be caught in the firing line; unsuspecting
travelers in the path of reckless drivers; young, unprotected children,
neglected by their parents - the blood of all these and other victims cry out
from the bowels of the earth and remind us that there are those among us who
shockingly mock human existence and give not the barest thought for the respect
of others. Moreover, their cries also remind us that all of us, citizens of the
state, did not erect sufficiently strict preventives in the path of the
murderers - our public awareness was deficient in the need to stand up to this
societal rupture.

Disrespect is also apparent in other areas of our lives. It was a year of
disrespect in the medical field. A year of repeated violent attacks against
women and those dedicated to saving lives and easing suffering. The educational
system was not left untouched by disregard. We added to our vices the sin of
cheapening the system in general, starting from elementary school upwards.
Sufficient foresight in providing adequate material resources was not
implemented. Worst of all, we did not pay enough attention to the status of our
teachers, especially while at their posts - those who carry the vital burden of
educating the younger generation. The respect required is not reflected in the
teachers' salaries, in the attitude of many parents and other authorities
towards them, or in the behavior of a large part of the student body, so
influenced by the atmosphere prevailing in the street and our homes.

Perhaps because of this disrespect, the educational system is still not
emphasizing adequately the importance of respect in the spirit of Ben Azai. And
so, this New Year must open with the hope of a real change, of a return by us
all to the principle, "This is the book of the generations of mankind."

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The Jerusalem Post

September 28, 2008 Sunday

Letters

BYLINE: Paul Berman, Rahmin Halfon, Linda Marcus, Daniel Abelman, Shulamis
Bonchek, Judy Prager

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 864 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Exception to the rule?

Sir, - I would like to believe that the situation Elana Maryles Sztokman
described in "Racism in the name of religion" (September 24) concerning a Beit
Ya'acov school is an exception to the rule rather than the norm. I can attest to
the fact that in the Bnei Akiva religious school where my daughter was educated,
no such discrimination or racism existed.

One of my daughters married a man from a Sephardi family and her closest friend
is also Sephardi, so it is obvious to me that she was not taught to hate or look
down on the Sephardim in any way.

Any school that exhibits a negative attitude toward minority groups should be
exposed and the situation corrected. If it is not, the school should be closed
down.

Now that this practice has been exposed, I hope Ms. Sztokman will keep us
informed as to how the problem is being addressed.

PAUL BERMAN

Shoham

'Medina' - good.

'Memshala,' not always

Sir, - Michael Freund's idea of a "Land of Israel Day" does touch a cord in
those of us who feel that this concept has been sadly neglected over many years
("Reverse the process of 'de-patriotization,'" September 17).

He needs to bear in mind, however, that such a celebration would not help with
regard to those groups who, while believing in the sanctity of the Land of
Israel and its eternal bond with the Jewish people, are nevertheless immovably
opposed to the State of Israel.

Perhaps the way forward would be to use the occasion to launch a massive
educational effort in constitutional government. Most of the haredi communities
opposed to the state seem to have no understanding of the fundamental
distinction between memshala (government) and medina (state).

This is far from being an academic issue. A true perception of this difference
would fully legitimize the dissatisfaction many of these groups feel with the
government, without having to make them feel, in the process, inimical to their
own country.

While there are other issues, mostly theological, that lie outside the scope of
this letter, in my experience this is the only one that continues to provide
fuel for such an absurdity - as witnessed by the fact that when haredim are
asked the reasons for their hostility, the answers almost invariably refer to
what "they" did, or are doing.

"They," of course, refers to the poor medina, which has never harmed anyone,
whereas it should be referring to the memshala.

It is tempting to ignore or set aside this massive tide of ill will. But
consider that it emanates from our own people, and - for those of us who are
believers - from groups that could, were it not for this dreadful misconception,
infuse our beloved country with enormous spiritual merit.

Mr. Freund would be well-advised to take this matter on board through any
channels open to him, within or outside the scope of his envisioned "Land of
Israel Day."

RAHMIN HALFON

Jerusalem

Tough, but it's only stuff

Sir, - One of the first questions I asked my shipper back in June was, "What
happens if there is a strike at the ports?" He was very upfront and said, "This
happened once before during the Second Lebanon War. Stuff was sent to
Alexandria, Greece, Turkey and Italy. You take on the cost."

Why did I ask the question? I guess it was from keeping up with the news in
Israel since my first visit over 30 years ago. There have been all sorts of
strikes here. In fact, the first word I learned on kibbutz in 1973 was shvita.

All kidding aside, it's tough as new olim who are acclimating to everything all
at once to be without our stuff - right before Rosh Hashana - and know that
those tangible objects from which we gain comfort are vacationing in Italy at
our expense.

But after getting over my panic, I realized it was just that - stuff.

While I wait to move into my apartment, I'll borrow a mattress and other
household items and consider myself more lucky than my relatives, who arrived
here more than a few years ago with nothing ("Immigrant shipments are 'held
hostage' after port sanctions," September 24).

LINDA MARCUS

Jerusalem

Odd aroma

Sir - In your gastronomic coverage headlined "Sderot festival to boost women's
cooking ventures" (September 19), you reported that "it is being sponsored by an
investment of NIS 6 million." Then, in the following paragraph, "(The festival
will) generate revenues of about NIS 1 million."

Do the arithmetic. It has a strange smell, and it's not coming from the culinary
delights of the women of valor who cook under Kassams.

DANIEL ABELMAN

Jerusalem

The new 45...

Sir, - Judy Montagu's "An ode to age" (September 24) was an enjoyable read. I
wish newspaper articles would not refer to 60- or 65-year-olds as "elderly."

Being 60 or 65 isn't what it used to be. In this day and age, 65 is the new 45!

SHULAMIS BONCHEK

Jerusalem

... is whatever you feel

Sir, - I so enjoyed Judy Montagu's column and would like to add a few quotes
which illustrate what she said.

An infirm elderly friend of mine said recently, in answer to my query about her
health: "They call this the Golden Age, but I call it the Rusty Old Iron Age!"

A grandchild asked me: "Grandma, do you feel old ?" To which I replied, "Not
when I am sitting down."

Shana Tova to all, old and young.

JUDY PRAGER

Petah Tikva

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September 28, 2008 Sunday

Politics and religion

BYLINE: MARILYN HENRY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1032 words

HIGHLIGHT: Religious institutions must choose between participating in political
campaigns and qualifying for tax-deductible donations. Metro Views

Americans cherish their freedoms. I do not say this lightly or in jest. The
Constitution's First Amendment - enshrining the freedom of speech, of the press,
of religion and to peacefully assemble - is nearly sacred in its significance.

In this dramatic electoral season, there is angst in some circles that those who
lead us in our religious freedom - the clergy - must limit their freedom of
speech on the pulpit.

Despite the fact that political candidates talk about God and religion, if the
clergy appear to be politically partisan or openly endorse a candidate, they
could jeopardize their institution's tax-exempt status.

These limits do not target only synagogues, churches and mosques. The tax rules,
which have been on the books for more than 50 years, apply to all American
religious and charitable agencies (which is why American Jewish organizations
often seem overly cautious in the political arena).

Steering clear of partisan advocacy ensures that agencies and institutions
retain the favorable tax status that is their financial lifeline. American
Jewish organizations are wealthy relative to their European counterparts not
because American Jews are richer than Europeans, but because American tax
incentives promote donations to charity.

The gist of the issue is that religious institutions and their leaders have a
choice: participate in political campaigns or qualify for tax-deductible
donations. It's politics vs. the pocketbooks.

The gauntlet was to be thrown down on "Pulpit Freedom Sunday," which was
organized by the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian advocacy group.
The idea was that pastors would preach specifically political sermons to goad
the US Internal Revenue Service to enforce the law, which could cost the
churches their favorable tax status. Then, according to the plan, the defense
fund, which is based in Phoenix, would file lawsuits to challenge the IRS
sanctions.

The defense fund has said that the US, through the tax law, is stifling free
speech and intimidating the church. "It is the job of the pastors of America to
debate the proper role of church in society," said defense fund attorney Erik
Stanley. "It's not for the government to mandate the role of church in society."

Opponents, primarily from an organization called Americans United for Separation
of Church and State, say: "Churches are charitable institutions that exist to do
charitable things. That does not include politics."

AT TIMES, this debate seems hypocritical, especially when the most interesting
and informative interviews with the current presidential contenders, Senators
John McCain and Barack Obama, were conducted in August by Rick Warren, an
evangelical Christian minister of the Saddleback Church, a "megachurch" in
California.

While there is a difference between interviewing a candidate and advocating for
one, the fact was that the minister-as-moderator was seen as legitimate. Once
candidates are invited inside religious institutions to express views, isn't it
natural to expect a response from the moderator, or probing questions that may
strike some as partisan?

In the meantime, a new grassroots group called "Rabbis for Obama" was formed by
more than 300 rabbis - acting as private citizens who happen to be rabbis,
according to a report in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

They couch their involvement in religious terms: the need to counter what they
call lashon hara, attacks on Obama using innuendo, rumors and guilt by
association. But they also go farther, saying in an open letter, "We join
together to support Senator Obama for president, and we do so in the belief that
he will best support the issues important to us in the Jewish community."
(Presumably if any of the rabbis make these pronouncements from their pulpits,
the defense fund would come to their aid, although it is unlikely the fund's
backers would vote for Obama.)

Americans are divided in their sentiment about the role of religious
institutions in politics. A slim majority - including about 50 percent of those
who identify themselves as conservatives - think houses of worship should be a
"no politics zone," according to a national survey published in August by the
nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

However, four in 10 Americans believe that religious leaders should be permitted
to endorse candidates from the pulpit without risking their organization's
tax-exempt status, according to a survey by the First Amendment Center.

THE IRS hasn't revoked a church's tax-exempt status since 1995. The case
originated with ads placed in two newspapers only days before the 1992
presidential election, in which an upstate New York church warned Christians to
"beware" of Bill Clinton for his stands on abortion and homosexuality. More
recently, a liberal church in Pasadena, California, was investigated by the IRS
after a minister gave an antiwar sermon that concerned what Jesus would have
said about war to George W. Bush and John Kerry.

These days, the only things that seem to be clear are that it is unclear where
the IRS boundary is in practice,and whether Americans want politics from the
pulpit.

Free speech is not stifled; it's all about location - where something is said
and by whom. Those seeking moral guidance on political candidates may get it
from their spiritual leaders, just not from pulpits and not in the name of
tax-exempt houses of worship.

At the same time, though, determined clergy can find ways to indicate political
preferences. For instance, they can remind parishioners about a denomination's
view on divisive issues, such as abortion. When candidates hold sharply
different positions on some issues, a religious leader's comments on morality or
a doctrinal statement may sound strikingly like political advocacy.

As ministers, imams and rabbis decide how far to push the IRS this election
season, it is worth recalling that in the US, there is a strict separation of
church and state. The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and also bars
the government from establishing religion.

Nonetheless, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the American law that
created the "National Day of Prayer," which - in a good year - does not have
Christian overtones.

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September 26, 2008 Friday

Iranian impasse

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 726 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

What to do about Iran, and who should do it? According to the International
Atomic Energy Agency's report released earlier this month, Teheran continues to
expand its capabilities to enrich uranium, and to refit long-range missiles to
carry nuclear warheads. But the same report also acknowledges the IAEA's
powerlessness: "The agency, regrettably, has not been able to make any
substantive progress" on key issues of "serious concern."

Nor can we count on the United Nations, a body whose only action this week on
the subject was to host President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's appalling speech to the
General Assembly. Three rounds of UN sanctions on Iran have so far only granted
that country more time to acquire centrifuges and perfect their use. And
high-level talks on Iran that were scheduled for yesterday were canceled after
Russia's announcement earlier this week that it is no longer willing to support
the Security Council's proposal for a fourth, and stiffer set of sanctions.

This effectively spells the end of the UN sanctions process. "We don't see it
working or leading anywhere," UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev told The Jerusalem
Post.

As for diplomacy, two years ago, the Iraq Study Group led by James Baker and Lee
Hamilton proposed a "robust diplomatic effort" with Iran and Syria - the very
countries that move terrorists and explosives into Iraq. Two weeks ago, five
former US secretaries of state (Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Warren
Christopher, Henry Kissinger and Baker), gathering to give their advice to the
next president, agreed that the United States should talk to Iran. And on
Wednesday, after an 18-month study of the deteriorating relations between the
United States and the Muslim world during the Bush administration, a diverse
group of 34 American leaders - including Albright and Thomas Dine, a former
executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee - released a
report recommending, among other things, increased diplomatic engagement with
Iran.

The timing of their expression of faith in diplomacy to confront
nuclear-obsessed enemies could not have been more damaging to their credibility:
The very same day, the IAEA announced in Vienna that North Korea had barred
international inspectors from a reprocessing plant at its nuclear reactor
complex in Yongbyon. North Korea, which tested its first nuclear device in 2006,
intends to resume production of nuclear weapons-grade fuel there within a week.
So much for the disarmament accord reached after many rounds of intense
six-nation diplomatic negotiation.

ALL OF this, taken together, shows clearly that two notions must be dropped if
the Iranian regime is to be dissuaded from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The first is the persistent belief in the power of transformative diplomacy. The
time for polite diplomatic exertions in response to the looming Iranian threat
is long past. Such exertions have achieved about as much today as they did in
1935, when Hitler defied the disarmament provisions of the Versailles Treaty,
and British foreign secretary John Simon went to Germany for talks with the
Fuehrer.

Direct contact with Iran is not intrinsically problematic; indeed, it can be
central in conveying the urgency of Iranian compliance with its obligations in
halting its nuclear drive, and emphasizing the costs of failing to do so; the
problem, rather, is that the diplomatic community has proved itself woefully
incapable of addressing the threat with the necessary seriousness.

Nothing has been done so far to give the Iranian regime a compelling reason or
interest to stop its relentless push for the bomb. Yet it must be stopped. So if
military intervention is to be avoided, a second - and increasingly flimsy -
notion must be altogether abandoned: the idea that the UN is the sine qua non of
legitimate action in the international arena.

Hope now rests with the US and the EU to act swiftly, decisively and
independently to ratchet up their own sanctions efforts, and to apply their own
severe pressures. With French President Nicolas Sarkozy as EU president, now is
the time.

The stakes couldn't be higher - for Israel in particular (though by no means for
Israel alone). For at the very moment Ahmadinejad denies Iranian ambitions to
build nuclear weapons, he simultaneously reiterates their intended objective -
to see Israel wiped off the map.

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September 26, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Mordechai Spiegelman, Pesach Goodley, Robert A. Grauman, Henry Grunwald

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 906 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

This prejudice...

Sir, - Elana Maryles Sztokman exposes the ongoing and pervasive problem of
discrimination practiced by Ashkenzim against Sephardi students in some state
religious schools ("Racism in the name of religion," September 24). Yet in
describing the outrageous ostracism suffered by Sephardi children - an issue
that must be addressed by community leaders and educators - she falls into the
trap of stereotyping the Sephardi community.

She is enamored of the view that "Mizrahi and Ashkenazi identities take
different forms," saying that Sephardi religious observance of Shabbat is
primarily expressed by being within the family, while Ashkenazi observance is
based on obeying the letter of the Sabbath laws. According to this
interpretation of Sephardi practice, it's okay "to flick a light switch" as long
as you are spending Shabbat with your family.

Give me a break! Your writer and her doctoral research fellows who present this
superficial and egregious distortion should familiarize themselves with the
giants of halachic codification, especially Maimonides, and the author of the
Shulhan Aruch, Rabbi Joseph Caro, who happened to be Sephardim. Equally so is
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, one of the greatest halachic decisors in the modern world.

The late Rabbi B. Soloveichik,who grew up in Russia, once stated: "I grew up
with the Sephardim," meaning that Maimonides and Rabbi Caro, together with so
many other Sephardi halachic luminaries, were at the center of his studies and
consciousness.

It is part of the Zionist dream that a Jewish state will ultimately integrate
the various Jewish communities into one entity worthy of the name People of
Israel. Alas, we still have a long way to go.

MORDECHAI SPIEGELMAN

Jerusalem

...has to end

Sir, - This long-overdue expose of prejudice in religious schools was, sadly,
not sufficiently extensive. It involves boys' schools as well and exists within
segments of the Ashkenazi community too. It is not accompanied by kindness or
any Jewish value such as the Torah's insistence on the sanctity of every soul.

Last week I emailed an anguished criticism of this issue within my own
community. For good reason, I was (kindly and respectfully) told my criticisms
were harsh, but that every word was true concerning a terrible problem that has
hurt many children. From within the system it was admitted that the problem is
"all over."

I don't have any suggestions for resolving this issue, only forcing it into the
open.

We are in the time of year when all our deeds are being scrutinized On High. At
this, of all times, conscience must be directed at absolutely condemnable
practices.

Categorically, our Father Abraham and Moses were not Ashkenazim.

PESACH GOODLEY

Telz Stone

Ignorance

isn't bliss

Sir, - I could not let Shmuley Boteach's "Modern forms of prejudice" (September
16) pass without comment. His suggestion that liberals are making fun of Sarah
Palin because of the number of her children is absolutely false. After all,
Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated by an Arab in 1968, had more than twice the
Palins' number of children and no liberal democrat took the Kennedys to task for
the size of their family.

Nobody has criticized the Palins on this account. Rather, Boteach cited only
half of the question we are posing.

The real question isn't just, Don't they have the pill in Alaska? It's: Don't
they have the pill in Alaska when unmarried 16-year-olds are sexually active,
becoming pregnant and having to marry their 17-year-old high school dropout
boyfriends?

Politicians like Palin, who refuse to permit any form of meaningful sex
education, continue the culture of ignorance that results in the US having the
highest teenage pregnancy rate of any of the OECD nations.

It's the same culture of ignorance that prompted her to attempt to ban books
from the local library in Wasilla, and it should be recognized as such,
especially in a politician who aspires to the second-highest office in the land.

ROBERT A. GRAUMAN

New York

Protecting rights

Sir, - Peleg Reshef of the World Jewish Congress is right to warn against the
dangers of world Jewry pursuing a policy of political isolationism in relation
to the forthcoming UN Durban Review Conference preparations ("WJC: Jewish
organizations must engage, not ignore, Durban II," September 14).

At this point in the process there is still a range of opportunities to
influence and shape the agenda of the conference by working in partnership with
other NGOs and human rights agencies, most of whom view the possibility of a
repeat of Durban I with abhorrence.

It is precisely because of the firm statements from the governments of Britain,
the US, Israel and others, as well as the strong action already taken by Canada,
that Jewish NGOs should feel empowered to work to avoid the scenario of a second
UN-sponsored hate-fest.

This is why the institutions of the UK Jewish community have formed the Jewish
Human Rights Coalition, to enable us to engage with the Durban Review Process
from within the framework of a genuine human rights agenda. If, at any point, a
repeat of Durban 1 appeared likely, we would certainly withdraw our
participation and urge our government to do the same.

We consider this approach to be firmly rooted in the Jewish tradition of
dedication to the advancement and protection of fundamental rights and freedoms
for all people.

HENRY GRUNWALD, President

Board of Deputies

of British Jews

Chair, Jewish Human Rights Coalition, London

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September 26, 2008 Friday

Mahmoud or Macca?

BYLINE: DAVID HOROVITZ

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1326 words

HIGHLIGHT: EDITOR's NOTES. The coincidence of Ahmadinejad at the UN and
McCartney in Israel only underlines the choice that now faces the free world

As Paul McCartney and his band headed here late on Tuesday, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
was speaking from the podium at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

McCartney, as he told this writer in the interview we carried in The Jerusalem
Post on Sunday, came to Israel for Thursday night's Tel Aviv concert with an
"apolitical," "global," "peaceful" message. "My mission, if I have one," the
world's most successful musician said gently, "is humanitarian... I try to
encourage people to look for the good in each other and address the best."

By contrast, Ahmadinejad's address, delivered from what ought to be one of the
most prestigious platforms on the planet, was cloaked in professions of
obeisance to God, justice and human freedoms, but, as in years past, was
dishonest, malevolent and threatening.

The Iranian president - who, in accordance with the UN's own conventions, should
be prosecuted for inciting genocide rather than afforded this annual opportunity
to restate his toxic agenda - misrepresented his regime's nuclear program as
peaceful and transparent.

He gloated at the ostensible imminent demises of the Zionist regime ("on a
definite slope to collapse") and the American empire ("reaching the end of its
road").

And he dredged up the classic anti-Semitic libel in asserting that a pernicious,
secretive act of global puppetry is being perpetrated by a shadowy Zionist
cabal, manipulating the finances and the politics of the innocent, trusting
masses: "The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people
are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called
Zionists," he proclaimed. "Although they are a minuscule minority, they have
been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers, as
well as the political decision- making centers of some European countries and
the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner."

For having the temerity to grace our revived Jewish homeland with his melodic
presence, McCartney has been subjected to dire Islamist warnings of dubious
credibility and various assaults on his political rectitude. Resolutely unfazed,
McCartney said unassumingly in our conversation that he was always interested in
visiting new places and, taking advantage of "the offer of a gig," was coming to
Israel "to see what's what."

On first hearing, it seemed naive, at best, when McCartney, who has tried to
live with feet as close to the ground as four-and-a-half decades of global
celebrity can allow, compared the hostility and threats his Israel concert has
prompted to the mild opposition engendered by a recent show he played in Quebec
or to The Beatles' first- ever concerts in Japan's hallowed Budokan martial arts
arena in 1966. "I mean, when I went to Quebec there were certain comments from
people who said they thought it was entirely inappropriate for an English guy to
be playing in a French Canadian city," he mused. And "when we first went to
Japan there were people who were very upset that we were playing in the Budokan
because it had sacred connotations for them."

But the uneven parallel does make sense when it comes to McCartney's guiding
world view, which is to do what he thinks is right, come what may - to ignore
what he called "the voice in the crowd" that wants to bully and intimidate and
threaten, be it Quebecois nationalist or radical Muslim fundamentalist.

This robust commonsense attitude elevates the Liverpudlian musician with the
upbeat, uncynical, strive- for-the-good approach to life to a markedly higher
moral plane than those world leaders who hosted, and in many cases applauded,
Ahmadinejad's alternately disingenuous and vicious oratory.

WHAT A contrast the two men make.

McCartney, with an absence of bloated rock star cynicism, used the opportunity
of our interview to fiercely declare "that the world is a magnificent place and
that we are blessed to be on it." He expressed his delight in the "miracle" of
the birth of his latest grandchild and hailed the "human spirit" as a "great
thing."

Ahmadinejad seized his spotlight to shamelessly lie to the watching world about
his country's "full cooperation with the inspectors of the IAEA and the agency's
repeated confirmation of the fact that Iran's activities are peaceful."

Why wouldn't he brazenly portray black as white, aggressive as peaceful? He's
certainly getting away with it on the nuclear front right now, even as Israel's
Military Intelligence experts warn that Iran has produced between a third and a
half of the enriched uranium necessary for a bomb. The Russians this week
canceled planned top-level talks on tougher UN sanctions because, in the
shameful words of their Foreign Ministry, "We do not see any sort of 'fire' that
requires us to toss everything aside and meet to discuss Iran's nuclear program
in the middle of a packed week at the United Nations General Assembly."

And his regime has been getting away with it for decades. Ahmadinejad represents
a leadership that has commissioned major acts of terrorism in Lebanon (killing
300 American and French troops in 1983), Argentina (the 1992 and 1994 bombings
of the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA Jewish community offices, with a combined
death toll of over 100) and beyond. A regime that efficiently killed off
dissidents by the dozen across Europe in the 1980s. A regime that ruthlessly
indoctrinates, funds and trains suicide bombers via a murderous perversion of
Islam. A regime that organizes missile attacks on enemy civilians using hapless
locals as human shields.

And yet he gets to enjoy this annual installment of fawning obsequiousness from
the world body that was established to face down the very tyranny he represents,
the body that is breaching its own obligations in failing to thwart his
systematic efforts to expedite the elimination of our sovereign state.

As President Shimon Peres so rightly and bitterly noted, in comments he hastily
added to his prepared text before he addressed the General Assembly on
Wednesday, Ahmadinejad "is a disgrace to this very house, the United Nations,
its basic principles and values."

Moreover, the Iranian president gets to cap his annual visit to the land of the
genuinely free by peddling his abuse at a Columbia University lecture one year
and in interviews with newspapers, radio stations and even Larry King the next.
(NPR pressed him pretty commendably on several issues; King challenged him on
his Holocaust denial and noxious stance on Israel but also served up a series of
indefensible lobs that included: "Do you have a preference among the American
candidates?", "You would agree that you are, for want of a better word, a
controversial figure. Are you not?" and, most nauseatingly, "You don't look old
enough to have married children...")

THE COINCIDENCE of Macca in Israel and Mahmoud at the UN only underlines the
choice that now faces the free world. It's a choice between defying and
marginalizing the bullies, as McCartney chose to do in his own quietly adamant
way, or capitulating to them - as the United Nations General Assembly does
annually with Iran's president, and the international community is on the point
of doing with Iran's nuclear program.

Unfortunately, though, McCartney can only sing about "Little children being born
to the world... help them to learn songs of joy instead of 'burn, baby, burn.'"
("Pipes of Peace," 1990.) He can only warn about "Too many people preaching
practices. Don't let them tell you what you want to be." ("Too Many People,"
1971.) He can only plead that "we learn to give each other what we need to
survive together alive." ("Ebony and Ivory," 1982.)

The notables of the United Nations General Assembly, however, are charged with
guaranteeing our freedoms and protecting what McCartney calls the "pretty
amazing" human race. Instead, with time running out and inertia representing
defeat, they complacently applaud the leader of an apocalyptic regime as it
reaches out for the tools to destroy us.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 26, 2008 Friday

A road paved on reality

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1816 words

HIGHLIGHT: COLUMN ONE

Listening to the news in Israel these days, it is hard to escape the feeling
that the Israeli political discourse has become dangerously irrelevant.

Take Iran for example. On Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told
the heads of UN member states, "The dignity, integrity and rights of the
European and American people are being played with by a small but deceitful
number of people called Zionists. Although they are a minuscule minority, they
have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers
as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and
the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner."

Ahmadinejad then promised that Israel will soon be destroyed - for the benefit
of humanity.

For these remarks, he received enthusiastic applause from the world leaders
gathered at the UN General Assembly.

And how has Israel responded? It hasn't done anything in particular. And it has
no intention of doing anything in particular.

This point was made clear to the public on Wednesday when Israel's new UN
ambassador, Gavriela Shalev, gave an interview to Army Radio. While bemoaning
Ahmadinejad's warm reception, she said that the world leaders were probably just
being diplomatic. She noted that many of their ambassadors say nice things about
Israel to her in private.

Israel's woman at the UN devoted most of her interview to defending the UN. In
fact, she said she believes it is her duty not simply to defend Israel to the
world body, but to defend the UN to Israelis. As she put it, her job is
"correcting the UN's image in the eyes of the people of Israel."

Shalev's appointment to the UN was the work of Foreign Minister - and would-be
prime minister - Tzipi Livni. And her view of her role as Israel's ambassador is
strictly in keeping with what Livni perceives as the job of Israel's top
diplomats. They are the world's emissaries to Israel.

Livni has spent the better part of the past three years at the Foreign Ministry
telling us that the UN is our friend, the Europeans are our friends and that the
Americans and Europeans and the UN will take care of Iran for us. The
Palestinians are also our friends.

As anti-Semitic forces grow throughout the world, Livni has not communicated one
single policy for defending Israel abroad that doesn't involve the kindness of
strangers. Her response to Ahmadinejad's speech was a case in point.

The one thing the woman who believes that she has the right to lead the country
without being elected by anyone thinks that Israel should do in response to
Ahmadinejad's call for our physical destruction is to object to Iran's bid to
join the UN Security Council. Livni's only concrete response to Ahmadinejad's
promise to annihilate us was to issue a directive to Israel's embassies telling
our diplomats to ask their host governments not to support Iran's bid for
Security Council membership.

Livni doesn't actually think Iran is Israel's greatest challenge. The
Palestinians are. And as far as she is concerned, giving the Palestinians a
state by handing over Judea and Samaria (and Jerusalem, although she never says
it outright), as quickly as possible is Israel's most urgent task. We need a
two-state solution and we need it NOW, she says.

Neither Livni nor her colleagues in Kadima, Labor and Meretz, nor her supporters
in the Israeli media ever bother to acknowledge the troublesome, inconvenient
fact that the Palestinians don't want a state. They want to destroy our state.

This basic fact was made clear - yet again - on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Livni took time out of her busy schedule of political meetings with
Labor, Shas and Meretz leaders with whom she is attempting to build a government
without being elected by anyone, to meet with Fatah's chief negotiator Ahmed
Qurei. Although Livni refused to tell us what she talked about, she promised
that progress was made toward the urgent imperative of forming a Palestinian
state.

But Qurei was not so enthusiastic. In fact, he was contemptuous of Livni and of
the very notion of peaceful coexistence between the Palestinians and Israel.
After the negotiating session, Qurei told Reuters that if the talks toward an
Israeli surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem collapse, the Palestinians
will renew their terror war against Israel. In his words, "If the talks reached
a dead end, what do we do? Capitulate? Resistance in all its forms is a
legitimate right."

Just to make sure he understood Qurei properly, the reporter asked whether that
meant that the Palestinians would renew their suicide bombing campaign against
Israelis. Qurei responded, "All forms of resistance."

We have been here, of course, a million times before. This is the same threat
that Yassir Arafat and his men have made - and implemented - repeatedly since
signing the Oslo Accords with Israel 15 years ago. They use terror and
negotiations in tandem to squeeze Israel into giving away more and more of its
land. And it works.

When Livni heard about Qurei's remarks, she called him and reportedly told him
that they were unacceptable. So he said he was taken out of context. No skin off
his back.

He knew Livni wouldn't do anything. At the same time that Livni said his remarks
were unacceptable, she pledged to continue negotiating Israel's surrender of
Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem with him for as long as she remains in power.

Today, Livni and her colleagues in Kadima, Labor, Meretz and Shas are working
fervently toward forming a new government that will continue holding irrelevant
but dangerous negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians, and pretending
that Iran's nuclear weapons are not going to be used against Israel. They argue
that we need the "political stability" that they can provide us in this
dangerous time.

The Israeli media gives these fantasies their full support. Indeed, anyone who
notices that the world is sitting back and allowing Iran to acquire nuclear
weapons or points out that the Palestinians don't want a state is immediately
shot down as an alarmist and an extremist.

This national discourse - which has been the only one permitted in the country
since the advent of the "peace process" with the PLO 15 years ago - is Israel's
Achilles' heel. Until the general public is set clear on the reality of the
world confronting the country, there is no chance that Israel will take the
necessary steps to defend itself and ensure that it survives.

Understanding this basic fact, former IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.)
Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon has taken it upon himself to tell the Israeli public the
truth about the world we live in. Ya'alon is a rare bird among Israel's current
pantheon of luminaries. He is an honest man who lives by his principles, and he
doesn't bend them, ever.

Last week Ya'alon published a book called The Longer Shorter Road in Hebrew.
Ya'alon, whose tour of duty as chief of Staff was unceremoniously cut short by
former prime minister Ariel Sharon in June 2005 due to his trenchant opposition
to Sharon's planned withdrawal of IDF forces and Israeli civilians from the Gaza
Strip, has written a book that sets out the facts of life clearly, credibly and
passionately.

The book's title is derived from a speech that Ya'alon's commander, Yoram Ya'ir,
gave to his officers during the First Lebanon War. Ya'ir explained that short-
cuts are not necessarily better than long roads. In fact, it is often better to
take the longest route. As Ya'ir put it, "There is a long road that is short and
there are short roads that are long."

Ya'alon uses Ya'ir's point to demonstrate that the Israeli Left's insistence on
peace "now" and a solution to the Arab-Israel conflict "now" has placed Israel
on a strategic trajectory that has brought it, and will continue to bring it
only bloodshed and danger. Israel's enemies in the Palestinian Authority,
Lebanon, Syria and Iran view Israel's insistence on finding immediate solutions
to the threats it faces as a sign that Israeli society is collapsing.

As a consequence, every step that Israel has made toward appeasing its neighbors
- from recognizing the PLO and bringing Arafat and his legions into Judea,
Samaria and Gaza; to retreating from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005; to
failing to properly prosecute the Second Lebanon War in 2006; to doing nothing
to combat Hamas's regime in Gaza since 2007; to embracing the false paradigm of
peace at Annapolis last November - has strengthened their conviction that Israel
can and will be destroyed.

Ya'alon also dwells on the moral collapse of Israel's political and media elite
and that collapse's adverse impact on the senior command echelons of the IDF.
The abandonment of Zionist values and public and private integrity by our
politicians and media has cast and kept Israel on a path of self-delusion, where
the only thing that matters is immediate gratification. Politicians promise the
public "hope" based on illusions of peace- around-the-corner to win their votes.
The media support the politicians' lies both because of the media's post-Zionist
ideological uniformity and due to their refusal to acknowledge that their
populist demands for peace "now" have brought Israel only war and danger.

Ya'alon's book is part memoir and part polemic. He reminds Israelis of what it
is about us that makes us a great people, worthy of our land and privileged to
defend it. At the same time, he chastises our failed leaders who have tricked
the public into following a strategic path that endangers us. His book's
greatest contribution is not in providing a set path forward, but in
courageously and unrelentingly explaining the reality that surrounds us today
and in showing the public how it is that we have arrived in our current
predicament.

In exposing himself, his values and his beliefs to the public, and juxtaposing
his own leadership experience and personal integrity with the corruption and
weakness of our political and intellectual leaders, Ya'alon is telling the
public in a very clear way that there is an alternative to defeatism and
self-delusion, and that he - and we the public - represent that alternative,
that "longer shorter road."

Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their colleagues on the Left in the
Knesset and the media insist that we not take that longer road to security and
peace. In fact, they deny that it even exists. They attempt to convince us that
elections are unnecessary by arguing that there is no difference between
political parties today, because their short cut to defeat is the only path
available to us.

It must be fervently hoped that Ya'alon will soon enter the political fray. Like
the Likud under Binyamin Netanyahu, Ya'alon is proof positive that Livni and her
cronies are lying. There are great differences between those that would lead us
and the paths they would take.

And the only road to safety is the long road that is paved on reality.

caroline@carolineglick.com

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The Jerusalem Post

September 26, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Valerie Rosendorff, B.B.

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 329 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

A WORRYING SIGN

Re: "Getting there," September 12.

I agree that the lack of route maps and timetables at bus stops is frustrating
and inconvenient. Jerusalem Transport Master Plan spokesman Shmuel Elgrabli's
answer to In Jerusalem is inadequate. He claims there is a plan to place maps at
Jerusalem's bus stops, but "it is yet to be decided when to put the maps at the
bus stops." They may have to wait until the light rail system is completed in
another 20 months.

What is the problem with putting up simple timetables and route maps similar to
those used in most countries - printed sheets of paper inserted under
transparent frames attached to each bus stop? Changes in timetable or route only
involve inserting an amended sheet. This requires minimal expenditure. Instead,
the Jerusalem Municipality would like us to wait for a grandiose scheme costing
NIS 30 million - bus stops fitted with computer screens and buses with GPS
systems (this will also involve a long wait as the scheme is currently "only in
its initial stages of research").

We want basic, clear information now, that can be read by any traveler at any
bus stop, not an expensive marvel for the technologically literate at some vague
future date.

Valerie Rosendorff

Kiryat Tivon

STILL HOT AND BOTHERED

Re: "HOT and bothered," September 5.

Seems like this subject has developed into a "swarm of hornets" issue with all
the feedback you are receiving from the public.

When a company agrees to give a specific quality service upon a consumer's
agreement, then that company is obligated to provide said service at the
specific price quoted. Furthermore, I believe that rates should not be changed
until the consumer is duly informed of the change and the reason. There should
be some type of warning in advance (mail, e-mail, telephone).

Again, it seems to me that governmental supervision is lacking in the case of
cable companies' service and automatic raising of rates. That spells out to me
as negligence.

B.B., Haifa

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The Jerusalem Post

September 26, 2008 Friday

Mailbag

BYLINE: Valerie Rosendorff, Andy Selby, Batya Sherman

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 604 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Get real - give proper information

Dear editor,

Re: Bus stop blues (September 12)

I agree that the lack of route maps and timetables on Israeli bus stops is
frustrating and inconvenient. The JTMP spokesman's answer to Metro is pathetic;
i.e. there is a plan to place maps at Jerusalem's bus stops. But "it is yet to
be decided when to put the maps at the bus stops." They may have to wait until
the light-rail system is completed in another 20 months!

What is the problem with putting up simple timetables and route maps similar to
those used in most countries - printed sheets of paper inserted under
transparent frames attached to each bus stop? Changes in timetable or route only
involve inserting an amended sheet. This requires minimal expenditure, but the
Jerusalem Municipality would like us to wait for a grandiose scheme costing 30
million shekels - bus stops fitted with computer screens and buses with GPS
systems (this will also involve a long wait as the scheme is currently "only in
its initial stages of research"). Good luck to them!

Get real, Mr. Elgrabi! We are talking about Jerusalem here, and an Israeli
budget. We want basic, clear information NOW, that can be read by any traveler
at any bus stop, not an expensive marvel for the technologically literate at
some vague future date. And, incidentally, how many times have you failed to get
information from a bank or an office because "sorry, our computers have crashed
and we are waiting for a technician?"

Valerie Rosendorff, Kiryat Tivon

Naive? Let me repeat

Dear editor,

I thought the subject of Hot and Yes would have died down by now on your letters
page, but seeing as it has not and I am being accused of being naive, I think I
should explain something. I do not have my own private satellite dish and am far
from being well off. I have a full subscription to Yes with every channel; I
joined Yes from Hot when they had the rights to show English football in this
country. When I thought Yes would not have the rights for the last World Cup I
told them I was going to leave them and join Hot (They also got the rights in
the end).

It is exactly like when Hot said they were dropping BBC Prime and a lot of
customers threatened to leave and move to Yes. All I am saying is if you do not
like the service cancel it; nobody is forcing you to stay with them.

Andy Selby,

Eilat

Yes to ulpan, but help yourself too

Dear editor,

Re: Cutting class (August 29)

My dream was to make aliya and spend the first few months at a mercaz klita
(absorption center) learning Hebrew. However, when my husband and I arrived in
2005, we were already aged 61 and 66. Too old to be accepted at a mercaz klita.

Prior to aliya I attended ulpan classes for which we paid. I, therefore, had a
good foundation. Only this past year has an ulpan been made available - twice a
week for two hours. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute learning our beautiful
language with an excellent teacher. I have noticed that many students, after
five months at a full- time ulpan, are still unable to speak Hebrew.

I am by no means fluent but I firmly believe that one needs to continue
'self-study' after ulpan - use the language as often as possible, read
newspapers, books (including children's books) and speak to as many people as
possible in Hebrew. Most Israelis are pleased and very encouraging when we speak
Hebrew. I often hear "Kol hakavod lach!" despite my mistakes.

Israel gives olim so very much, such as sal klita (immigration benefits), ulpan,
wonderful medical treatment, etc. etc. Let's give rather than take. Thank you
Israel for the welcome we have received.

Batya Sherman,, Zichron Ya'acov

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The Jerusalem Post

September 26, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Maurice Picow, Tom Harris, Doug Greener

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 531 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Jewish 'spark' far from New York

Sir, - Hilary Leila Krieger's "Mountain Jews" (Cover Story, September 19) on the
small but vibrant Jewish community of Park City, Utah, reminded me of my own
upbringing in Oklahoma City. Although it is the capital of the Sooner State and
has a population of more than half a million, its Jewish population has never
been more than 300-400 families, or around 1,500 souls.

Despite its small size, the Jewish community of my birthplace, which included
one Conservative synagogue and one Reform temple, always made its presence felt
and had considerable Jewish education and culture available to Jewish children.

"Mixed couples" i.e., where one spouse was Jewish and one not, were encouraged
to expose their children to Jewish life whether or not the non-Jewish partner
eventually converted.

Like the community in Park City, the Oklahoma City community has included
several women holding high positions in national Jewish organizations such as
Hadassah. A Solomon Schechter Day School was established more than 15 years ago
and the Conservative shul, Emmanuel Synagogue, has a halachically-certified
mikve.

Examples like Oklahoma City and Park City help to keep the "spark" of Judaism
very much alive in locations far removed from New York City, Chicago and other
locations with large Jewish populations.

MAURICE PICOW

Netanya

Uganda & the 'Shema'

Sir, - In "Why not Uganda?" (September 19) Daniel Gordis laments that many
Israeli children are unable, after 12 years of schooling, to grapple with
important questions "about what kind of people they want to be, what kind of
country they want to build and how the tradition called Judaism fits into any of
that."

But neither pre-army programs nor schools will be able to solve the problem
while willfully ignoring the obvious: Our only link with this land is through
our Jewish history. The secularism of the founders, often given as "proof" that
we can belong here without Judaism, in fact declared the opposite: "Zionism
seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under
public law." Even the founders envisioned an Israel populated by Jews, not just
Israelis.

Unfortunately, it only took a generation or two of anti-religious secularism to
create not just children, but parents who don't care to be Jewish. The only
possible recovery is to fearlessly teach that the answer to "Why not Uganda?" is
also the answer to "What is the Shema?"

TOM HARRIS

Jerusalem

Following Alinsky

Sir, - In Samuel Freedman's wonderful appreciation of community organizing guru
Saul Alinsky ("Community calumny," September 19), the writer failed to mention
that right-wing organizations in the US were quick to adopt Alinsky's techniques
for their own purposes - much to Alinsky's chagrin.

Similarly, Alinsky's rejection of any "reconciliation" with his opponents - long
a rallying cry of the ultra- liberals - can be a fitting response from those
Israelis who feel abused to death by the Left's attempts to appease, pacify and
placate the intractable Palestinians at any cost.

Like Alinsky, we should believe in reconciliation "when our side gets the power
and the other side gets reconciled to it."

DOUG GREENER, Jerusalem

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The Jerusalem Post

September 26, 2008 Friday

Person of the year

BYLINE: AMOTZ ASA-EL

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1082 words

HIGHLIGHT: Middle Israel

Our person of the year 5768 is not an inventor who may have conceived an
instrument, a tool or a gadget that we suddenly all use, nor is he a man of
letters, who emerged with a must-read book, play or poem widely discussed in
cocktail parties, talk shows and literary evenings.

Our person of the year is also no Nobel Laureate who spent decades ensconced in
a lab before emerging with a revolutionary medication or vaccine, nor is our
person of the year an athlete whose defiance of biology, climate, gravity or
poverty inspired millions. And sadly, just as our person of the year is no
statesman who struck a peace agreement, or stood up for the poor, or
revolutionized education, he is also no gutsy dissident who confronted the
tyrannies that throughout this decade are steadily eroding freedom's gains over
the previous decade.

In fact, our year was so shorn of political distinction that even the bad guys
did not produce anything we haven't seen before, unlike, for instance, 5766,
when our person of the year was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; or 1938, 1942 and 1979, in
which Time magazine named as Man of the Year, and rightly so, Hitler, Stalin and
Khomeini respectively. They did so notoriously, but they sure shaped those
years, and much more.

If anything, ours was a year of non-leadership, certainly in the West, where
market mayhem humbled leaders from Tokyo to Washington, but also beyond the
West, where neo-czarist Russia lost face in a Caucasian brawl, Venezuela's
generalissimo failed in his attempted robbery of foreign oil companies, Iran's
mullahs ran for cover from inflation's wrath and North Korea's dictator
altogether vanished.

Under other circumstances, a year of non-leadership would have been welcome, as
it might have reflected an irrelevance of leadership, a time when rains fell,
harvests brimmed, investment yielded, wars ground to a halt and crime gave way
to charity. Alas, ours remained a time of conflict, perplexity, evil and
consternation - so much so that it wouldn't have been implausible to name as
Person of the Year Rose Pizem, the four-year-old whose murder united us in
shock. Then again, bad as many things remain about us, this atrocity represented
neither the moment in which it occurred nor the society in which it happened,
but a type of evil that transcended both.

Still, while 5768 did not bring overall moral bankruptcy, it was a year of
horrendous leadership, a year that began with bread riots in dozens of poor
countries and ended with a financial meltdown in the rich ones, a year when one
set of leaders gathered at Annapolis to deliver a peace proclamation as empty as
another set's toothless barks in the face of Russia's aggression.

It follows that the elapsing year's most dominant feature was non-leadership,
and Israel was no exception in this regard. If anything, the Jewish state's
record on this front stood in a class of its own. And so, this is what our
person of the year must reflect.

THE MOST banal choice, now that we know what we are generally looking for, would
be either the outgoing prime minister or his designated successor. When leaders
are named Person of the Year, it is invariably because they impacted.
Unfortunately, the man about to depart Israel's helm never this year constituted
a skipper, as he graphically demonstrated last July when his thinly veiled
effort to manufacture a dramatic photo resulted even in his Syrian enemy's
treatment of him as if he were air.

The woman who is out to succeed him is also ineligible for Person of the Year,
for the prosaic reason that, with all due respect to her well-tailored jockeys'
jackets, she has yet to mount the saddle, seize the reins and finally gallop,
let alone arrive, anywhere.

And so, in the aftermath of a year in which the winter's Winograd Report
highlighted our leaders' ineptitude, and the summer's court proceedings exposed
their immorality, we could possibly have sought a person who was effective in
calling our leadership to task.

In this regard, State Attorney Moshe Lador comes to mind, considering his
instrumentality in touching off the political process that is now under way.
Then again, the legal system's role in what has so far transpired remains to be
judged, particularly considering its indecision and stammering in the case of
former president Moshe Katsav.

Which leaves us with this grim year's non-heroes.

One thought is the fallen prime minister's longtime secretary and chief of
staff, who is being investigated in a slew of scandals involving or surrounding
the career she developed alongside her boss. Then again, while she may personify
many Israelis' quest to bask in power's warmth, and their failure to understand
public office's substance as a sacred mission rather than a financial
opportunity, the role she played in shaping the year boiled down to an effort to
prevent her boss's downfall. As such, she bucked the year's main trend and can
therefore not conceivably emerge from it as Person of the Year.

And so, by default, this leaves us with the most unsung, unassuming and
uninspiring of the year's assorted anti-heroes: Moshe Talansky.

THE WELL-MEANING octogenarian fund-raiser from Woodmere, a community whose warm
Jews would do anything legal to help Israel, doubtfully ever thought of himself
as a kingmaker, or a trailblazer or, least of all, a prophet of doom.

Moreover, what he told the people of Israel through a Jerusalem courtroom has
since lost some of its legal weight, as it was marred by some inconsistencies,
and then followed by even graver - and reportedly better documented -
allegations.

And yes, Moshe Talansky was not a man of authority. Though he routinely brushed
shoulders with power, and at times even looked it in the eye, he never wielded
it; he was only blinded by it - much like the man he was suddenly disempowering,
and possibly incriminating. And that is why he is our Person of the Year.

If it already must happen, one would expect an Israeli premiership to be
derailed by poignant judges, vicious terrorists, charismatic generals or savvy
statesmen. A successor to David Ben-Gurion is not expected to be deposed by a
grotesque reincarnation of the shtadlan, the Wandering Jew and the Court Jew, a
Long Island zeidi who sounds as if he had just sprung out of a Sholem Aleichem
fable. Yet in 5768, with Israeli leadership in its worst crisis ever, Moshe
Talansky was the ideal man to tell us just how low our leadership has sunk. That
is why he is Middle Israel's Person of the Year.

www.MiddleIsrael.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

614 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 26, 2008 Friday

General maneuvers and politics as usual

BYLINE: CALEV BEN-DAVID

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 993 words

HIGHLIGHT: Snap Judgment

In the autumn of 2000 my reserve unit was among the first called up on emergency
order to deal with outbreak of the second intifada.

At the end of our brief training period at the Beit Guvrin base, we were paid a
visit by then-chief of General Staff Shaul Mofaz.

After speaking with us, Mofaz took questions from the soldiers. One member of my
unit stood up and, in a voice shot through with anger and frustration, spoke
about how his employer had threatened him with dismissal if he did not make more
of an effort to get out of miluim.

Mofaz at first listened sympathetically and said he would press the government
to crack down on this troubling phenomenon. But when the soldier went on to
complain about how easy it was for less conscientious comrades to shirk their
duty by applying for the psychiatric deferments given too readily by the IDF, a
note of impatient irritation crept into the general's response. Rather than
respond with the sympathy one might have expected - be it sincere or not - he
left me with the distinct impression that he was simply blowing this soldier
off, despite the legitimacy of his point.

That incident has subsequently colored my view of Mofaz - not as an IDF
commander, a position he seemed to fill more than adequately, the capstone of a
storied military career for which he deserves all due credit.

But that day I saw tendencies on display that to my mind made him not
particularly suited for the give-and-take necessary in politics on almost any
level, an impression that has only been reinforced since then.

MOFAZ'S WILLINGNESS to be parachuted by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon into
the defense minister's post in 2002 only three months after leaving the army,
certainly violated the spirit - if not letter - of the law mandating a half-year
"cooling off" period for IDF commanders before allowing them to run for office,
and it did keep him from running on the Likud list just a few months later.

His impatience with normative political process was further demonstrated in 2006
when he at first declined to follow his mentor Sharon into Kadima, and then made
a last- minute leap to the new party only when it became clear he had no chance
in the race for the Likud leadership.

Now we have his behavior since losing a very tight race against Tzipi Livni in
the Kadima primary. Shortly before that vote, responding to rumors that the
foreign minister was weighing whether to remain in the party if she lost, Mofaz
reportedly commented: "Livni is not a loyal person... Kadima is holding
democratic elections for the first time, and MKs will refuse to accept the
results?"

Yet less than a day after his defeat - and hours after promising to do whatever
he could to help her and the party - it was Mofaz who announced he was taking a
"time-out" and resigning from his post as transportation minister, undermining
the effort by Kadima to form a new government even while some of his supporters
are challenging the primary results.

IT WOULD be easy to view Mofaz's maneuvering both in the past week and during
his entire post-army career as the kind of cynical tactics one expects from
politicians primarily concerned with advancing their own interests. But I don't
doubt for a minute that Mofaz sincerely believes he is acting in the best
interests of the country, that he is an indispensable man at this moment in the
nation's history, and such petty matters as political parties - be it the Likud
or Kadima - or proper governmental procedure pall beside the need for the kind
of leadership he can provide.

That outlook is all too typical of the many top IDF commanders or security
establishment officials who enter government at the highest levels without first
having to serve any kind of political apprenticeship, and are immediately hailed
by some in the public and media as the latest messiah to redeem either a
particular party or the entire nation.

Mofaz provides only the most recent example of what happens when such a figure
ultimately learns that his sense of political entitlement doesn't correspond
with the demands of a democratic system in which advancement is neither as
orderly, or absolute, as the military world he left behind.

In narrowly defeating Mofaz for the Kadima leadership and possibly the prime
minister's seat, Tzipi Livni promised that her victory would represent a break
from "politics as usual." That campaign rhetoric was most widely interpreted as
her banking on her reputation as the "Mrs. Clean" of Israeli politics,
especially in comparison with the disgraced Ehud Olmert. But in choosing Livni
over Mofaz, in selecting a female candidate whose few years in the Mossad
provide her with only the scantest of resumes in security affairs in comparison
with a highly regarded former chief of General Staff, Kadima members did break
with an unhealthy political precedent that, although it has nothing to do with
corruption per se, is still a symptom of some of the core weaknesses in the way
this society chooses to govern itself.

Livni has committed herself to pursuing a centrist peace-and-security agenda
that is Kadima's only tangible ideological substance, and that surely must be
the primary task ahead of her if she succeeds in forming a new government either
through coalition negotiations or new elections.

But her real opportunity to redeem her party will come only if she can truly
demonstrate a continuing capacity for breaking with politics as usual, both in
her own personal behavior as a party leader and possibly prime minister and her
ability to push for broader governmental reform.

That Livni is clearly not an Ehud Olmert, or a Shaul Mofaz, is reason enough for
Kadima voters to hail her victory as at least partial redemption for the ballots
cast for the party in the general election two years ago. Now, though, Livni
must prove she has the capability to leave her own mark on Israeli politics, or
soon enough she will find herself joining Mofaz on his time-out from it.

calev@jpost.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: A supporter of Shaul Mofaz, wrapped in a banner bearing the
slogan 'After me!' - a command that apparently worked better for Mofaz in the
army. (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

615 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 26, 2008 Friday

Moral ambiguity versus moral clarity

BYLINE: DAVID J. FORMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1075 words

HIGHLIGHT: Counterpoint

On July 22, 2002, an IAF F-16 dropped a one-ton bomb into the middle of Gaza
City, killing Hamas military leader Salah Shehadeh and 16 civilians, of whom
nine were children. More than 100 others were wounded in the attack.

OC Air Force Maj.-Gen. Dan Halutz, claimed to be satisfied "militarily and
morally" with the operation. He maintained that "the decision-making process was
right, balanced, proper and cautious," although he admitted there was a "problem
with the information" on which the attack was based.

Having served in Gaza during my years in the army, I can testify that it is
another planet - one of the most densely populated land masses in the world.
Dropping a one- ton bomb in the heart of Gaza City will necessarily cause
"collateral damage" - a euphemism for the murder of innocent people.

Much of the world was outraged by the attack. Local human rights groups placed
notices in the papers that Israel was morally irresponsible for killing
Shehadeh, for it knew that many civilians would be killed as well.

In Israel, there are very few secrets. After Shehadeh was killed, I received a
call from my daughter's father-in- law, who works in military intelligence. He
is opposed to targeted assassinations for a host of practical reasons. However,
in this case he claimed it was absolutely justified because Israel had hard-core
evidence that Shehadeh was planning a cyanide attack, the material to be
released into a water cistern of a mall in the North. The plan was so advanced
that Hamas' operatives in Tulkarm had been fully trained in dispersing the
cyanide. All that was needed was to transfer the deadly material to them.

Being aware of this fact, let us suppose that the security forces, for fear of
killing innocent Palestinians, opted not to assassinate Shehadeh and, as a
result, at the very least 100 Israelis were killed at a mall in Hadera. Many of
us who so vigorously protested Shehadeh's death may well have put ads in the
papers holding Israel morally irresponsible for not having killed him.

ISSUES, WHICH seem to be clearly defined as either right or wrong, do not always
possess the moral certainty we think they should. However, there are some
actions and behaviors that are so transparent, there is no room for moral
equivocation. Such has been the case with the "itchy- finger" response of
soldiers and border policemen to Palestinian protests against the security
barrier. This is not surprising when one considers the shooting deaths of 13
Israeli Arabs in the riots of October 2000.

A short while ago, at the continuing demonstrations against the security barrier
in the West Bank village of Ni'lin, where the fence has cut off the residents
from some of their olive orchards, videotapes revealed a complete lack of army
restraint in combating Palestinian demonstrators. Over a three-day period,
10-year-old Ahmed Mousa and 18-year-old Youssef Amireh were shot dead, and
28-year-old Ashraf Abu Rahma, bound and gagged, was lightly wounded when a
soldier shot him in the foot at point-blank range with a rubber-coated steel
bullet, under the watchful eye of his commanding officer. These are not the
first, and sadly will not be the last of such incidents carried out by our
security forces, which should be adequately trained in riot control.

At the outset of the first intifada, I wrote a piece for this paper titled:
"Symbols, images and historical reality" (April 5, 1990). What I stated then is,
unfortunately, still applicable today: "Images can take on a life of their own.
When etched into the public psyche, they can be a powerful tour de force,
coloring the very nature of a society. Often, images of past events are easily
identifiable because of the impact they made during the historical time frame in
which they occurred. When an Israeli soldier, even accidentally, shoots a
10-year old Palestinian boy, our memories are jarred, as the picture of a Viet
Cong boy, a pistol held to his head, executed by a South Vietnamese officer,
flashes before our eyes. That photo image became a symbol of the brutalization
of a society. Will the image of one lone Israeli soldier, seemingly firing
indiscriminately at protesting Arab children, become the symbol of Israeli
society?"

AT THE height of the last round of internecine battles in Gaza that saw more
than 100 Fatah members seek protection in Israel from Hamas, this is what we
witnessed: Israeli soldiers standing guard over Palestinians whom they had
blindfolded, handcuffed and stripped to their underwear. What image was
fostered: Abu Ghraib, Mogadishu anti-government rebels holding manacled hostages
in Somalia or, worse, pictures that haunt our most painful memories?

When watching and hearing of these horrid events, I do not have to wait for my
daughter's father-in-law to call and inform me of another side to the story.
There is no other side. In such cases, morality is not a relative term, but an
absolute one - and clearly, we have failed the test of moral decency.

But, equally as troubling as the shameful actions of some of our soldiers is the
apathy of others, who do nothing to stop their comrades-in-arms from engaging in
such reprehensible behavior. Further disturbing is the official army response,
which is always the same: "We are looking into the incident." Rarely is anyone
held accountable for such undisciplined conduct and, if so, it often is no more
than a slap on the wrist, as was the case of Abu Rahma (that he was not
seriously wounded should not lessen the crime).

FOR US Jews, the bounds of Jewish moral responsibility are clearly delineated.
The Talmud teaches: "Whoever has the capacity to prevent someone in his
household from committing a crime and does not, he is accountable for the sins
of the entire household..." (Shabbat 54b). If we are not all guilty, we are all
responsible, which is precisely why on the High Holy Days, when we ask
forgiveness for our sins, we do so in the plural: "We are ashamed, we have
transgressed, we have gone astray."

As we approach the coming Ten Days of Repentance and Atonement, may our communal
confessions of shame and guilt help us distinguish between matters of moral
ambiguity and issues of moral clarity. Let us collectively and individually vow
to define our image as a people that is committed to righteous behavior, even
under the most difficult circumstances - circumstances which shape a nation's
character and provide the ultimate test and measure of its ethical values.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Anti-security barrier protests in Ni'lin consistently turn
violent. Our security forces should be trained in riot control. (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

616 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 26, 2008 Friday

Goodwill ambassador

BYLINE: BARBARA SOFER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1263 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Human Spirit

I recently received by e-mail a short Kol Yisrael radio interview with Michal
Elboim, of blessed memory, taped several months before her death. Elboim, a
vivacious, dark-haired sabra from Hod Hasharon, was serving as a young emissary
of the Jewish Agency when she slipped off the bow of a motor boat in the Perdido
Bay and was mortally injured by the propeller. She was just 24.

The subject of the radio interview was Elboim's weekly telephone study sessions
with a very religious woman in Israel.

Listening to the broadcast, it's impossible not to be moved by Elboim's warmth
and conviviality. Indeed, her magnetism, her enthusiasm for Israel and her love
of people attracted young and old, Jews and non-Jews in North Florida and nearby
states. Soon after arriving in Pensacola, she was teaching Sunday School,
leading kids in Young Judaea youth movement activities and representing Israel
in campus fairs and debates. She organized letter-writing campaigns to the
children of Sderot. She was successful at finding and inspiring previously
uninvolved young Jews to take part in the birthright israel program. She sought
them out in the community and from the nearby US military bases. In the process,
she discovered Dan, a Hebrew-speaking Jewish navy pilot who became the love of
her life.

When this spunky young woman with patchy English managed to lecture about her
beloved Israel in synagogues, on university campuses and even in evangelical
churches, mostly she shared the passions of her own life. She told audiences how
she was a peer-counselor in the scouts, about the year she volunteered with
Ethiopian immigrants in Migdal Ha'emek, about the two and a half years she
served as an officer in the IDF and even the post-army backpacking trip in South
America.

IT WAS in Peru that she met young emissaries from the Jewish Agency and decided
that she'd like to serve still another year for the Jewish people before
starting university. She flew through the multiple stages of the admissions
process. By all accounts, she was dazzling and irresistible. She had everything
it takes to be the perfect goodwill ambassador - that is, nearly everything.

One day, the Pensacola community asked her to prepare something called a "Dvar
Torah." She was stumped. What exactly was a Dvar Torah? "I'm totally secular,"
explained Elboim on the air. "My Judaism is expressed through being an Israeli.
For the community in Pensacola, it is centered on synagogue and Jewish
holidays." She understood the paradox: She'd come to lead and inspire Diaspora
Jews, but in matters of Judaism proper they knew more than she did.

Not that she'd been assigned to Crown Heights. The Jewish community of
Pensacola, she explained on the air, has many non-affiliated Jews, a large
Reform temple and a smaller Conservative congregation.

Elboim surfed the Internet to find an answer for herself, and came across the
Web site of the Ayelet Hashahar Hevruta program. She could study with an Israeli
woman far more knowledgeable in Judaism than she was by phone. The program was
free - even the phone call.

So, over the international phone lines she met Giti Kenning, 32, a haredi mother
of four from Yeroham.

Kenning was recruited to the program by her sister-in- law who worked in the
Ayelet Hashahar office in Jerusalem where literally thousands of study
shidduchim are made. Kenning works in the Yeroham schools as a teacher of
children with speech and motor challenges. Both busy women initially committed
half an hour for the weekly phone sessions.

Kenning put a lot of thought into the weekly discussions. They began with the
weekly Torah portion and its relevance for modern life, and she let Elboim's
questions and interests guide the choice of sources. "Michal was so thirsty for
knowledge. Half an hour grew to an hour and a half and that wasn't enough. I was
unsure if I should be including material on Jewish practice as well, but in the
end I decided against it."

The subject of becoming more religious never came up, Elboim told the radio
interviewer. "Besides, I'm opposed the idea that you have to be religious to
study Judaism." Nonetheless, last Pessah, when Elboim and friends went hiking in
the Smoky Mountains, she surprised her friends by insisting on eating matza. She
dragged them from one sleepy hollow to the next seeking a corner store that
stocked unleavened bread.

THE TRUE gift of their study was her first exposure to a mindset in which
studying Judaism was cherished and even fun. "I hadn't opened a Bible since high
school, and suddenly I was reading in my spare time and finding it interesting."
For Kenning, the weekly Torah discussions were opportunities to see the Torah
from a fresh perspective. "Each of us brings a unique understanding to the
Torah, and I could tell from the beginning what a special person Michal was."

Her 10 months in Florida were coming to an end. In the synagogue newsletter,
Elboim thanked the community and urged its members to keep their Jewish identity
and Jewish commitment strong. She wasn't sure she would continue learning about
Judaism when she returned to Israel. She was already looking forward to starting
her BA in anthropology and Israel studies at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba,
and to living in a service-oriented village of students in the Negev, helping
children at risk.

Not far, actually, from her hevruta in Yeroham. For sure they would meet face to
face.

When Kenning didn't hear from her study partner in July, she assumed Elboim had
left without saying good-bye. They'd become close through the study. Then
Kenning's husband happened to see an article in an extremely religious newspaper
- one that rarely carried news about the secular community - reporting Elboim's
death. Kenning was devastated.

A thousand people attended Michal's funeral, according to her mother Shoshana
Elboim. "Michal knew people of every walk of life, but suddenly I saw a woman
wearing long sleeves, a long skirt and a kerchief on her head. She didn't seem
to fit in." Kenning had traveled by bus from Yeroham to part from the study
partner she'd never met but "who was as close as a sister." She introduced
herself to Elboim's parents.

SHOSHANA ELBOIM still doesn't understand why her daughter never told the family
about her weekly Jewish studies. She hadn't mentioned the radio program to them,
either. They heard it only after her death.

In the radio broadcast, Elboim is critical of the lack of Jewish education in
the Israeli education system, that she had to go to the Diaspora before she
understood the beauty of Jewish study.

But before we nod in angry and easy agreement, let's remember what this young
woman did receive at home, at school and in the scouts: love and commitment to
Israel, motivation to devote years to doing good deeds and a passionate desire
to serve the Jewish people. We need all of this and a knowledge of Judaism, too.
That would mean that we'd have to acknowledge and respect each other's strengths
and gifts. A tall order indeed, but a worthy goal for all of us.

The Jewish community of Pensacola recently dedicated a symphonic evening
celebrating Israel's 60th anniversary to Elboim's memory. The religious staff
members of the Ayelet Hashahar study program adopted a program of study and good
deeds for her sake and the next issue of the organization's magazine will be
dedicated to her so that the circle of those who honor her memory will be
enlarged. And so, Michal Elboim, who was able to bridge the chasms between
religious and secular, Israel and Diaspora, continues to be a goodwill
ambassador even after her death.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Michal Elboim. The 'totally secular' Israeli became curious
about religion while working with Diaspora Jewish communities. (Credit:
Courtesy)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

617 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 26, 2008 Friday

This is the way Kadima ends

BYLINE: SARAH HONIG

SECTION: OPINION ..ME ANOTHER TACK; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 1272 words

In one of his most important poems, "The Hollow Men" (1925), T.S. Eliot
speculates on how the currently living are perceived by the departed - "those
who have crossed with direct eyes, to death's other kingdom." He reckoned
corporeal mortals are remembered "if at all - not as lost violent souls, but
only as the hollow men, the stuffed men."

If we allow ourselves the interpretive liberty of adding the female gender to
Eliot's generalized plural, and consider it as referring both to hollow men and
women, stuffed men and women, then his prescient verses could perfectly apply to
Kadima's present leadership.

Eliot sardonically homes in on the gaping discrepancy "between the conception
and the creation." Between these, he writes "falls the shadow." Such an
obscuring shadow now darkly enshrouds the profligate promises disseminated in
all political directions - Left and Right - upon Kadima's conception. Kadima was
hailed as no less than the long- awaited "Big Bang," detonated to reorder
Israel's political universe and blow asunder its traditional components.

All that remains of the actual creation, just before Kadima's third anniversary
(November 21), is a dim shadow of 2005's excited hype, resonated ecstatically by
media cliques committed to the agenda of combating Zionism's so- called Right -
be it personified by settlers, the Likud, Binyamin Netanyahu, Uzi Landau or
anyone else who doesn't expediently run with the bon-ton pack and doesn't
faithfully follow its postmodernist fashions.

Copywriter of the Big Bang epithet, Labor alumnus Haim Ramon - now relegated to
Kadima's sidelines - is so out-of- the-loop and so indifferent that he didn't
bother to endorse any of the candidates in last week's party leadership primary.
More humiliating yet, no wannabe head- honcho so much as bothered to vie for
Ramon's support. Ramon's marginalization/apathy is emblematic of the state of
the party.

Only some 30,000 of its shadily recruited rank-and- file bothered to cast
ballots, and this despite inordinate media hoopla, orchestrated to drum up
enthusiasm and inflict upon Israel - sans elections - a new premier. Peace Now
has already embraced and learned to love Tzipi Livni in lieu of Labor flunky
Ehud Barak. She, in turn, realizing that the key to her political destiny lies
in a surrogate Labor clone, had proven herself exceedingly disposed to ditching
principles.

SINCE LIVNI became the establishment's indisputable darling, its left-leaning
loyal court-journalists did their tireless utmost to promote her fortunes and
deride her rivals. They glorified her with glowing paeans of praise, boosted her
prospects with uber-optimistic forecasts, commissioned and publicized
tendentious polls and declared her the primary winner before the voting
concluded.

When even Kadima members appeared reluctant to perform their part in the
pre-scripted political pageant, the media rushed to enhance Tzipi's chances.
Channel 1 - public-owned and paid for by you and me - allowed MK Yoel Hasson
ample airtime just before the primary's close to extol Livni and urge eligible
primary participants to hurry and vote for her and thereby save the nation.

The media predictably failed to squawk when, breaking the game rules, polling
stations were kept open longer to save Tzipi. Additional stations were opened at
Tzipi's request, where these helped her cause. However, similar requests from
Shaul Mofaz were denied outright. Still, despite all this, she merely managed to
squeeze out a hair- thin 1 percent edge. Given the small numbers at play to
begin with, Livni wouldn't have achieved even this minuscule majority were
everything on the up-and-up.

Thus, by dint of 431 individuals, an anyway evaporating party presumes to impose
Tzipi on us as head of our government. The rationale is that it's bad for
democracy to summon the entire national electorate to vote. By seeming to stick
to a synthetic party's hitherto- unimplemented strictures, the vox populi can be
subordinated to what several hundred hacks consider their opportune option. So
much for the moral authority of Tzipi's triumph.

This, of course, won't prevent superficial scribblers and shallow talking-heads
from championing the legitimacy of her elevated rank. Their skewed conception of
democracy calls for thwarting the popular sentiment if that sentiment isn't to
their liking. Common folks, believe our opinion- molders, don't know what's good
for them. The omniscient ones must steer the masses to the correct course.

What they did to Mofaz is but a hint of what they'll unleash on Netanyahu. And
they might succeed, because - as the ultimate anti-Bibi weapon in the Left's
arsenal - Tzipi can do no wrong. How reporters gushed at being served French
fries outside the beloved candidate's home! How they relished the delicacy she
said she prepared with her own hands! It's such readiness to kowtow to fawning
coverage conventions that prevented the press from delving into Livni's record.

Though she's presented as the fresh new force for change - Israel's counterpart
to Barack Obama - she's really nothing like him. While Obama is truly
inexperienced, Livni points to years in high executive office. Tzipi's pose as
the model of self-assured competence and no-nonsense know-how should naturally
invite investigation into what she had accomplished as minister.

WE WON'T even mention her silent acquiescence to Ariel Sharon's corruption
(after all, he was her patron) and her cowardly response to the corruption of
Ehud Olmert, Avraham Hirchson and other Kadima luminaries (after all, she didn't
want to jeopardize her career). We won't mention her support for the
incontrovertible fiasco that was disengagement (after all, Tzipi couldn't afford
to buck the party line).

But were our media even minimally objective and responsible, they would focus on
her conduct as foreign minister during the Second Lebanon War and her
interrogation in its aftermath by the Winograd Committee. Though under severe
fire for grossly mismanaged diplomacy, Livni managed never to give a straight
answer to a single Winograd-panel question. The diplomatic debacle she almost
caused - plainly due to failure to understand her interlocutors and anticipate
their moves - resulted in the disaster of the war's last three days. Forces were
dispatched to senseless battles to improve positions and salvage something of
the mess she made.

The end "improvement" was UN Resolution 1701. Livni now crows about it as a
particularly splendid feather in her cap, even if that resolution was never
worth the paper it was printed on. However, all's relative. Although highly
harmful, 1701 is a lesser disaster than what Livni had in the works previously.
Details can be accessed on-line in the Winograd protocols. They make fascinating
reading and should send chills down Israeli spines should Livni constitute our
new standard for leadership.

Tzipi offers the quintessence of what T.S. Eliot ascribed to "hollow men" (and
which we extend to include "hollow women"): "Shape without form, shade without
color, Paralyzed force, gesture without motion." If Kadima could field no
worthier a prime-ministerial nominee than Tzipi Livni - if her caliber is deemed
the fittest to headline Kadima - then the disparity "between the idea and the
reality, between the motion and the act," indeed staggers even jaded and cynical
political imaginations. That's why, instead of witnessing Ramon's
much-ballyhooed shattering of old frameworks, all we see is the way Kadima ends
- both in practical and ideological terms - as Labor's sorry substandard
substitute. In Eliot's words, it "ends, not with a bang but a whimper."

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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September 25, 2008 Thursday

Good Day Sunshine!

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 737 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Sometimes it seems like the desire by Israelis to just live normal lives without
constant drama is an unattainable dream. A case in point is the performance
tonight by Paul McCartney at Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv.

The show is cause for genuinely joyous celebration by the 40,000 fans who will
fill the grassy field, as well as by anyone who was touched by the remarkable
musical and cultural magic that McCartney's former group The Beatles created in
their relatively short existence.

However, there are those who would attempt to snatch the good will and messages
of brotherhood that McCartney's music represents, and turn it into a political
message, thereby elevating a tremendous culture story and event into yet another
Israelis vs. Palestinians issue.

British-based organizations The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and
Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign both
launched campaigns after the show was confirmed to urge McCartney to cancel his
performance in solidarity with the plight of the Palestinians at the hands of
aggressor Israel.

"Performing in Israel at this time is morally equivalent to performing in South
Africa at the height of the apartheid era," the PACBI wrote in a letter to
McCartney.

And in a further attempt to prevent Israeli fans from seeing and hearing
McCartney sing "Hey Jude" and "Yesterday," Omar Bakri, a Syrian-born Islamist
who broadcasts sermons out of Lebanon, warned that if McCartney valued his life,
he would cancel the show. "He will not be safe there, sacrifice operatives will
be waiting for him," threatened Bakri, who has been called a friend of al-Qaida
by CNN.

The resultant headlines around the world have shifted the focus from a positive
story about McCartney hand picking Tel Aviv to join Quebec City as the only
venue he's chosen to perform in during the second half of 2008, to yet another
story focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

An opinion piece that appeared earlier this week in the UK's Daily Mirror, by
McCartney's former press agent Geoff Baker, was entitled 'Willing to risk it all
in Israel', implying that McCartney's life would be on the line from the second
he stepped onto the tarmac at Ben- Gurion Airport.

While security insiders have discounted the threats, saying that Bakri is a
notorious media attention seeker who is more talk than action, the warning
certainly must have rattled McCartney's nerves. To his credit though, McCartney
has steadfastly refused to cave in to the pressure, saying that the show would
go on as planned.

"I was approached by different groups and political bodies who asked me not to
come here. I refused. I do what I think and I have many friends who support
Israel," McCartney said earlier this month.

In a more recent interview, with The Jerusalem Post last weekend, McCartney
chose to compare the threat to criticism he received when he played in Quebec
for performing in English at the time of a French Canadian celebration. "I tend
to just ignore those things and think there's always a voice in a crowd that
will say that," McCartney told the Post, adding "You have to realize that any
high profile event brings with it some worries... And I think that most people
understand that I'm quite apolitical and that my message is a global one and
that it is a peaceful one. So I just have faith in that aspect of what I do."

McCartney should be lauded for not caving in to the boycott calls or the
threats, and we welcome him and his message of tolerance with wide, open arms.
Israelis should take pride in the fact that the world's most successful
musician, according to the Guinness Book of World's Records, is going to perform
here tonight.

Promoter Dudu Zarzevsky's assertion that this is the "biggest cultural event
that Israel has ever seen" is not just hyperbole. The Beatles broke barriers,
established musical and fashion trends, expanded horizons and forever altered
Western culture's axis. And as drummer Ringo Starr said in the late 90s Beatles
Anthology documentary series, "it was all for love, and bloody peace. It was
fabulous."

Instead of issuing threats and calling for boycotts of the show, why doesn't the
Arab world organize concerts in which friendship and harmony are the main
themes? What if tens of thousands of Palestinians or Syrians gathered in
Ramallah or Gaza City or Damascus, and sang along to songs like "All You Need is
Love" and "Let it Be"?

Imagine.

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September 25, 2008 Thursday

Letters

BYLINE: Gabriel A. Sivan, Aharon Mayne, Daniel Sterman, Gerardo Lederkremer,
Mottle Goodbaum, Moshe Aumann, P. Yonah, Lipman Rabinowitz

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1159 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Paul's alma mater

Sir, - I was glad, as an older alumnus of the Liverpool Institute, to note Ruth
Posner's mention of the high school which Paul McCartney and George Harrison
also attended ("Welcome, Sir Paul," Letters, September 22).

Founded in 1825, the "Inny" welcomed lecturers such as Charles Dickens and Ralph
Waldo Emerson. It produced a host of distinguished figures including Charles
Barkla, 1917 Nobel prizewinner in physics; W.C. Kneale, professor of moral
philosophy at Oxford; Samuel Montagu, the Orthodox leader and the future Lord
Swaythling, Sydney Silverman, the Labor MP who consistently attacked Ernest
Bevin's Palestine policy, and classical composer John McCabe.

They were admitted on scholastic ability, not birth or wealth; Lord Oxburgh, the
eminent geophysicist, was one of my classmates.

Viewing the Institute as a "bastion of privilege," in 1985 a loony-Left city
council forced it to close down. It was the sponsorship and financial aid of Sir
Paul that led to the Victorian structure's rescue and reopening in 1996 as the
Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.

To David Horovitz's interview with Sir Paul ("Speaking words of wisdom,"
September 21) I would add the key role played by Beatles discoverer and
impresario Brian Epstein. His family belonged to Childwall Synagogue, as ex-
Merseysiders still recall.

Coinciding with Liverpool's celebration as European Capital of Culture 2008,
Paul McCartney's Tel Aviv concert tonight is singularly appropriate.

GABRIEL A. SIVAN

Jerusalem

Quadruple hutzpa

Sir, - New oleh Yitzhak Meirowitch complains that because of the recent port
workers' strike, "It's not fair that we are being charged double for something
that was not our fault" ("Immigrant shipments are 'held hostage' after port
sanctions," September 24).

How about being charged quadruple?

Our former phone company introduced a new computer system, which, according to
its personnel, caused chaos in their systems. They disconnected our telephone,
without warning. We protested, the customer "service" representatives agreed
that it was the company's fault, but said they could do nothing about it. Then
they slapped on a NIS 200 charge for the phone cancellation.

We agreed to pay, because we had spent hours getting nowhere with them.

On September 23, we were advised that we now owed them NIS 200 shekels - plus
NIS 350 for a collection service. Failure to pay by September 22 (the day before
we received their letter!) would result in an additional charge of NIS 200.

We call this Quadruple Hutzpa. And this time we are going to our lawyers.

We love this country, deeply. But you need an immense capacity for patience, and
humor.

AHARON MAYNE

Jerusalem

Man of dishonor

Sir, - Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law defines a whistleblower as "an
employee who brings wrongdoing by an employer or other employees to the
attention of a government or law enforcement agency and who is commonly vested
by statute with rights and remedies for retaliation." The American Heritage
Dictionary defines it as "one who reveals wrongdoing within an organization to
the public or to those in positions of authority."

Mordechai Vanunu is not a whistleblower but a leaker of classified defense
information and the cause of irreparable damage to Israel's national security.
To refer to him as a whistleblower is to grant him a legitimacy and honor he
does not and never will deserve ("Vanunu sentence cut due to ill health,"
September 24).

DANIEL STERMAN

Jerusalem

Misleading

Sir, - Without trying to minimize the problem of corruption in this country and
admitting that much is still to be done to reduce it, I would like to point out
some errors in your report on the recently published 2008 corruption perceptions
index.

The fall of Israel from 30th place to 33, or less than 2 percent, is within
statistical error; a quick comparison of the 2008 and 2007 tables shows most
countries shifting up or down by a similar magnitude. The headline "Israel loses
ground in its own perception of local corruption" (September 24) was therefore
misleading.

Your report also stated that Israel tied with the Dominican Republic, where
corruption is widely perceived. But the tie is with the island of Dominica. The
Dominican Republic, in contrast, is in 102th place.

GERARDO LEDERKREMER

Shoham

Who's clueless?

Sir, - Yoav Sivan postulates that Sarah Palin is a "big concern for Jewish
voters... because she is completely clueless" (about foreign policy) and
therefore, in the best interests of Israel, "Obama-Biden is the natural ticket
for the vast majority of Jews in America" ("Sarah Palin - pro- Israel by
default?" September 24).

I would remind Mr. Sivan that Ms. Palin is running for vice-president. Compare
John McCain's foreign policy credentials to Barak Obama's, and you could also
say that Obama is clueless.

Lets compare apples with apples.

MOTTLE GOODBAUM

Jerusalem

Stay youthful...

Sir, - The lines "those whose occupation gives them the drive to carry on"
particularly resonated with me ("An ode to age," Judy Montagu, September 24). In
my early eighties now, I find myself as busy as ever practicing my lifelong
occupation as writer-editor-diplomat. Only now I do it more or less at my own
pace instead of "9 to 5."

Indeed, I've always felt it a blessing and a privilege to be allowed to earn my
livelihood doing what I most enjoy doing, using my God-given talents as best I
can. And now I find this blessing carrying over into my retirement years.

And, of course, I start my day, every day, with The Jerusalem Post's Daily Brain
Teasers. Just to keep in shape.

So, thanks for that!

MOSHE AUMANN

Jerusalem

...by eating right

Sir, - Judy Montagu gave people excellent advice on how to remain young at heart
and in body during their golden years. There was one area, however, that she
neglected to address: the importance of eating properly.

You often have a situation where an elderly person living alone loses interest
in food and looks for shortcuts to good nutrition. There is no question in my
mind that the fastest way to run a strong healthy body into the ground is
through nutritional neglect.

P. YONAH

Shoham

Sir, - This op-ed missed the point. As the psychologist Viktor Frankl said,
people must lead meaningful lives. That's what makes many of our senior citizens
live longer.

One senior citizen I know is active in charitable causes and a member of her
synagogue board. One day a week she tutors, voluntarily, at an elementary school
that serves children from poor and uneducated families. She also attends classes
in Torah study, and an ulpan. She is just one example of the many women in our
community who give meaning to their lives.

Our synagogue has a daily Talmud class taught by a volunteer who is past 80.
Many of his students are retired. During the day, they review their daily lesson
and prepare for the next day's session.

Judy Montagu is wrong. It is not playing a daily Scrabble game that brings
longevity, it is living meaningfully.

LIPMAN RABINOWITZ

Netanya

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September 25, 2008 Thursday

Get out your crystal ball!

BYLINE: JONATHAN S. TOBIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 935 words

HIGHLIGHT: It's time once again to take the Jewish pundit quiz on next year's
news. The writer is executive editor of the Jewish Exponentin Philadelphia. He
can be contacted via e- mail at: jtobin@jewishexponent.com

Did you have a good time in 5768? For Jews around the world, it was the usual
assortment of bad - and even worse - news.

Of course, not everything was awful. It was a year in which the tide turned in
favor of the American war effort in Iraq. The rocket barrage on southern Israel
was halted (for the most part) by a cease-fire with Hamas, and two Israelis
kidnapped by Hizbullah were returned home. But, of course, the two were dead and
among those released in order to purchase their corpses was an Arab who had
murdered an Israeli family, a feat he continued to boast about as he was being
treated as a hero by the Arab world. So that probably has to count as even more
bad news.

Elsewhere, Wall Street is in free fall, so checking the value of your 401k plan
is as scary as watching Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talk about wiping
out the State of Israel.

So, as we pause to catch our collective breath, the arrival of a new Jewish year
has us all wondering about what's in store for 5769. Can things get worse? Of
course!

Yet, even as we cope with bankruptcies, bailouts, indicted prime ministers,
Islamists with nukes and American politicians and their cheering sections who
want to drink each other's blood, we shouldn't lose what's left of our sense of
humor.

BUT BEFORE the Almighty writes down just how much worse (or better) it will be
for us in the proverbial Book of Life, I present (with apologies, as always, to
former New York Times columnist William Safire) the annual "Jewish Pundit Quiz"
for 5769.

For the record, in last year's quiz, I was wrong about both presidential
tickets, with the dumbest one being my choice of Fred Thompson as the GOP
winner. In my defense, I made that pick before he had started campaigning and
proved himself a total dud. But before you laugh too hard, tell me honestly how
many of you really thought that John McCain would win or that Barack Obama and
Sarah Palin would be dominating the news. Save this column, and see how you or I
do in 5769.

So guess - or should I say prognosticate - along with me about the coming year.
My answers are at the bottom of the column. And remember, if you are worried
about the outcome, teshuva (repentance), tefilla (prayer) and tzedaka (acts of
justice and charity) may avert the severe decree. L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu!

1. The winner of the 2008 presidential race will be:

a. Sen. Barack Obama

b. Sen. John McCain

2. The Jewish vote in the 2008 presidential election will be (by percentage
points):

a. Obama 80, McCain 20

b. Obama 75, McCain 25

c. Obama 70, McCain 30

d. Obama 65, McCain 35

e. Obama 60, McCain 40

3. The composition of the U.S. Congress in 2009 will be:

a. Increased Democratic majorities in both House and Senate

b. No change in the current Democratic majorities

c. A split, with the Republicans re-taking the House while the Democrats hold
onto the Senate.

d. Republican control of both the House and Senate.

4. The American Jew who will have the most influence on policy in the next
administration will be:

a. Obama's Secretary of State Dennis Ross

b. Obama's National Security Advisor Barbara Streisand

c. McCain's Secretary of Defense Joe Lieberman

d. Republican House Minority Whip Eric Cantor

e. Imprisoned Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff

5. The average price of a gallon of gas at the pump in the United States at the
end of 5769 will be:

a. $3.00

b. $3.50

c. $4.00

d. $4.50

e. $5.00

6. The most important issue for most American Jews in 5769 will be:

a. The push for a national health care system

b. Support for the State of Israel

c. The growing number of destitute senior citizens in a depressed economy

d. Fear of the Christian Right and Sarah Palin

7. By the end of 5769, the prime minister of Israel will be:

a. Tzipi Livni of Kadima

b. Ehud Barak of Labor

c. Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud

d. Zionist Organization of America leader Mort Klein

e. Ariel Sharon, who will wake from his coma and ask what happened while he was
asleep

8. By 5769, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will:

a. Have been resolved, as Livni and Mahmoud Abbas reach an historic agreement.

b. Be sidelined, as an Iranian announcement of the successful test of a nuclear
bomb renders all other issues moot.

c. Have re-escalated, as new missile attacks lead to an Israeli all-out attack
on Hamasistan in Gaza.

d. Still be stalemated.

9. Which of the following will not be true in 5769:

a. Anti-Defamation League head Abe Foxman will decry the ubiquity of talk about
faith in American politics.

b. Most American Jews will be against the system of Congressional earmarks as
inherently corrupt but will applaud when local Jewish groups are the recipients
of federal largess.

c. Left-wing groups like J-Street will still be pushing for pressure on Israel
while ignoring the fact that both Hamas and Fatah have no interest in peace.

d. Philadelphia will still be waiting for its next major professional sports
championship.

e. The majority of American Jews will recognize that day schools are the key to
their community's future and take decisive action to make them affordable for
middle- class families.

10. The most important event in Jewish history next year will be:

a. Israel's decision to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.

b. The return of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit.

c. The outbreak of increased anti-Jewish violence in Europe in the wake of the
success of the "Boycott Israel" movement.

d. President Obama's convening of a summit at which Iran and Israel will pledge
to give up nuclear weapons.

e. President McCain's decision to move the U.S. embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv
to Jerusalem.

Tobin's answers: 1. b; 2. b; 3. a; 4. c; 5. b; 6. d; 7. c; 8. d; 9. e; 10. a

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GRAPHIC: Photo: REPUBLICAN HOUSE minority whip Eric Cantor. What are his chances
of being the most influential American Jew in the upcoming year? (Credit:
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The Jerusalem Post

September 25, 2008 Thursday

How Jewish were the Beatles?

BYLINE: DAVID BENKOF

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 520 words

HIGHLIGHT: Some of the intersections between the Mop Tops and Judaism.
Fabulously Observant

With Sir Paul McCartney performing in Tel Aviv tonight, it's a good time to
consider just how Jewish the Beatles were - or weren't:

* McCartney's most famous wife, and all but one of his children, were Jewish.
Linda Eastman McCartney was the daughter of American Jews. Her father changed
his name from Leopold Vail Epstein to Lee Eastman. Linda grew up in Scarsdale,
New York, an area with many wealthy Jews. Despite rumors to the contrary, the
family was not related to the owners of Eastman Kodak.

* Perhaps the most Jewish thing about the Beatles is their longtime manager,
Brian Epstein. Often called "the fifth Beatle," he played a role in the band's
discovery as well as nurturing them to the greatness they achieved musically and
professionally. The openly gay Epstein was especially close with John Lennon,
and rumors of a single instance of a physical hookup between the two on a trip
to Barcelona may be more Epstein's fantasy than actual reality. Epstein died of
a drug overdose in 1967 at the height of the Beatles' success.

* The months after the Yom Kippur War of 1973 were fraught with Israeli
self-doubt, which was explored by the country's first lady of song, Naomi
Shemer. Her most well- regarded songs of that period were adaptations of two
Beatles hits: "Hey Jude," and most famously "Let It Be." Shemer's version of
that latter song, "Lu Yehi," had a little in common with the original's music
and lyrics, and was mostly an original composition. For a composer who confessed
on her deathbed that she took the melody for her most famous work, "Yerushalayim
Shel Zahav," from a Basque lullaby, it is admirable that with "Lu Yehi" she was
upfront about borrowing musically from the biggest rock band in history.

NOT EVERYTHING was Jewish about the Fab Four, however. For example, at least the
first dozen of the Beatles' hit songs were about romantic love (until "Help!" -
or "Nowhere Man," depending on how one interprets "Help!"). But the Torah
doesn't emphasize romantic love, at least not Western-style romantic love. True,
Jacob's love for Rachel was intense, but the example of his father Isaac is more
dominant in Judaism - we aren't told that Isaac loved Rebecca until after they
were married.

Hebrew has one word for loving - and it's the same word for liking: ahava. We
are commanded to love God, and to love our neighbor, and implicitly ourselves -
but never specifically our spouses, much less our "dates." Now, arguably "All
You Need Is Love" is about loving thy neighbor. But I don't interpret any
Beatles song to be about loving God (could the guy who wrote "imagine there's no
heaven" even do that?).

But there are lots of lyrics about men loving women, sometimes ("Something")
quite erotically. There's even a Beatles song about same-sex love, probably with
reference to Epstein - "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away." The obsession with
romance in early Beatles lyrics is just not consistent with Jewish priorities.

Still, there are many intersections between the Mop Tops and Judaism, especially
on a playful level. Best of luck to Sir Paul on his visit to Israel and on his
concert this evening.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Was 'You've Got to Hide Your Love Away' about their gay manager
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The Jerusalem Post

September 25, 2008 Thursday

Time and negotiations

BYLINE: DAOUD KUTTAB

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 622 words

HIGHLIGHT: If one thing is clear in this conflict, it is that the absence of a
resolution has nothing to do with time and everything to do with the absence of
political will. The writer is general manager of Community Media Network, a
nonprofit organization registered in Jordan and Palestine, dedicated to support
and develop media in the Arab world.

The issue of time has always played a major role in most negotiations. Whether
they be labor negotiations or political ones, each side of any conflict waits
literally till the very last minute before revealing its true position. Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have been
quoted as saying that they wish they had just a little more time to reach a
solution.

Time and again we have seen the Palestinian-Israeli conflict reach a potential
breakthrough point only for the hopes of both peoples to be dashed because of
the failure to reach a resolution.

After six years of the Palestinian nakba and the creation of the State of Israel
and following more than 40 years of the military occupation of the rest of
Palestine, it is a joke for negotiators to wish they had just a little more
time.

At the Wye River negotiations with Binyamin Netanyahu, the 2000 talks with Ehud
Barak at Camp David and the Taba talks lead by Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed
Rabbo, negotiators used time both positively and negatively to proceed or to
scuttle the talks.

The tyranny of time led the negotiators in Taba to agree that "we have never
been closer to an agreement."

Of course such optimistic statements seem comic today, after thousands of
Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis have been killed, after Ariel Sharon made
his provocative visit to Al-Aksa Mosque and Israeli soldiers brutally put down
anti-Sharon demonstrations thereafter, all resulting in what is commonly called
the Aksa intifada or the second intifada.

IF THERE is one thing clear in this conflict, it is that the absence of a
resolution has nothing to do with time but has everything to do with the absence
of a political will. Before the latest Abbas, Olmert time- related quote, two
negotiators went about to prove that the issue is not time related. Both Beilin
and Abed Rabbo decided to make an intellectual exercise. They gathered experts
from both sides and reached consensus on a detailed agreement which is called
the Geneva Agreement. Hundreds of respected Israeli and Palestinian
intellectuals have since signed this document. Another two leaders, Sari
Nusseibeh and Ami Ayalon, also sat down and came up with a signed documents.
Again thousands of Palestinians and Israelis signed what became known as the
People's Voice.

Olmert has indeed shown signs of a political conversion. Not only was he
instrumental in the withdrawal from Gaza and the removal of Jewish settlements
there, but he has also publicly made breakthrough statements for a sitting
Israeli premier. His verbal burial of the idea of Greater Israel and his empathy
for Palestinian refugees has never been made so clearly by an Israeli official.
Speaking at the beginning of a cabinet meeting does give the sense of a change
of heart for a Likudnik who has been publicly proud of being a follower of Ze'ev
Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin and Sharon.

ABBAS HAS also shown courage not seen beforehand by a Palestinian leader. Not
only has he been a consistent opponent of the militarization of the intifada and
a strong opponent of the rockets from Gaza, but he has publicly lowered
Palestinian expectations for any large-scale return of refugees.

He has been weakened by losing Gaza to Hamas. His days might be counted as his
present term comes close to an end. On the other side, Olmert will soon be
running a caretaker government and thus unable to make strategic decisions.

Time might be a factor, but after decades of delays and procrastination it
certainly is not the only factor. Unfortunately, however, delays affect mostly
Palestinians under occupation while allowing the occupiers to continue their
illegal settlement expansion, thus negatively affecting a future solution.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: PA PRESIDENT Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appear
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have never been 'so close' to peace. (Credit: Bloomberg)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 25, 2008 Thursday

Blood, soil and Michael Freund

BYLINE: ELLIS WEINTRAUB

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1013 words

HIGHLIGHT: If Freund believes that this land belongs solely to the Jews, where
does that leave the Arab minority? Right of Reply. The writer is pursuing a
master's degree in Middle East studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Of all the criticisms that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert very much deserves, his
telling the far right to wake up to reality is not one of them. Olmert told his
cabinet last Sunday that the dream of a Greater Israel was impractical and
delusional. Jerusalem Post columnist Michael Freund condemned the comments in
his September 16 piece "Reverse the process of 'de-patriotization.'" His
reasoning, however, relied on a rather extreme combination of religion and
nationalism, an ideology that would leave little room for democracy and human
rights.

Freund told his readers that he does not "think it is a flight of fancy to
believe in the promises that God made to our biblical forebears - Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob - that this land would be ours and no one else's." Freund believes in
the divine right of Jews to continue to control all of Greater Israel. Replace a
few words here and there and Freund's piece could very well have been written by
someone from Hamas. As the Hamas Charter states: "The Islamic Resistance
Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Wakf consecrated for
future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not
be squandered; it, or any part of it, should not be given up."

If Freund believes that this land belongs solely to the Jews, where does that
leave its Arab minority? If he wants to keep the territories in perpetuity, what
should be done with the 4 million Arabs who live in the West Bank and Gaza?

Freund thinks his vision is the true Zionist vision, when actually he betrays
the very idea of Zionism articulated by Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion.
Herzl and Ben-Gurion wanted a Jewish and democratic state, one that would
respect the rights of its non-Jewish inhabitants. Freund finds the Jewish
possession of land more important than a society based on freedom and law.

BEN-GURION SPENT World War I in America and developed a profound respect for
American democracy, and later in life became acquainted with the British
Parliament; he would model the Knesset in Parliament's image. Herzl likewise
envisioned a European, liberal and democratic Jewish state. His novel Altneuland
contained an Arab character named Reshid Bey, who lived as a complete equal
among his neighbors.

In his piece, Freund called for a renewed patriotism, and as a first step
suggested an annual "Land of Israel Day." In his words, the "holiday would be
devoted to celebrating the land and our eternal bond with it" and would
emphasize "the Jewish people's attachment to this holy soil." This attachment he
places on people and soil points to an extreme form of nationalism, one that
bears a frightening resemblance to the "blood and soil" variety of nationalisms
that proved so destructive throughout the 20th century.

Herzl built his idea of political Zionism against the intellectual background of
the Romantic period of the 19th century. Romantic thinkers of the time wrote of
the ties of blood, of history and of language that bound together peoples and
nations. Similar to the idea of the German Volk, Zionism intended to gather a
people divided across political borders, a people that shared blood and a
culture, into a state to nurture that common culture.

The Romantic period foresaw states based on national feeling, group membership,
engagement with tradition and the preservation of peoplehood - all worthwhile
traits for any political entity. However, Herzl tempered his political dream
with the ideals of the Enlightenment, hoping to create not only a Jewish state,
but also a free state.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT thinkers - John Locke, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson -
wrote of states based on liberty, liberalism and the rule of law. Such states
would guarantee the rights of minorities and equality before the law, and Herzl
ascribed to his Jewish state the best of both the Enlightenment and Romantic
eras, a child of these two parents. Hence Herzl specifically reminded his
readers that Arabs would share full equality and rights in the Jewish state.

When Romantic nationalism dropped the Enlightenment from its worldview, the
catastrophic events of the 20th century ensued. The fascist movements of Europe
placed the nation and its people above the individual, and any individual who
did not fit exactly into the national ideal was marked. Michael Freund's idea of
a spirit that binds the Jewish people to the land, reminds one of the "blood and
soil" theories, popularized by Nazi thinker Richard Walther Darre, which
espoused a similar bond between the Germans and the German soil.

Faith, blood, people and soil - for Freund they are all wrapped together in a
biblical super-narrative. Such themes also come together in that most hideous of
Middle Eastern fascist movements, Ba'athism. Ba'athism's founding thinkers, the
Syrians Sati al-Husri and Michel Aflaq, composed a Koranic super narrative of
Arabism, soil and Islam. They wrote of an Islam as the great cultural and
intellectual achievement of the Arab people, and it in turn formed a symbiotic
relationship with Arabism, such that they flowed from one another, locked in an
eternal embrace.

FREUND FORGETS the Enlightenment half of Zionism, the one that guarantees the
dignity of the individual, while it is Zionism's Romantic half that encourages
the culture and pride of the Jewish people. Freund need only look around him,
and he will see that Arabs clean Israeli floors, build Israeli houses, mend
Israeli roads and then scurry back to their homes under the watchful eye of a
fearful population - indeed, Israel has much work to do to live up to its
Enlightenment heritage. This land belongs only to the Jews? No, this land has
Arab memories too.

If Freund wants to keep the territories, then the Zionism of Herzl and
Ben-Gurion would have to give them citizenship and voting rights. That of course
would seal Israel's fate as a Jewish state, Zionism's other legacy. Real
Zionists know that Israel cannot hold onto the territories. But if Freund's
vision of Zionism should come to pass, Israel would cast not a "light unto the
nations," but rather a shadow.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: THEODOR HERZL wanted a Jewish and democratic state that would
respect the rights of its non-Jewish inhabitants.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 25, 2008 Thursday

Appease Iran?

BYLINE: DANIEL PIPES

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 818 words

HIGHLIGHT: Appeasement was once a perfectly respectable form of diplomacy, but
since 1917 concessions have failed to mollify ideologically-driven enemies. The
writer is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting
fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

After Hitler, the policy of appeasing dictators - ridiculed by Winston Churchill
as feeding a crocodile, hoping it will eat one last - appeared to be permanently
discredited. Yet the policy has enjoyed some successes and remains a live
temptation today in dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Academics have long challenged the facile vilification of appeasement. Already
in 1961, A.J.P. Taylor of Oxford justified Neville Chamberlain's efforts, while
Christopher Layne of Texas A&M currently argues that Chamberlain "did the best
that he could with the cards he was dealt." Daniel Treisman, a political
scientist at UCLA, finds the common presumption against appeasement to be "far
too strong," while his University of Florida colleague Ralph B.A. Dimuccio calls
it "simplistic."

Neville Chamberlain mistakenly declared "peace in our time" on September 30,
1938. In perhaps the most convincing treatment of the pro-appeasement thesis,
Paul M. Kennedy, a British historian teaching at Yale University, established
that appeasement has a long and credible history. In his 1976 article, "The
Tradition of Appeasement in British Foreign Policy, 1865-1939," Kennedy defined
appeasement as a method of settling quarrels "by admitting and satisfying
grievances through rational negotiation and compromise," thereby avoiding the
horrors of warfare. It is, he noted, an optimistic approach, presuming humans to
be reasonable and peaceful.

From the prime ministry of William Gladstone until its discrediting in the late
1930s, appeasement was, in Kennedy's description, a "perfectly respectable" term
and even "a particularly British form of diplomacy" well suited to the country's
character and circumstances. Kennedy found the policy had four quasi-permanent
bases, all of which apply especially well to the United States today:

* Moral: After the Evangelical movement swept England in the early 19th century,
British foreign policy contained a strong urge to settle disputes fairly and
non-violently.

* Economic: As the world's leading trader, the United Kingdom had a vital
national interest in avoiding disruptions to commerce, from which it would
disproportionately suffer.

* Strategic: Britain's global empire meant it was over-extended (making it, in
Joseph Chamberlain's term, a "weary titan"); accordingly, it had to choose its
battles sparingly, making compromise an accepted and routine way of dealing with
problems.

* Domestic: The extension of the franchise made public opinion a growing factor
in decisionmaking, and the public did not care for wars, especially expensive
ones.

As a result, for over seven decades, London pursued, with rare exceptions, a
foreign policy that was "pragmatic, conciliatory, and reasonable." Again and
again, the authorities found that "the peaceful settlement of disputes was much
more to Britain's advantage than recourse to war." In particular, appeasement
steadily influenced British policy vis-^-vis the United States (in relation to,
for example, the Panama Canal, Alaska's borders, Latin America as a US sphere of
influence) and Wilhelmine Germany (the "naval holiday" proposal, colonial
concessions, restraint in relations with France).

Kennedy judges the policy positively, as serviceably guiding the foreign
relations of the world's most powerful state for decades and "encapsulating many
of the finer aspects of the British political tradition." If not a brilliant
success, appeasement permitted London to accommodate the expanding influence of
its non-ideological rivals such as the United States and Imperial Germany, which
generally could be counted on to accept concessions without becoming inflamed.
It thus slowed the UK's gentle decline.

POST-1917 AND the Bolshevik Revolution, however, concessions failed to mollify
the new kind of ideologically-driven enemy - Hitler in the 1930s, Brezhnev in
the 1970s, Arafat and Kim Jong-Il in the 1990s, and now, Khamene'i and
Ahmadinejad. These ideologues exploit concessions and deceitfully offer a quid
pro quo that they do not intend to fulfill. Harboring aspirations to global
hegemony, they cannot be appeased. Concessions to them truly amount to feeding
the crocodile.

However dysfunctional these days, appeasement abidingly appeals to the modern
Western psyche, ineluctably arising when democratic states face aggressive
ideological enemies. With reference to Iran, for example, George W. Bush may
bravely have denounced "the false comfort of appeasement, which has been
repeatedly discredited by history," but Middle East Quarterly editor Michael
Rubin rightly discerns in the realities of US policy that "now Bush is appeasing
Iran."

Summing up, the policy of appeasement goes back a century and a half, enjoyed
some success, and ever remains alive. But with ideological enemies it must
consciously be resisted, lest the tragic lessons of the 1930s, 1970s, and 1990s
be ignored. And repeated.

www.DanielPipes.org

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: GEORGE W. BUSH denounced 'the false comfort of appeasement,' but
'Middle East Quarterly' editor Michael Rubin discerns in the realities of US
policy that 'now Bush is appeasing Iran.' (Credit: AP)

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September 25, 2008 Thursday

'Feh' on hunting

BYLINE: LARRY DERFNER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 762 words

HIGHLIGHT: We don't admire hunters. RATTLING THE CAGE

'There was a story in The Jerusalem Post recently about how Sarah Palin was
driving a lot of the old Jews in Florida back into the hands of the Democrats.
They still didn't particularly like Barack Obama, but they disliked Palin more,
explained Steve Geller, a Jewish Democratic politician down there.

It wasn't just the evangelical thing, he said. "Most of our South Florida condo
people are appalled at seeing her standing over a moose."

Finally. Thank God. I'd like to shake the hands of those South Florida condo
people for saying what American Jews have been afraid to say ever since the rise
of the Right: We don't like hunting. We don't admire hunters. In fact, we think
they're a little strange, maybe even a little bit sick - and with some of them,
more than a little bit.

What sort of person kills animals for sport? For fun? You see this picture of
Sarah Palin kneeling in the snow over this moose she's just shot, and the moose
is lying there bleeding from the mouth - and everybody's supposed to applaud.
This is women's equality - women can kill moose, too.

By the way, this is not just a Republican thing; Hillary Clinton told the story
over and over about how she learned to hunt from her father. In 2004, John Kerry
made sure everyone knew he may be a Democrat with a Boston accent, but he was a
hunter, damnit.

Obviously, they were going after the redneck vote, showing they weren't prissy
urban liberals, they were real, red-blooded Americans. That's what you have to
do to get elected president ever since 1980, when Reagan took over, and country
became cool.

AND I have to laugh at these Jewish Republicans who are kvelling over Palin and
what a regular, down-to-earth gal she is. I'd like to see some of these verbose
Jewish neocons tromping around Alaska with a hunting rifle going after caribou,
whatever the hell that is.

Why don't they admit that they're put off by Palin's exploits in the snow, and
by hunting in principle, just like those Florida condo people are. This is not a
Jewish thing, and, as a Jew, I'm happy to say it's not. I know there are a few
Jewish hunters out there, and I want to say I feel sorry for you, you and all
your gentile friends, that this is how you find joy in life - by killing deer,
and moose, and rabbits, and ducks, and birds and whatever other animals you
enjoy shooting.

By the way, I don't mean to tar all gentiles as barbarians - I know that
millions and millions of gentiles are also sickened by hunting, maybe most of
them are. But let's face it, even if most gentiles aren't hunters, virtually all
hunters are gentiles.

After all, how many Jews are members of the National Rifle Association? (No, you
cannot count Charlton Heston, z"l.)

And I'm not one of those people who want to outlaw hunting. I don't think it's
"murder," I don't think animals have the same rights as people. Actually, I'm no
great animal lover at all. Actually, if you want to know the truth, I identify
with the humorist Fran Lebowitz, who, when asked to name her favorite animal,
replied: "Steak."

And I don't hate guns, either; I got a big kick out of target practice in the
army. I'm also not a stickler for gun control; I understand that in some places
and some situations, a gun is a good thing to have, and I'm not convinced that
rounding up guns in America would bring the crime rate down to European levels.

It's just that I don't like the idea of killing animals for pleasure, and I
don't think being a hunter is anything to be proud of. I wouldn't do it, and
frankly, I don't think I could be friends with somebody who did it, or at least
somebody who did it passionately, and it seems to me that all hunters are
passionate about hunting. It doesn't strike me as a hobby you can pursue
half-heartedly.

The South Florida condo people have a term for it: goyishe naches. Gentiles'
idea of happiness. Not all gentiles, of course, but too many of them, including
Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and, of course, Dick Cheney. (Just
think - if the yidden in Florida had known all along that Cheney was such a
remarkably eager hunter, Al Gore probably would have won in 2000.)

So let's all of us Jews, or virtually all of us, along with the vast, civilized
majority of gentiles, stand up and say: Feh on hunting! You think that makes you
a man, or a strong woman? It makes you a nut! You should be ashamed of
yourselves! Unless you're starving, leave the poor animals alone!

And now that we've told the rednecks and the politicians who pander to them what
we think of that great American pastime, shall we talk about stock car racing?

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: GOV. SARAH PALIN and three of her children at a rally in
Florida. She knows how to hunt down the source of her favorite food,
moose-burger. (Credit: AP)

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September 25, 2008 Thursday

A day in the life of coexistence

BYLINE: SETH J. FRANTZMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 924 words

HIGHLIGHT: Nowadays coexistence more often than not means two people who have
everything in common pretending that they are from different backgrounds. The
writer is a doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In its book review section on August 23, the Economist included two books by the
late Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim. Although the review was ostensibly about
music, which the books are also ostensibly about (Everything Is Connected: The
Power of Music by Barenboim and Music at the Limits by Said) the article was
titled "Friends across the divide" and included the cliche "working together
from opposite ends of the Israeli-Palestinian divide."

The article thus claims that Barenboim and Said are practicing "coexistence" and
"learning about the other" when they discuss music and discuss politics. Thus
Barenboim's West-East Divan Orchestra which he founded with Said in 1999 is part
of this coexistence. The article once again reminds us of the how most
coexistence is really just about two people who already agree masquerading as
coexisting.

It was the same story with a BBC article on August 28, entitled "Summer camp
sows seeds of peace," which is ostensibly about the Seeds of Peace organization
which sends young Palestinian and Israeli teenagers to the Maine woods for
summer camp where they learn about "the other" and practice coexistence. The BBC
showcases two girls who are practicing this coexistence, Nadia Tibi, the
Israeli, and Majdoline Shahed, the Palestinian.

But Tibi and Shahed are both Arabs - and presumbably both Muslim - the only
difference being that one is from Israel and the other from the Palestinian
territories.

Then there is the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker non-profit, whose
"Profiles of Peace: celebrating 40 years of Israeli and Palestinian peace
builders" ostensibly provides profiles of Jews and Arabs who are practicing
peace. But the only Jews selected seem to be the most extreme anti-Israel voices
and most of them are only Israeli in citizenship, they were almost all born in
the United States or elsewhere. They include Jeff Halper, who recently went to
Gaza illegally to campaign on behalf of Palestinians, and Amira Hass, who lived
in Gaza for the better part of a decade reporting only on Palestinians.

The Palestinians, such as Jad Issac, practice peace by doing the same thing the
Israelis do, working with Palestinians and encouraging Palestinian nationalism.
This coexistence project doesn't involve people who are coexisting at all, they
all agree on their condemnation of Israel and they all focus exclusively on the
rights of Muslim Arab Palestinians.

RETURNING TO Barenboim and Said, it is worthwhile examining just how much of a
charade it is to claim they are different in any way. Both were born to wealthy
families. Both enjoy the music of Richard Wagner, the famous anti-Semite who
inspired Hitler, and they both condemned Israel at every opportunity to the
extent that Barenboim even holds Palestinian citizenship, just like Jeff Halper.

But Said's masquerading as a Palestinian Arab is almost as comical as
Barenboim's attempt to masquerade as an Israeli Jew. Said spent less than a few
years of his life in Jerusalem and this was not because he was barred from going
there. He spent his childhood at one of his parents' multiple homes in Egypt and
Lebanon, living with servants, and later immigrated to the US. His father had
American citizenship because he had volunteered to fight in World War I, and
Said spent a few of his youthful summers in the Maine woods at camp, perhaps the
same camp where Seeds of Peace is now located.

Said was an Anglican Christian, and his English was better than his Arabic. His
parents were disdainful towards the culture of the Middle East and made fun of
the idea of an "Arab general" leading the Arabs against Israel in 1948. Said's
early experience at coexistence with others was with his family's Jewish female
servants and his Greek and Armenian drivers. His house was located in a posh
area alongside the houses of Europeans who resided in Egypt, and he rarely even
met the Arabs he would spend his life defending.

He was so ensconced in European culture that on one summer holiday in Jerusalem
he was taken to a photo studio in the Old City where he dressed up in fake
Beduin clothes alongside his sister and had his photo taken by an Armenian
photographer, much as many Europeans used to do at that time (dressing up like
Lawrence of Arabia) and much as Americans do in Tombstone, Arizona when they
dress up as cowboys and play the part of Billy the Kid. Said captions this photo
in his autobiography Out of Place, "traditional Palestinian dress" but his
wealthy Arab family never dressed this way and no wealthy Jerusalemite Arab
family did either. Later Said would term this portrayal of the romantic Arab
world of Lawrence of Arabia, "Orientalism," a term that applied, ironically, as
much to himself as those he critiqued.

But just as the Argentinian-born Barenboim plays the Israeli, a country he has
rarely resided in, to claim that he is somehow critiquing his country, Said
played the Palestinian. Neither had anything to do with Israel or the
Palestinians in their daily lives and neither was ensconced in the everyday
culture of a place such as Jerusalem. They aped the culture and recalled a few
youthful moments spent in the country to weave a tale of coexistence and Arab-
Israeli conflict into their writings and professional lives as an academic and a
musician.

Together they symbolize the extent to which coexistence more often than not
means two people who have everything in common pretending that they are from
different backgrounds to make themselves more interesting to the outside world.

sfrantzman@gmail.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: EDWARD SAID with his sister Rosy, Jerusalem, 1941. Did his
Anglican Christian parents, like their Western peers, dress up their children in
costume? (Credit: from 'Out of Place', Said's 1999 autobiography)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 24, 2008 Wednesday

Playing legal hardball at the public's expense

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 674 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch proved this week that she can play
hardball just as ruthlessly as Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann. Unfortunately,
the main losers in the game the two often seem to be playing are not the players
themselves but the Israeli people, who want a just and objective legal system
led by those they can trust as having the public interest foremost in their
minds.

The public squabble Beinisch and Friedmann have conducted over the past 18
months has done nothing to enhance the people's confidence in the judicial
system. On the contrary, its stature has never fallen so low.

Friedmann is primarily to blame for this state of affairs, if for no other
reason than that as minister of justice, he has the power to pass laws and make
changes in existing legal arrangements. From the beginning, he has tried to use
that power to ram the reforms he wants down the throats of the courts and its
supporters without the slightest attempt at dialogue or compromise.

Time plays a critical role in Friedmann's considerations. He knows he has only a
limited period to make the sweeping changes he seeks and must hurry if he wants
to make a lasting mark and mold the legal system to his views.

Beinisch is clearly on the defensive. Her "only" power is to adjudicate; she
cannot initiate legislation or other action to safeguard the court's current
powers. But Beinisch proved on Monday that given the opportunity, she can be as
formidable as her adversary.

THE DECISION of the three justices on the Judges Election Committee to cancel a
critical meeting scheduled to fill three vacancies on the Supreme Court came as
a complete surprise to Friedmann and the other committee members. The justices
waited until the meeting began to drop their bombshell, though they could have
discussed the matter with Friedmann beforehand, or at least warned him of their
decision in advance.

They knew they had the power to enforce their will since, according to a new law
requiring a majority of at least seven committee members out of the total of
nine to elect a candidate, they could block any appointment.

The judges based their decision to cancel the meeting on a High Court verdict
handed down on December 26, 2005, in which it upheld a decision by the state
against appointing new members to the religious council in Kiryat Ono because a
caretaker government was then in power.

In its ruling, written by Justice Ayala Procaccia, the court said: "In this
period, the government must restrain itself in the application of its powers
regarding matters for which there is no urgency or special need to actÉ There is
a delicate balance between the obligation to act where there is an urgent need
to do so and the obligation to maintain restraint in applying executive powers."

Clearly, in a matter of "delicate balance," reasonable arguments can be made to
defend either course of action. One obvious justification for taking action was
the fact that the three slots on the Supreme Court have been vacant for more
than two years and the remaining 12 justices are overwhelmed with work. Another,
even more relevant justification is precisely the public interest in seeing the
justice minister and Supreme Court president cooperating instead of battling.

Appearances are crucial in this matter. Beinisch's position can easily - perhaps
correctly - be attributed to her desire to prevent Jerusalem District Court
Judge Judith Tsur's appointment to the Supreme Court. According to this feasible
scenario, Friedmann insisted on appointing Tsur and was willing to let Beinisch
make the other two choices in return. Beinisch rejected the compromise.

It is a matter of public record that Beinisch pulled out all the stops to
prevent the appointment of another Friedmann favorite, Prof. Nili Cohen, to the
Supreme Court. The crisis over Cohen's appointment may, in fact, be the source
of the fatal hostility between Beinisch and Friedmann ever since.

One fight should have been enough. Now it was time to bury the hatchet.
Unfortunately, Benisch refused to do so.

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September 24, 2008 Wednesday

Sarah Palin - pro-Israel by default?

BYLINE: YOAV SIVAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 887 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is a journalist and the Meretz representative to the World
Jewish Congress. www.YoavSivan.org

During the fierce rivalry between Sen. Hilary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama over
the Democratic nomination, at times it seemed the latter was the only Democratic
candidate who could turn the bulk of Jewish voters away from the Democratic
Party.

A near perfect score on Israeli-related issues from AIPAC, coupled with
unquestionable evidence of a being circled by Jewish lifelong friends, close
aides and party operatives, were hardly enough to ease the unfortunate suspicion
that had regrettably been the burden of a middle name with a Muslim sound or the
more serious allegations regarding Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright.

But then Sen. John McCain invited the Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, to be his
running mate, and made it perfectly clear to the lifelong Democratic Jews who
had second thought about Obama: Their true home is nowhere but in the Democratic
Party.

True enough, McCain has become a turn-on to many Jewish voters who are liberal
on internal affairs but hawkish on foreign policy, who after eight years of
George W. Bush in power, considered McCain to be exactly the Republican they
could stomach: not tied to religious right and religiously driven, understanding
the fine line crossing faith from policy, with an impressive record in the
Senate that suggests that even if he can be a hard- liner on security, he's far
from extreme on the dividing internal issues.

But this is exactly what makes Sarah Palin such a turn-off to the same group.
Palin is progressive on nothing but naming her children. She is strongly
pro-life and opposes abortion even in the case of rape; she vetoed a bill
denying benefits to gays as unconstitutional; she endorses teaching creationism
alongside evolution in schools; and she supports teaching intelligent design in
public schools. To top it all off, on security and foreign policy, a big concern
for Jewish voters and strength of McCain with them, she's completely clueless.
It's not that she's got a bad record on Israel - she's got no record at all.

ADMITTEDLY, WHEN it comes to foreign policy Palin's attraction becomes a
trickier matter. You can expect she enjoys some liking among Jews who generally
assume that if you are conservative on internal affairs, it will translate into
being conservative on external issues. Even if thus far she didn't have to
bother herself with the threats to the existence of the Jewish state, when she
ascends to national prominence, she'd follow her conservative instinct and will
have Israel's interests close to heart.

Perhaps. Still many, who wish to see that the incumbent's support for Israel is
shared by a new, younger, feminine politician, would have hard time with a
candidate who derives her insights into foreign policy from the proximity of her
home to the Russian mainland. Her recent appearance on TV where she exhibited
such incompetence in understanding, never mind defending, basic concepts of the
right-wing doctrines that she supposedly upholds, is alarming. While it is fair
to say that some Jewish voters would interpret this incompetency and ignorance
as a promise for pro-Israel stance, for others this provides a horror show of a
politician without any record on foreign policy - including on Israel - possibly
with only a heartbeat of a 72 year old separating her from the White House.

Take, for example, Joe Lieberman, the Democratic senator turned into an
independent, who shared the Democratic presidential ticket with Al Gore in 2000.
His strong and powerful endorsement of McCain resonated well among like-minded
Jewish voters, where his appeal is especially strong. Their hearts and votes
have always been with the Democratic Party, but they suspect Obama and his "talk
with Iran" has too soft a foreign policy.

When Lieberman says, "I'm here to support John McCain because country matters
more than party," and bluntly identifies himself as a Democrat, his speech was
intended for the Jewish household in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey,
where the Jewish population may be pivotal in determining the final color of
their state on Election Day.

However, when Lieberman comes to endorse the joint McCain-Palin ticket and call
the Alaska governor "a reformer," he loses credibility. Support for McCain is
one thing, coloring Palin as progressive is another.

Let's make no mistake. In six months Obama is not going to gain the status of
the darling of the Jewish community, of which substantive parts have been
gradually shifting to the right. Surely he will win the vast majority of Jewish
votes, but still suspicion and lack of enthusiasm in some quarters of the Jewish
community can harm him where he most needs that backing.

IN AN election that is everything but decisive, a few points in each direction
in a few key states with considerable Jewish population can help determining the
identity of the person in the White House. Yes, liberal Jewish voters, many
previously supporters of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, were willing
to consider McCain, now that Obama won the Democratic nomination - some unlike
outspoken Lieberman, only in their heart of hearts and under the anonymity of
the ballot box. But inviting Sarah Palin onto the Republican ticket should make
them think twice and remind them that the Obama-Biden is the natural ticket for
the vast majority of Jews in America.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: GOV. SARAH PALIN addresses a campaign rally in Wisconsin.
Support for McCain is one thing, coloring Palin as 'progressive' is another.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA has a near-perfect score on Israel issues from AIPAC. (Credit:
AP)

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September 24, 2008 Wednesday

Racism in the name of religion

BYLINE: ELANA MARYLES SZTOKMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1254 words

HIGHLIGHT: In state religious schools, only the Ashkenazi version of
religiousness counts. The writer is an educator, writer, researcher and
activist.

There are moments when I find myself truly ashamed to be part of Israeli
society. I had a moment like that recently as I stood outside the Supreme Court
with women from Ahoti, a Sephardi feminist organization, waiting for a ruling on
the religious girls' school in Emanuel where racism is so entrenched that
parents will do all it takes to keep antiquated Jim Crow-like separations in
place.

What is happening in the Beit Ya'acov school is nothing less than the
formalization of racism. Here the school implements a policy in which Sephardi
girls are not allowed to be in a class with Ashkenazi or hassidic girls, and
they have different teachers, different classes and even different recess times
and a fence between their yards just to ensure that the two groups do not mingle
during the breaks.

It's not just Emanuel, but in other religious girls' schools around the country,
such as Elad, where parents protested to ensure that a Sephardi girl would not
be allowed in to the class. Protested! There have been reports from around the
country of girls being rejected or ejected from schools because of the color of
their skin or their last name. And even though the High Court ruled last week
that the apartheid has to end, the school and parents are refusing to comply,
thus rejecting civil as well as moral obligations. This is not the post-Civil
War South, but Israel of 2008, where I would have expected more people to be
outraged by this blatant racism.

"WHAT'S HAPPENING in the Beit Ya'acov is outrageous," said Yael Ben-Yefet, one
of the leaders of Ahoti. "The girls get the message that they are deformed, that
they are less good, that there is something inherently wrong with them. This
happens everywhere in Israel, but it is the most prominent in this school."

This story comes on the heels of a similarly shocking exposure of racist
practice in a religious school in Petah Tikva. Earlier this year, in a state
religious school, the school physically and academically separated the Ethiopian
girls from the rest of the school - separate teachers, separate curricula,
separate rooms, separate recess.

My kids and I spent some time last year at a predominantly Ethiopian preschool
in Mevaseret Zion, shortly after the Petah Tikva events came to light. One
morning, as the kids all played together in the sand, the teacher said, "This
community is very hurt. It just doesn't understand how such a deep-rooted hatred
can exist in the country that its members dreamed of coming to."

The teacher suggested that as a form of healing, kids from around the country
come and play with Ethiopian kids in preschool. It sounds so basic, and yet that
basic sense of morality and equality is so profoundly lacking.

It's no coincidence that many these stories of racism take place in religious
schools. Religious schools are drenched with practices that created social
hierarchies between those who are "more" and those who are "less," or those who
are "in" and those who are "out." Indeed, for my doctoral research on religious
school culture, I discovered multiple hierarchies intersecting and intertwining
in religious schools via a discourse that takes for granted Ashkenazi culture as
morally, intellectually and religiously superior to Mizrahi or Sephardi culture.

The demeaning of Mizrahi kids is sometimes subtle, but often strikingly overt.
Discrimination may take the form of teachers casually referring to "Ashkenazi
intellect," and "Mizrahi emotion," or where the highest tracks become
predominantly Ashkenazi and the lowest tracks predominantly Sephardi, based
presumably on "intelligence." Mizrahi students are typically penalized and
suspended more often than Ashkenazi students; they are reprimanded for the same
offenses that Ashkenazi kids get away with, and are lectured on how to avoid
things like dropping out, getting pregnant or turning on a light switch on
Shabbat. Mizrahi students are assumed to be "problems," on the margins of
society, teetering on the edge of an abyss or at high risk of being deemed the
worst of all - non-religious.

Indeed, in religious schools, as opposed to state schools, discriminatory
practices are rationalized on the basis of "religiousness." That is, whereas in
non-religious schools, discrimination revolves primarily around academics and
class, in religious schools, there is an entire extra level of patronizing in
which Mizrahi kids are assumed to be less religious. Thus, for example, United
Torah Judaism MK Avraham Ravitz, in an attempt to "explain" the events in
Emanuel and Elad, said that "the ethnic discrimination stems first and foremost
from the desire to maintain the school's educational atmosphere... We educate on
internal and external values and there are differences among the different
ethnic groups."

IN OTHER words, Sephardim have different "values" that threaten the "educational
atmosphere." Mizrahi students are thus viewed as being on the margins
educationally, economically and morally - and in religious schools, these
hierarchies ultimately conflate into the view of Mizrahi students as less
"religious."

This language of Sephardi culture as "threatening" to religiousness is rampant.
Yair Sheleg, in his book Dati'im Hadashim (The New Religious), documents
Ashkenazi fear of "contamination" by Mizrahi families. He writes that the
21st-century version of "white flight" is among Ashkenazi religious families.
That is, as soon as parents see that Mizrahi students are entering "their"
schools, they open up a new elitist "torani" school in the name of creating a
"higher" religious level, but is in fact simply Mizrahi- free.

These religious hierarchies are the latest version of 19th-century colonialist
racism of the "Great Chain of Being" and "Social Darwinism." Shlomo Deshen and
Moshe Shokeid brilliantly write in Dor Hatemura (Generation in Transition) that
Mizrahi and Ashkenazi religious identities take different forms - not superior
and inferior, but simply different. Mizrahi religiousness is transmitted via
people, families and traditions, while Ashkenazi religiousness is transmitted
via the written word.

So a kid who spends Shabbat with her family and flicks a light switch is keeping
the faith in Sephardi culture, whereas a kid who spends Shabbat all alone but
does not flick the light switch is keeping the faith in Ashkenazi culture. But
in state religious schools, only the Ashkenazi version of religiousness counts,
and those who don't abide by the Ashkenazi culture are just inferior outsiders.

"FOR A girl to make it in this system," said Vardit of the organization Tmura,
"girls in Beit Ya'acov are expected to give up their entire culture, everything
they know and love from at home. They have to accept that their food, their
customs, even their pronunciation of Hebrew, are wrong. They have to be willing
to reject their entire spiritual and cultural heritage as inferior. It's
horrible."

In the Beit Ya'acov in Emanuel, Vardit explained, Sephardi girls who want to
enter the "regular" track are told to actually sign a written contract to the
effect that they will conduct themselves according to Ashkenazi expectations -
and, by the way, pay an extra school fee. "So far, no girls have agreed to
sign," she said.

As I discussed these events at home, my 11-year old daughter was dumbfounded.
"Why won't they let the girls into class?" she demanded. She could not get her
head around this racist reality. Kids can be very wise - wiser, in fact, than
many adults. My daughter understands how such practices violate our basic
humanity.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: UTJ MK Avraham Ravitz: 'The ethnic discrimination stems first
and foremost from the desire to maintain the school's educational atmosphere.'
(Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 24, 2008 Wednesday

Letters

BYLINE: Lillian Susswein, David Goshen, Robert Iddings, Reida Mishory-Isseroff,
Netta Kohn, Stanley Lawson, Arieh Rosenblum, Laurin Lewis

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1152 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Of aims...

Sir, - A car may come out of nowhere and aim right for you, or your companion.
It may be called an accident, but it probably isn't ("Arab driver rams into
pedestrians in capital," September 23).

Terrorists are ingenious in finding new ways to kill and cause panic. When a car
deliberately targets soldiers, it was likely planned. Other attacks may be more
spontaneous. They are very hard to stop.

While destroying terrorists' homes obviously affects their families negatively,
innocent people's lives must be protected. Yes, there is a conflict between
civil rights and protecting society, but no society can refuse to act against
terrorism.

Israelis have suffered more terrorism than any people on earth and have
maintained a civil society throughout. Demolishing terrorists' homes is
justified if it will make some terrorists think again.

LILLIAN SUSSWEIN

Jerusalem

...and deterrents

Sir, - After so many cases of Arabs abusing their blue ID cards, the time has
come to cancel this privilege and issue Arabs who are only permanent residents -
those who rejected full Israeli citizenship in 1967 when Jerusalem was united -
with a differently colored ID.

Similarly, any vehicle owned by such a resident should bear an indication that
the driver is not a citizen.

There would be absolutely no discrimination in such a step since those affected
would be permanent residents enjoying full social benefits like regular
citizens. Human rights associations would also have no grounds for objection, as
a permanent resident can opt for full Israeli citizenship, with all its
privileges.

DAVID GOSHEN

Kiryat Ono

Sir, - Enough with the drills, the discussions, the meetings. Take some action,
even if it's wrong. Israelis are dying and everyone is trying to be an urbane
and cosmopolitan citizen of the world. Where are the Prophets of Israel when
they are needed?

Do something, do something.

ROBERT IDDINGS

Salem, Oregon

Kudos

Sir, - Caroline Glick's insightful journalism nails it again ("Your abortions or
your lives!" September 23.) This op-ed deserves to be seen in major US
publications.

REIDA MISHORY-ISSEROFF

Moshav Olesh

Falling star?

Sir, - In "The meteoric Ms. Livni. A resignation away from the premiership on
fewer than 20,000 votes" (September 18) David Horovitz's metaphor may be more
apt than he intended.

Meteors, otherwise known as falling stars, are destined for demise. They either
crash, causing damage (or desolate craters), or burn up in the atmosphere.

Fascination, even glory may attach to a falling star's brief and impressive
flash - but it is not something this nation can afford to hitch its hopes to.

We need not someone who has arrived at a position of leadership through flukes
of circumstance but rather someone of tested mettle, who can be counted on to
steer the ship of state through ever more dangerous waters to a safe haven and a
brighter future.

Ms. Livni, despite her admirable, even amazing self- confidence, has neither the
vision nor the wisdom needed.

Elections are in order.

NETTA KOHN

Jerusalem

Sir, - If Shaul Mofaz had come clean with his supporters before the Kadima
leadership elections and told them: "If I do not get elected, I will desert
you," Tzipi Livni's majority might have been larger ("Livni's challenge,"
Editorial, September 19).

STANLEY LAWSON

Jerusalem

Effectiveness is all

Sir - As one of the few individuals who has worked in Israel advocacy in Canada
for both B'nai Brith and CIJA, I was surprised and dismayed at Isi Leibler's
diatribe against the CIJA approach to advocacy ("Canadian Israel advocacy in
turmoil," September 21).

Though the "Shared Values" modality, as it came to be known, was not perfect and
was never fully understood as a modality rather than a strategy, it had the
singularly important element of establishing a positive framework for targeting
an approachable audience with clear goals and measurable outcomes.

Leibler seems to have ignored the only important rule of advocacy:
effectiveness. It might be satisfying to argue with an anti-Zionist on campus
and win - I've done it many times - but it will never change that anti-Zionist's
mind, and it will probably turn an onlooker off both sides of the issue. One
might feel triumphant at embarrassing an anti- Israel politician, but it is even
more useful to establish a relationship with politicians who are reachable and
will return our phone calls because our community has built bridges and/or
supported them.

As a small community, we need to have strength beyond our numbers. We must reach
the 90 percent of people who don't yet have a reason to care about Israel.

Finally, there are elements of advocacy one doesn't talk about, and thus doesn't
publicly claim credit for. The work of CIJA and its founders - as well as of
B'nai Brith, CIJR, and all the thousands of Israel advocates of all stripes in
Canada - deserves praise and thanks.

ARIEH ROSENBLUM

Thornhill, Ontario

Chaos and belief

Sir, - Eliot Jager's claim in "An ordered world" (September 17) that CIA
counterintelligence chief James Angleton's tendency to find conspiracies
everywhere (the Tito-Stalin split, Yuri Nosenko's defection, etc.) stemmed from
a need to "identify order in a chaotic world" prompted the thought that our
refusal to admit chaos in the universe is often designated as the main reason
for believing in God - this is claimed by both believers and non-believers.

How often have we heard that "There must be a God, because if not, there would
be no meaning in life (= chaos), and that would be unbearable"?

This is deeply disturbing. Why? Because if the need for "order" is the only
reason, or even the main reason, for believing in God, then observant Jews -
and, for that matter, believers of other faiths - are in deep trouble.

The presence of some disorder (chaos) in the universe cannot be rationally
denied. Everything that happens cannot be part of some divine plan. Were that
so, the term "according to plan" would have no meaning because it would apply to
everything that exists. It's called the Polar Principle in philosophy, meaning
that no category can be all-encompassing.

In a word, the religious truism that "there are no accidents" must be wrong.

So once we admit there is chaos in the universe, how can we say where chaos
ends? A holocaust. A Hurricane Katrina. A win or loss in the lottery. Bird poop
on my hat. Are those chaotic events, or examples of divine providence?

Some claimed Katrina was a punishment for the immoral Mardi Gras festival in New
Orleans, or for America's support for a Palestinian state. Or did it happen just
because God created a world in which there are hurricanes - in other words,
chaos?

Our belief in God has to be based elsewhere. Those of us who count ourselves
religious Zionists see the unfolding of Jewish history as proof of God's
existence.

It's not that we refuse to admit chaos, a la Angleton. Rather, it's because we
see God's hand where others do not.

LAURIN LEWIS

Jerusalem

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The Jerusalem Post

September 24, 2008 Wednesday

An ode to age

BYLINE: JUDY MONTAGU

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1141 words

HIGHLIGHT: The fountain of eternal youth doesn't exist. But there are people who
behave as if they've discovered it. IN MY OWN WRITE

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

- From 'Warning' by Jenny Joseph

One of the most enduring images from my first years in this country, back in the
'70s, isn't of a historic locale, religious site or natural beauty spot, though
I saw quite a few of those and they were gripping and very splendid.

It's of an elderly woman I encountered briefly in an office on the top floor of
a old building in Tel Aviv, where I was helping out a friend of a friend with
some secretarial chores (the company imported YKK zippers from Japan).

Now two words in that last sentence - "elderly woman" - while perfectly
accurate, do absolutely nothing to advance this story. I could write "old
woman," but that wouldn't be any better.

So I'll just tell it.

There we were, about six of us in that long, stuffy room, heads bent over
invoices, when the door opened and a figure wafted in. Clad in some
pastel-colored floaty garment, she flitted - there's no other word - from desk
to desk, bestowing here a word, there a smile. When she passed me, the merest
fragrance remained in the air.

Then she was gone.

"Who was that?" I asked a co-worker, bemused.

"That's the big boss's wife," she answered. I learned, too, that she was a woman
in her 80s.

It was late summer, but those few moments were a breath of spring.

THIS EPISODE hardly fits with the general perception of old age - but that's my
point. In a secular Western culture that worships youth and, lip service apart,
doesn't consider being "full of years" as having much going for it, older people
themselves can, as never before, define what being 60, 70, 80 and older means.
Call it gray pride.

There was a time when rigid social structures decreed that matrons must wear
frilly caps and black bombazine. Widows, most of whom weren't very merry,
receded into near- obscurity.

Today, every color of the rainbow is there for women of any age to enjoy; for
men, too. A woman of nearly 90 I saw at a wedding was dressed in sky blue from
her hat to her shoes and looked as fresh as a flower.

My neighbor, 78, told me about the life-drawing class she was enjoying. "I
haven't told my grandchildren about the nude models," she laughed. "They'd
probably disapprove."

A TV documentary I saw a while back focused on a group of centenarians in
America, hardy folk of 100 and over who looked far from calling it quits. One, a
chemist, was still being driven daily to his laboratory, where he put in a few
hours' work. A comment he made was instructive.

"I know I'm going to have to give this up one day," he told the interviewer.
"But I'm having such fun."

I'd rather have fingers than toes

I'd rather have ears than a nose;

And as for my hair

I'm glad it's all there

I'll be awfully sad when it goes!

- Gelett Burgess (1866-1951)

'I DON'T mind getting old," a colleague confided to me. "It's the baggage that
goes along with it."

Now the most dishonest, least useful thing one could do is romanticize old age
and pretend that 60 is fitter, healthier and happier than 40. In many respects,
it isn't. Bodies become frailer and more vulnerable to disease; joints wear out.
Dear ones can die.

But for those spared serious illness, who have a reasonable standard of living
and the blessing of family and friends, getting old could, I imagine, be like
slowly climbing a great oak tree and, the higher you go, seeing more and more of
the countryside below.

Perhaps, too, from that vantage point the perspective is better, the important
things standing out and the rest softened.

EVIDENCE suggests that those who make it into the oldest age are those whose
occupation gives them the drive to carry on. In Short Stories About Long Lives,
former Jerusalem Post journalist Helga Dudman looks at a whole gamut of people -
famous and ordinary, Jews and non-Jews - who lived into their 90s and beyond.

"The only basic rule that emerges," she concludes, is that this group includes
"personalities who were devoted to their work and their causes, often to the
point of obsession."

Like Irving Berlin, the phenomenal American composer of hit songs. He published
190 of them between 1907 and 1914 alone, and lived to be 101. Though
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911) took him, he said, only 18 minutes to write,
his subsequent efforts were far from a walk in the park.

"I work (ideas) out between eight at night and five in the morning... I sweat
blood between three and six a.m.... and when the drops that fall off my forehead
hit the paper, they're (musical) notes," he said.

Berlin's secret, Dudman writes, was work, work, and more work.

ONE NEEDN'T look further than the Sam Orbaum Jerusalem Scrabble Club to find
people Dudman could have put in her book.

Co-founder Sara Schacter, nearly 93, plays at least three games of Scrabble
every day, more if she can, and is still one of the club's top players. Feisty
Roz Grossman, 82, has written and performed hundreds of songs and says she
remembers the words of most of them.

Another club member, 80-something, told me: "I've just had my whole apartment
redone - new bathroom, new kitchen... it's gorgeous."

She sounded like a young bride, which made me think: Enthusiasm. It's part of
the answer to remaining young while growing old.

OUR ENGLISH literature teacher at London's Brondesbury and Kilburn High School
for Girls, Margo Rowlands, was not above shocking her impressionable charges,
sometimes to the core. A professional actress, she once stole a pupil's wallet,
to the amazement of those who witnessed it - in order, as it turned out, to
demonstrate the folly of carrying money in a back pocket.

The class was stunned when she calmly began a lesson with: "Girls, do you
realize that you are one day nearer to your deaths?" For us 13-year-olds, it was
almost impossible to conceive of life as finite, and of ourselves as anything
but immortal.

But it is, and we aren't; and had our teacher known about Rabbi Eliezer ben
Horkanos, she might have followed her shocker with his well-known "Repent one
day before your death."

How does one know when one will die? the obvious question would have arisen.

Aha, Rabbi Eliezer would have answered, that's exactly the point: You must live
as if every day was your last.

That recommendation might, if you think about it, be no less beneficial than the
doctor's prescriptions the not- so-young carry regularly to their pharmacists.
For what would we do, where would we go, and to whom might we reach out if we
knew we were cashing in our chips at midnight?

OH AND, by the way, if a decade or three from now, you should happen to see a
person wearing a floaty garment of beautiful color, flitting here and there and
spreading good vibes - it'll be me, doing my best to emulate an "elderly woman"
in a Tel Aviv office who has stayed in my mind and heart these 30-odd years.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: GRAY PRIDE is defining what being 60, 70, 80 and older means.
(Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 24, 2008 Wednesday

Tzipi, you can do it

BYLINE: GERSHON BASKIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1089 words

HIGHLIGHT: They will say that you didn't get a mandate to negotiate peace. Don't
listen to them. The writer is the co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for
Research and Information.

Tzipi Livni, should you become our prime minister, we will have great
expectations from you. We can't help it. Our disappointments from your
predecessor are so great and the challenges before you so immense, we need you
to succeed. If you do, your success will be the success of all of us, and if you
fail, your failures will impact our lives for negatively for years to come.

There are very few heads of government around the world who have to face the
kind of decisions that may be in front of you. It is hard to imagine why a sane
person would even desire to be in your place. But those of us who grew up in an
ideological movement and were educated that we have a "mission" in our lives,
can understand the notion of din hat'nua - the judgment and determination of the
calling of "the movement."

The decision to lead is ingrained in your soul, in your spirit and the belief
that you are "the right person at the right time in the right place" is the
driving force that may bring you into the prime minister's seat. For you, it is
not ego, for you it is the drive of mission and commitment; that is how you were
brought up and it is obvious from the kind of person you have become.

Your tasks are many, and most of them extremely complex. First you must create
unity in your party and then form a stable government. That's the easy part!
Your main mission and most important task is the one you have already been
working on for months - reaching an agreement with the Palestinians.

NOW, YOU are the boss. You don't have to take instructions from someone else.
You are the party leader and it may become your responsibility to fulfill the
mission that every single prime minister before you has failed in doing. You
already know how complicated it is. You already know the demands of the
Palestinian negotiators. You also know the implications of failure. This is
certainly the proverbial "moment of truth" for you and for this country.

You will certainly face pressures from everyone around you. The military and
security forces will impress upon you the great risks involved. There is no
possible peace agreement with the Palestinians that does not involve risks.
There will be threats that if you negotiate Jerusalem, you will lose coalition
partners. There is no possible agreement with the Palestinians without including
Jerusalem in the deal. There will be those who will tell you to work on the
economic side of the Palestinian issue - improve their lives - and then later
work on the political side. There is no Palestinian partner for improving the
quality of the occupation, there is only a Palestinian partner for ending the
occupation.

There will be those who will advise you to move ahead with the Syrian track
because the strategic advantages of peace with the Syrians is much higher than
with the Palestinians and the issues are far less complicated. They will say
that Israel does not have the capacity to move ahead with peace on two fronts,
so chose the Syrian track.

The truth is that there is no real possibility for peace without moving forward
on both tracks. Each track has the ability to "spoil" the other. Pursuing both
tracks is the right way forward. Moving ahead on both tracks also fulfills the
clauses of the Arab peace initiative and opens the door to all 22 Arab states
and at least to 50 Islamic states as well. The potential payoff is larger than
anyone who sat in the prime minister's chair has ever allowed himself to
imagine.

There will be many who will tell you that you don't have the legitimacy to
negotiate peace. They will talk about the slim majority of your victory. They
will say that you weren't elected by the general population. They will say that
you didn't get a mandate to negotiate peace. They will say that Kadima's mandate
was for a plan of unilateral disengagement that after the Kassams of Gaza has no
legitimacy anymore.

Don't listen to them. If you sit in the seat of the prime minister and have a
government holding the confidence of the Knesset, you have all the legitimacy in
the world. You have the legitimacy to make war, to send the IDF to fight, to
send the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) to assassinate Palestinian
combatants. If you have the legitimacy and the authority to kill, you certainly
have the legitimacy and the authority to negotiate peace, including negotiating
the future of Jerusalem.

YOU WILL probably have to continue to negotiations in complete silence and
secrecy. That is the only way to reach an agreement. The close relationship that
you have already developed with the Palestinian team headed by Ahmed Qurei will
help you to reach an agreement. The Palestinians are ready to recognize the
Jewishness of Israel, as you demand, if you include guarantees for the rights of
the Palestinian minority in Israel. The Palestinians will tell you that they are
convinced that they can deal democratically with the problem of Hamas if they
can present a fair agreement to their public. They will have to do that or face
the possibility of losing the West Bank, as well.

The Israeli public, skeptical as it may be, will also support an agreement that
will include a Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem as long as there is a fair
chance of providing Israel with the long-term security that we so badly need.
That security is mostly predicated on removing ourselves from occupying the
Palestinian people and risking the end of the possibility of the two-state
solution. The Palestinian Authority has begun to seriously combat terrorism. It
will continue and succeed if the political process moves forward steadily and
with speed. There is no chance of a partial agreement or an interim agreement -
those will only empower the extremists.

The time for peace with the Palestinians is now. The time for decisions is now.
Move ahead with the Syrians too. Call for the government of Lebanon to join in
as well after you announce your intention to transfer the disputed area of the
Shaba farms to the United Nations, after appropriate security arrangements are
made.

Lastly, bring home Gilad Schalit. There is no way to bring him home without
making huge concessions to Hamas. He and his family have suffered enough. The
moral and ethical code of the IDF and of the State of Israel is that we don't
leave soldiers behind. It is time to bring him home. You can do it.

This is your time. This is the time for all of us. We are behind you and with
you - as you as you move forward. Be ambitious, be practical, be bold, be
sincere, be yourself.

(www.ipcri.org, Gershon@ipcri.org)

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: KADIMA LEADER Tzipi Livni has received a formal nod from
President Shimon Peres to form a government. (Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 24, 2008 Wednesday

From Wall Street to the Knesset

BYLINE: MICHAEL FREUND

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 944 words

HIGHLIGHT: This week, the foundations of our system shook. It's time to step up
and fix what's broken. Fundamentally Freund

Over the past few days, much of the world's attention has been turned to New
York, where the turmoil in US financial markets has created fears of an
unprecedented meltdown. With breathtaking speed, the investment bank Lehman
Brothers went under, Merrill Lynch sold itself to the Bank of America and the
insurer AIG was saved from going belly-up thanks only to a massive $85 billion
federal rescue plan.

Now, to top it all off, the Bush administration is proposing a series of
extraordinary moves that would include the purchase of vast amounts of
distressed securities, totaling hundreds of billions of dollars, to stave off
further crisis. Needless to say, there is something unnerving, and highly
unsettling, about watching a venerable system wobble ever so perilously on the
verge of collapse.

But Wall Street was not the only major institution to find itself at the brink
this week. Israel's democracy had its own brush with a form of bankruptcy,
albeit one that was political and moral in nature, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
submitted his letter of resignation to President Shimon Peres on Sunday evening.

After 33 months of mismanagement and malfeasance, there was an almost audible
sigh of relief from the public that he was finally leaving the scene. But
whatever one may think of Olmert and his personal performance, this was a sad
day for the Jewish state.

IF OUR task as a people is to serve as a "light unto the nations," a bastion of
justice and righteousness which all are supposed to emulate, then how is it that
our head of government had to resign under a cloud of scandalous accusations?

Sure, we can take pride in the fact that there is an orderly transfer of power
and that our democratic system, with all its numerous faults, remains durable
and resilient. After all, few else in this part of the world can assert such
claims. But that should not deflect our attention from examining the critical
question of just how we reached such a low point in our country's history, as
the state's top official was consumed by charges of corruption.

Don't get me wrong - Ehud Olmert's failings were first and foremost his own
doing. But there is no doubt that he is a product of a broken system, one that
almost seems to produce corruption and sleaze.

This development should shake us all to our very core, no less than the
financial upheaval taking place across the ocean. For while the latter may pose
a threat to the growth of the economy, the former casts a heavy pall over the
integrity of the state and its institutions, which is most assuredly of equal
importance.

True, the problems plaguing Wall Street and those gripping our political system
could not possibly be more different. The financial crunch has to do with such
mundane things as falling housing prices and bad debts, which ostensibly have
little in common with our local political intrigue. But what the two crises do
share is a key, underlying trait: Both are the result of a lack of
accountability and proper oversight, mixed in with some plain, old-fashioned
greed.

In Wall Street's case, recklessness led many firms to over-leverage their
positions using risky instruments, leaving them vulnerable once the housing
bubble burst and home foreclosures soared. At the time, it seemed like a great
way to boost profits, but in retrospect it has proven disastrous.

AS ECONOMIST Robert Samuelson noted in The Washington Post the other day, "Every
financial system depends on trust. People have to believe that the institutions
they deal with will perform as expected. We are in a crisis because financial
managers - the people who run banks, investment banks, hedge funds - have lost
that trust."

The same can also be said for Israel's political system, where a general sense
of malaise has set in as people throw up their hands in disgust at our
leadership.

Sure, every man-made system experiences breakdowns from time to time, but the
real test is whether the system can be tinkered with and fixed, and made to work
again. In Wall Street's case, only time will tell to what extent it will
rebound, but at least America's elected officials are taking the requisite steps
to address some of the underlying systemic flaws that led to the current mess.

As for Israel, no such radical change is in the offing. There are no calls for
reform, no protests against corruption and no demands for structural change in
how our system operates. We merely shrug our shoulders passively and watch as a
change of personnel takes place at the top, leaving a flawed democracy in place
to sputter along.

The truth is that Israel's system of government needs a bailout plan no less
radical in scope and overarching than that being proposed by the US Treasury for
Wall Street.

THE FOUNDATIONS of our system shook this week, and it is time to step up and fix
it - by introducing more checks and balances on our leaders, insisting on a
greater separation of powers between the executive and the legislative branches
of government and adopting a more representative and responsive parliamentary
structure.

It has been said that a nation gets the leaders they deserve. I beg to differ,
because I think the Jewish people deserve a whole lot better than what we have
right now. We deserve a leadership that will stand firm and proud and defend the
nation and its interests, one that will not cower before others. And we deserve
leaders who walk in faith with God and uphold the highest ideals of honesty,
integrity and Jewish values.

We really do deserve such things - but the only way to get them is to speak out
and demand them. Unfortunately, the way things look right now, we'll probably
have to wait a bit longer until we do.

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September 24, 2008 Wednesday

The lessons of Oslo

BYLINE: GIL TROY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1071 words

HIGHLIGHT: The failure of the Oslo Accords spawned the West Bank security fence,
which buried the delusions of the Left and the Right. The writer is professor of
history at McGill University and the author of Leading from the Center: Why
Moderates Make the Best Presidents.

Wouldn't it be great if we could greet Tzipi Livni's ascension by applauding her
honesty and being satisfied that integrity was enough? Wouldn't it be reassuring
if all we had to speculate about was her economic sophistication and her social
vision for the country? Unfortunately, the major question Livni will face,
should she become prime minister, is "How effectively will she protect Israel?"
This question takes on particular prominence as her razor- thin Kadima victory
coincided with the 15th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords and
growing concerns about Iran's nuclear threat.

Normally, a question like "why did the Oslo Accords fail" could be left to
historians. But while historians can help clarify, providing evidence, context,
insight, perspective, every Israeli leader - and voter - must come to grips with
what occurred. The conclusions Israelis draw about what happened to Oslo
yesterday is essential to figuring out what to do today and how to build toward
a stable tomorrow with the Palestinians.

It is scandalous that Oslo's architects, especially Shimon Peres and Yossi
Beilin, have not accounted for why Oslo failed. The point is not to make them
wallow or even apologize. Rather, the challenge is for them - and others - to
draw the appropriate lessons and plot a realistic future course.

While the history of the Oslo Accords is as complex and subtle as the agreements
themselves, there is one clear, crude, depressing explanation for why Oslo
failed. Israel's leaders - and the world - failed to appreciate most Arabs' and
specifically most Palestinians' violent hostility to the Jewish state's very
existence.

THIS FAILURE is, in many ways, lovely and understandable. The Western mind is
too rationalist - and, frankly, too self-absorbed - to appreciate the depth of
the hatred. It was easier to condescend toward Yasser Arafat, assuming that when
he advocated violence in Arabic he was just playing politics, than to take his
words seriously and realize that when he smiled and negotiated with Westerners
he was just toying with them.

Shimon Peres's New Middle East pipe dream was rife with Marxist assumptions,
supposing that an Israel-fueled materialism could dull the fires of maximalist
Palestinian nationalism. The Oslo delusion was secular, underestimating Islamist
radicalism's intensity and popularity. The Oslo apparition was also a peculiarly
quixotic Zionist miscalculation. Despite the anti-Zionist narrative claiming
that early Zionists alternately ignored Palestinian Arabs or brutalized them, a
strong Lawrence-of-Arabia streak in early Zionism also romanticized Arabs,
dreaming of a Jewish state lovingly embraced by its neighbors.

Nevertheless, the failure of leaders to comprehend the intensity of Palestinian
rejectionism was also inexcusable. A state's first goal is to protect its
citizens. The fact that Israeli policy resulted in a prolonged war against the
peace process, with more than 1,000 Israelis murdered by weapons which Israel
helped deliver to the terrorists, is a failure of historic proportions. Fifteen
years later, viewing the anti-Israel maps and textbooks the Oslo-created
Palestinian Authority spread, assessing the culture of enmity and martyrdom that
festered in the territories, Arafat's war seems utterly predictable.

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS after the Yom Kippur War, Israelis still wonder about and try
to learn from that intelligence failure. It is equally essential to remember and
learn from the inability - and outright refusal of some leaders - to anticipate
the burst of Palestinian terror reignited in 2000.

Tragically, Arab hatred continues. We cannot become inured to the pornography of
Palestinian violence, the lurid addiction to shooting yeshiva students,
bulldozing commuters, blowing up boulevardiers, for effect. Nor should we become
blase about the broader epidemic of Islamist hatred. The world should be
outraged by the report, just days before Livni's election, that a leading Muslim
cleric in England, Omar Bakri, threatened Paul McCartney's life if he performed
in Israel. "If he values his life, Mr. McCartney must not come to Israel. He
will not be safe there," London's Sunday Express quoted Bakri as saying. "The
sacrifice operatives will be waiting for him."

McCartney heroically refused to be cowed. Judging by the news coverage, however,
neither Bakri's threat nor McCartney's steadfastness triggered much commentary,
when the papers should have been filled with editorials furiously condemning the
cleric and celebrating the singer.

The tricky question, then, is not whether this hatred exists, rather how to
respond to this unfortunate reality. Acknowledging the hatred does not
necessarily preclude withdrawing from territory; it should, however, avoid
withdrawing with unrealistic expectations. In fact, the Oslo wake-up call
spawned the West Bank security fence, which buried the delusions of the Israeli
Left and the Israeli Right.

BOTH EXTREMES underestimated Palestinian nationalism. Leftists assumed
Palestinians were as willing as they were to jettison core identities. Rightists
assumed the Palestinians were pushovers willing to accommodate Jewish
territorial ambitions. In building the barrier, the Israeli left abandoned its
illusion that fences were unnecessary in a world where Arab and Jew would soon
embrace. The Israeli right abandoned its illusion that territories housing
millions of Palestinians could be integrated easily into the Jewish state. The
security fence - which Livni should complete quickly - provides necessary
security to Israelis while reminding them that Palestinian nationalism is real,
hostile and not disappearing.

In fact, Oslo teaches that the two-state solution is the only viable path for
Israelis and Palestinians. Talk of a one-state solution is really advocating a
no-Jewish- state-solution. And Jewish nationalists who demanded their own state
should respect Palestinian nationalists' desire for their own state. But
Zionists should not expect to see the characteristic Zionist pragmatism in the
rival movement. Oslo teaches that whatever agreement Israel makes should come
without romantic expectations of warm relations and from cold-hearted
calculations aiming for stability.

Oslo's paradox is that this tougher, more pragmatic, but not soulless approach
may be the way to break the logjam and reorient Palestinians toward building
their state rather than dreaming of destroying ours.

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September 23, 2008 Tuesday

The national interest

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 745 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Ehud Olmert's resignation has been handled with the appropriate understated
ceremony - the short meeting with the president, the president's subsequent
brief political eulogy, the procession of party representatives filing through
Beit Hanassi to make their recommendations regarding a successor.

But this cannot mask the dismal nature of this latest twist in Israel's hapless
governance. And the portents as regards our elected leaders' behavior in its
aftermath are also far from encouraging.

Defying the scathing conclusions of his own committee of inquiry into the
handling of the Second Lebanon War, which did everything short of demanding his
resignation last year, Olmert clung to his job, insisting he was the man to
correct the errors of strategy, preparation, consultation and decision-making
that war exposed.

His foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, rightly recognized the absurdity of this
conclusion, told him privately and publicly that he ought to step down, but
carried on as his right-hand woman nonetheless.

Only more than a year later, when his inability to swiftly lay to rest an
accumulation of corruption allegations left him with little alternative, did
Olmert first reluctantly sanction new leadership elections in Kadima, then
reluctantly conclude that he could not himself compete, and finally reluctantly
tender his resignation to President Peres.

The political instability that preceded his resignation has been acutely
damaging to Israel, weakening its credibility as it tries to impress upon the
international community the urgency for tougher sanctions against Iran, and
undermining the prospects, however faint they may be, of substantive and
constructive progress in the negotiations and contacts with the Palestinians and
Syrians.

BUT THE drift, unfortunately, isn't over yet. Yes, Olmert has resigned as prime
minister. But that doesn't mean he has left office. Instead, Livni is now hard
at work trying to tie in the existing coalition, or adjust its membership, to
ensure she can take over.

Already, she has been deeply compromised. She managed to sustain the image of
integrity despite having stuck with a premier she had said ought to have
resigned. But she has emerged less pristine from the Kadima leadership battle,
where her 431-vote margin of victory makes Binyamin Netanyahu's 29,457 prime
ministerial margin over Shimon Peres in 1996 look like a landslide.

Her victory was aided by the Kadima election regulator's decision to keep
polling stations open late, even as the TV news shows prematurely screened exit
polls showing that Mofaz supporters needn't waste their time casting a ballot
for their crushingly defeated candidate. But the polls were off mark - way off -
and Mofaz, victim of such erroneous surveys throughout the campaign, has every
reason to feel cheated.

In prematurely celebrating victory, furthermore - declaring within minutes of
the polling stations closing that "the good guys" had won - Livni looked
impetuous and inexperienced. Mofaz's supporters are still pressing acute
concerns about several hundred votes that seem to have disappeared or been
unfairly excluded.

Livni's Kadima victory will not be overturned on appeal. But far from giving her
momentum, her "success" and Mofaz's concurrent bitterness have weakened her from
the start of her party leadership career.

Meanwhile, her coalition partners, notably in Labor and Shas, have predictably
been playing a little hard to get - calculating whether their interests are best
served by crowning Livni as premier, or by cold-shouldering her and setting
Israel on the road to general elections, with Olmert the caretaker leader en
route.

Immune because of our electoral system from direct accountability to specific
constituents, our politicians often seem to forget that they are elected not for
their own convenience, but to do our will. What Israel's voters crave now is
competent, stable government, focused on the national interest - as soon as
possible.

That requires our politicians to put aside their narrow concerns and either, if
they consider her capable of effectively leading this country, partnering the
new head of Kadima in a solid coalition, or, if they do not, moving swiftly to
general elections.

With Iran closing in on the bomb, Mahmoud Abbas nearing the end of his term, and
a range of other diplomatic, military, economic and social challenges, Israel
cannot afford further inexpert leadership, and dare not indulge in further
political drift.

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September 23, 2008 Tuesday

Where have all the gentleman gone?

BYLINE: RABBI SHMULEY BOTEACH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 980 words

HIGHLIGHT: It's a man's world. Women just live in it. The writer hosts a daily
US national radio show on Oprah and Friends. His most recent book is The Broken
American Male (St. Martin's Press).

In Ireland last week, in front of hundreds of students at University College in
Dublin, I participated in a debate on whether pornography is destructive or
harmless. Numerous speakers on the pro-pornography side argued that it was a
central part of women's liberation, a point which met with thunderous cheers
from the women in the audience.

When it was my turn to speak, I asked the young women present to raise their
hands if they needed a man. Not one hand went up. I then told them that
commensurate with the degree to which men are becoming immature, porn-obsessed
schoolboys, women are giving up on the hope of ever finding a noble,
well-mannered gentleman. As women confront the vulgar reality of how men treat
them, they discover that becoming masturbatory material to men is not
particularly liberating.

This despair of Dublin's women was mirrored the next evening in a conversation
with a 29-year-old woman who told me that she had given up on finding a good
man, seeing as the men in Dublin were conditioned "to treat women as orifices."

"A huge number of women play along," she told me, "by coming out on Friday and
Saturday nights in their skimpy miniskirts in the freezing cold, getting
completely drunk and doing anything the guys want in the mistaken belief that
somehow this will bring them love. After a few years they give up on men and
become like me."

NOWHERE IN the Western world are we raising a generation of men who pride
themselves on their restraint and respect toward women. We are likewise failing
to cultivate women who refuse to be complicit in their own degradation and who
insist that their sexuality be shared with a man only in the context of a
serious and tangible romantic commitment. It's a man's world. Women just live in
it.

This is even true in marriage, as more and more relationship experts blame a
cheating husband on his wife. If a man is unfaithful, they argue, it is often
due to the fact that he feels lonely and unappreciated by his wife. By
recognizing that their husbands have emotional and sexual needs which she may be
ignoring, a wife can win her husband back and ensure that he does not stray.

But this attempt to blame the victim ignores the fact that the principle reason
men womanize is to shore up their broken egos. There are so many damaged
husbands who think that a nurturing stranger who both desires him and wishes to
lend an ear to his pain will be a salve to his painfully low self-esteem. In
many cases, these are husbands who have wives who could not be more devoted, who
give them sex whenever they want, who pine for them to come home at night, all
to no avail. No matter how much she huffs and puffs, she cannot inflate his
perforated ego.

Would we really suggest that, as Elizabeth Edwards ran around the country with
incurable cancer catering to her husband's yearning to be president, that her
husband John cheated on her because she wasn't caring enough? After Silla Ward
Spitzer garnered national ridicule by quite literally standing by her husband
Elliot in his greatest moment of shame, would we inflict the final insult on her
by telling her that her husband hung out with hookers because of her neglect?

IN THIS age of husbands who are sports and TV addicts, I dare say there are
probably more wives ignored by their husbands than the reverse. But women seem
much more capable of controlling themselves and deciding that a husband's
neglect is no excuse to corrupt one's character and become immoral. Indeed, the
only way to truly affair-proof one's marriage is to decide that the pleasure of
righteous action and moral heroism by far outstrips anything that can be
experienced in illicit sex.

There is something magical in a man's ability to turn down an opportunity to
stray and walk away from the encounter a devoted husband and moral giant. One of
the prime reasons we all suffer from low self-esteem these days is that we are
not the people we want to be. Becoming a liar and a cheat is probably not, in
the long run, going to make us feel a whole lot better about ourselves. But
deciding to behave righteously even when we are in pain will.

To be sure, wives should work to reach their husband's buried emotions. Contrary
to what many women believe, men are intimacy seekers. In these challenging
financial times, wives should ask their husbands not, "How did your day go?" but
"How do you feel about all the convulsions in your company?" They should nurture
their men's hearts and do their best to address their pain. But in the final
analysis, if a husband cheats, it's his fault. Period. He has his own
selfishness and ingratitude to blame.

AS I survey the current cultural landscape, I often wonder - where have all the
gentlemen gone? Our movies are filled with male bathroom humor. Our sporting
heroes, like Alex Rodriguez, can't seem to respect their commitments. Our
college campuses are filled with frat boy party animals for whom womanizing is
an integral part of "higher" education. Do men today only aspire to an Internet
startup but not to refined character? Do they yearn for the Forbes 400 list but
not to set an example for their own sons of how a great man honors his wife and
prioritizes his family?

There was a likable young man I met in Dublin who was very smart but also very
cynical. As I spoke with him, he shared with me his desire to be recognized as a
great director. He also said, matter-of-factly, that when he meets a woman he is
unapologetic about trying to have sex with her. When I asked him if he wanted
children, he said, "I love my future children enough not to have them. I would
inevitably mess them up."

Of course, by the same logic he might as well never try to make a movie. But
then, great directors get Academy Awards while gentleman receive no public
accolades other than the knowledge that they alone among men tamed and harnessed
the beast within.

shmuley@shmuley.com

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GRAPHIC: Photo: THE MANAGER of a nightclub in Santiago, Chile, poses with two
employees. The 'club' features pole dancers and miniskirted waitresses. (Credit:
Bloomberg)

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September 23, 2008 Tuesday

Letters

BYLINE: Sarah Avihai, Editor's note, Julius Shwarzstein, Jac Friedgut, Arnold I.
Kisch, MD, David Rotenberg, Mel Driller, David Katcoff, Herman Storick

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1217 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

License to kill?

Sir, - The comparison between the reckless-driver sentences of Yaron Bracha and
Avigdor Klagsbald was indeed bone-chilling ("Sixteen years inside," Editorial,
September 16). But what concerns me most is not the respective lengths of the
two men's prison terms, but what Adv. Klagsbald may be doing in future.

Does anyone know if he is still driving on our roads? Was his license at least
denied him, or is he still - after those 23 "citations before the fatal
collision" of April 2006 - being allowed, by law or our judicial system, to get
behind the wheel?

SARAH AVIHAI

Jerusalem

Editor's note: Avigdor Klagsbald's license was revoked for 10 years.

Chicago defense

Sir, - As a former Chicagoan, I take offense at Labor MK Ophir Paz-Pines,
referring to the feuding crime families in Netanya, saying, "It is unacceptable
to allow this situation to become the norm, turning the streets of our cities
into Chicago" ("Police don't have what they need to take on mob," September 16).

Was he ever in Chicago? I doubt it. True, back in the 1920s, they did have a lot
of mob action there. But since then, in the past 80 years, Chicago has had
neither more nor fewer shootings than any other large city.

I lived in Chicago for over 50 years and it was definitely not like in the days
of Al Capone. Between all the mayors of Chicago since the 1920s, the city has
become a beautiful and tranquil one.

Please, Mr. Paz-Pines, check the facts.

JULIUS SHWARZSTEIN

Jerusalem

Unkosher speech

Sir, - Some years ago, I attended a wedding, officiated at by an Orthodox rabbi,
on the grounds of a magnificent estate in the North. After the ceremony, the
waiters started passing out canapes and I discovered, to my horror, that some
were cheese and others meat.

Finding the rabbi, I asked whether or not the affair was required to be kosher.
After a brief hesitation, he said, "If it were not, they wouldn't have gotten a
certificate," and promptly left.

So much for the gratuitous comment attributed to Jerusalem marriage registrar
Rabbi Yitzhak Ralbag: "The pig also tries to prove it is kosher by showing that
its hoofs are cloven" ("Conservative leader decries ban on non- Orthodox
immersion," September 22).

It would be grossly unfair to claim that Orthodox rabbis - or even one specific
rabbi - knowingly officiated at a wedding where the food was not kosher. It is,
on the other hand, a gross violation of Jewish principles, to say nothing of
common decency, for an Orthodox rabbi - particularly one to whose hands the
administration of the sacred mitzva of marriage in the city of Jerusalem has
been entrusted - to speak in such insulting and boorish terms about those who
may feel obligated to submit to the yoke of the mitzvot, but are not comfortable
in submitting to the unfair yoke of those who so obviously despise them.

JAC FRIEDGUT

Jerusalem

Unmanly mission

Sir, - I read with disbelief David Benkof's "My gay 'akeda'" (September 18). Mr.
Benkof, admittedly gay, has decided to not only forgo same-sex relations but to
"eventually pursue traditional Jewish family life married to a woman."

What does he imagine that his proposed spouse will experience, married to a man
who chooses to be with her only in order to live his personal sacrifice, going
against his own instincts and desires? What can a man do that would be more
selfish or more hurtful to his life partner?

If Mr. Benkof is not alone in his mission, it is a sad commentary on what the
meaning of Jewish identity and observance has sunk to. Whatever happened to the
old- fashioned idea that "love and marriage go together like a horse and
carriage"?

Mr. Benkof could choose to live celibate as a form of personal akeda. Abraham
too was alone in his fearful decision - Sarah was not party to the event. The
only other moral choice open to him is to be what his fate determined him to be.

ARNOLD I. KISCH, MD

Jerusalem

No place at the table

Sir, - Two important points need to be added to Isi Leibler's excellent
"Canadian Israel advocacy in turmoil" (September 21). The takeover by a small
group of fund- raisers and main donors was really a coup, without any
consultation with the Canadian Jewish Congress, a body elected by all Jews
across Canada, or with the Canada Israel Committee (the Canadian AIPAC), a group
of volunteers comprising supporters of all Israeli political points of view.

Both organizations had highly qualified staff with excellent PR qualifications,
and were very efficient. But the new group - the Canadian Council for Israel and
Jewish Advocacy (CIJA) - controls the purse-strings and the budgets; and the
message to other organizations, who were doing a much better job than CIJA is
now doing, was to go along, or be cut off.

Most of the "machers" are good friends of Shimon Peres and want only his agenda
as the policy of the Canadian Jewish community. It is thus not so much the "sha
shtil" approach, as leftist-only ideas. Political centrists, even more so those
a little to the right, have not only lost their place at the decision-making
table. They cannot even approach the table.

Sometimes it seems that this new entity is a branch of the Israeli Labor Party.

Happily, as Leibler points out, there are a number of smaller groups in Canada
carrying the message Israel needs to be sent to the Canadian Jewish community,
and to the Israel-friendly Canadian government.

DAVID ROTENBERG

Jerusalem /Toronto

Helping lubricate

the evil machine

Sir, - Re "Ahmadinejad: Iran to break 'hand of offender'" (September 22): The
Iranian president should not be permitted to travel freely around Manhattan, or
anywhere in the US for that matter, while he is in New York to address the UN.

Rudy Giuliani is the only mayor who would have implemented such a measure, thus
helping to define for the world who the bad guys are and treating them in the
way they deserve.

Not isolating and disgracing Ahmadinejad during his visit to New York suggests
acquiescence in his behavior and only lubricates his machine of evil.

MEL DRILLER

New York

Bloody waste of time

Sir, - Iraqi parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi's persecution by his fellow Iraqis
is a good illustration of what a waste America's investment in that country has
been.

Al-Alusi's unequivocal condemnation of terrorism and open admiration of Israel
represent the progressive thinking we have sought in liberating Iraq.
Nevertheless, he is only a one-man party, elected by about 1,400 voters out of
26 million. His statements and visits to Israel have gotten his two sons
murdered, and now he is facing a ban on travel and possible criminal charges
("Iraqi MP calls for joint intel network with Israel and US," September 11).

Our mistake in promoting democracy lies in not understanding that it is more
than just majority rule, that it also means individual freedom; and as long as
Iraq is an Islamic state, real democracy will never happen there.

DAVID KATCOFF

Jericho, Vermont

Holy restoration

Sir, - Re "Catholic Poles mobilize to save neglected Jewish cemeteries"
(September 18): I would like to add that the Web site
(www.kirkuty@kirkuty.xip.pl) covers the tremendous work being done by Krzysztof
Bielawski and colleagues in restoring the cemeteries of former Jewish
communities. The site is in Polish and English, and covers a brief history of
many Jewish communities as well.

HERMAN STORICK

Larchmont, New York

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September 23, 2008 Tuesday

Austria antes up

BYLINE: DIANA GREGOR

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 611 words

HIGHLIGHT: Nobody thought Austria would have been one of two players to sign the
biggest gas deal a European company has ever concluded with Iran. The writer is
a freelance journalist in Austria focusing on the Middle East, particularly
Iran.

'Austria is a small world within the bigger world which challenges it," German
dramatist Friedrich Hebbel once said. This quote rings true, especially today.
Although it is true that the former empire is in many ways a veritable Garden of
Eden - from a political, economic, ecological and cultural point of view it is
one of the safest places on earth - a dark stain continues to stretch over
Austria's history like an invisible shade.

It impossible to ignore the opportunism which plagues Austria's diplomatic
history. In the maze of international events, Austria always manages to appear
forced into a corner in order to be able to close its eyes and ears unobserved.
This was the case with Austria's work on reconciliation during 1938-1945, and it
is still true to this day. It would be foolish, though, to assume that this
attitude is a result of a real inability to act, whether politically or
economically. Austria antes up so as not to be thrown out of the world powers'
poker game, but in fact it plays its hand quite skillfully and aggressively.

CONSIDER THE round of a new game that started in April 2007. Nobody thought that
Austria would have been one of the two players to sign an energy deal with Iran
worth 22 billion euros. Moreover, Austria won the jackpot. Representatives of
Austria's OMV, which is 30 percent government owned, and the Iranian National
Oil Company signed the biggest gas deal that a European company has ever
concluded with Iran.

The agreement found support among all parties in the Austrian parliament -
despite Iran's non-compliance with UN resolutions regarding its controversial
nuclear program. Despite the Iranian regime's pronouncement that Israel, a UN
member state, ought to be wiped off the map. Despite the fact that there are
more children and teenagers being sentenced to death in Iran than in any other
country. And despite the fact that the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has
repeatedly referred to the Holocaust as "the myth about the massacre of the
Jews."

The war of words in the debate about the Iranian nuclear program has sharpened
in tone. It is beyond question that a major offensive is going to happen
eventually. "A nuclear Iran is intolerable," said Ephraim Sneh, Israel's former
deputy defense minister, during his recent visit in Vienna. "If one helps the
regime economically, that equals encouraging its nuclear ambitions."

AUSTRIA IS caught right in the middle. Not only has OMV signed a
multibillion-euro deal with Iran, but it also is one of the major sponsors of
the "Gas Export Conference," which will take place in Teheran on October 4 and
5. How can such behavior possibly be reconciled with the sense of responsibility
that Austria bears for the Holocaust and for Israel's right to exist? Not at
all.

Instead, Austria is looking for arguments and excuses that legitimate its actual
ambitions. The fact is that Austria has become one of the leading strategic
partners of the mullah-dictatorship - and not only because of the oil giant OMV.
During the past six years Austrian exports to Iran have almost doubled; future
exports are being secured by government guarantees.

Aside from the moral dubiousness, the bilateral relationship should also be
mistrusted on an economic level. If Austrian investors cannot take ethical
dimensions into account, they should at least consider the financial risk of
dealing with an unstable region. Iran is a powder keg. In the near future the
country will face a military strike. Anyone unimpressed by sanctions and
resolutions should at least avoid investing in a tinderbox. But as Cicero once
said: "There are many ways that lead to wealth, and most of them are dirty."

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September 23, 2008 Tuesday

Understanding the Georgia invasion

BYLINE: EFRAIM INBAR

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1101 words

HIGHLIGHT: It was the opening shot in Russia's grand strategy to challenge the
West by dominating the energy market. The writer is professor of political
studies at Bar-Ilan University and the director of its Begin-Sadat Center for
Strategic Studies.

Moscow's military intervention in Georgia must be understood through the prism
of global strategy and energy politics. Moscow seeks to intimidate energy
producing countries once part of the Soviet Union, such as Azerbaijan and
Turkmenistan, and to develop a grand anti-American energy coalition that spans
from Iran to Venezuela. This poses a significant challenge to the West, and may
yet require muscular Western counteraction.

The small state of Georgia is a fledgling pro-Western democracy that seeks to
join NATO and other Western political structures. Georgia, located next to
powerful Russia, committed a grave mistake in its foreign policy this August.
Tbilisi ignored the main virtue advocated by the great practitioners of
international relations from Niccolo Machiavelli to Henry Kissinger - prudence -
by attempting to regain military control of a seceding region which was
supported by Moscow.

Russia exploited the Georgian miscalculation to strike back and to remind
everybody that Russia will flex its military muscles in areas considered to be
its backyard. Moscow views with trepidation the expansion of NATO, of which it
is not a member, toward its borders. Georgian accession to NATO is simply
unbearable from a Russian perspective. Russia is threatened by the Western
security architecture and will oppose encroachment on areas once
Russian-controlled.

Yet this understandable aspect of Russian behavior hides a more ambitious
foreign policy goal of controlling the global energy sector, and using such
leverage to challenge America in world affairs. The immediate goal of Moscow's
military intervention in Georgia was to intimidate the energy-producing
countries once part of the Soviet Union, such as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, to
return to the Russian sphere of influence. The Finlandization of the Caucasus
and Central Asia will allow Russia, a great oil producer itself, greater
influence over the world's energy.

Oil and gas constitute a strategic commodity that is different from coffee or
refrigerators. Control of this commodity bestows considerable political
influence. The Russians understand that such leverage can be effective against
the energy-hungry European states who are already dependent to various degrees
on Russian energy. By its actions in August, Russia decided to challenge
America. Vladimir Putin seeks to create a wedge between the US and Europe by
further increasing the European dependency upon Russian-controlled oil.

GEORGIA IN itself does not produce oil, but hosts several pipelines transferring
oil from Azerbaijan in the Caspian Basin. The Georgian territory helps bypass
Russian land and prevents Russia from having a greater handle on moving oil from
the Caspian to the West. Therefore, following the invasion, Russian troops took
control of the Baku-Supsa pipeline (ending on the Black Sea), which runs close
to present Russian military lines. The Russians also threatened control of the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (ending on the Turkish Mediterranean shore) by
attacking its vicinity from the air. If the Russians remain in Georgia, they
maintain control over great amounts of oil slated for the West that hitherto
were unaffected by Russian preferences.

Russia aims to strengthen key alliances with countries such as Iran and
Venezuela in its quest for energy supremacy. Russia's refusal to cooperate with
the West in isolating Iran in order to curb its nuclear ambitions has remained
an enigma to realpolitik observers, who expect it to prefer non-proliferation.
Yet, if Russia's grand strategy is to challenge the US, then one of its main
tools is the political economy of energy. With a much greater nuclear arsenal,
Russia is ready to tolerate a nuclear Iran. It believes it is strong enough to
deter the ayatollahs if they can be harnessed under Russian grand strategy.

Moscow nourishes hopes of coordinating anti-Western policies with oil-rich Iran.
A nuclear Iran may serve the Russian interest in detaching Gulf oil from
American influence. This had been a long-standing goal of the Soviet Union.
Facing an Iran armed with nuclear weapons, most oil producing countries in the
Gulf will slither into the Iranian orbit. The Shi'ite areas are most vulnerable
to Iranian influence. Noteworthy, the southern portion of Iraq as well as the
northern province of Saudi Arabia, where significant amounts of oil are located,
are heavily populated by Shi'ites (as is Iran).

A NUCLEAR Iran will also dominate the Persian Gulf and its energy output. A
nuclear Iran may also destabilize Turkey, which serves as an energy corridor for
the West. An emboldened Iran will be less reluctant to meddle in Turkish affairs
and help the Islamic radical elements to create political turmoil and even an
Islamic takeover of Turkey. Secular Turkey has been an anathema to the
ayatollahs.

Further evidence for an anti-American grand strategy is the Russian behavior
toward Venezuela, another major exporter of oil. Russia capitalized on the
extreme anti- Americanism displayed by Venezuela's leader, Hugo Chavez. We
already see a minor Russian military presence in Venezuela and the Caribbean.
The Moscow-Teheran-Caracas axis is currently in formation. Moscow is harnessing
the oil riches of these two countries to challenge US hegemony in an
increasingly energy dependent world. Iran and Venezuela cooperate willingly to
see American influence reduced.

THE WEST must recognize the challenge ahead. Pavlovian responses urging
engagement, which often is a euphemism for plain appeasement, are to be
expected. Yet, it is an illusion to believe that the Russians will change their
mind. Expansion of the EU and of NATO already has progressed too far from the
Russian point of view. Russia's security concerns, coupled with its historic
imperialism, drive its strategy.

Therefore, if the West does not want to succumb to dependence upon a Russian-led
energy coalition, it has to act as soon as possible. Alternatives sources of
energy should be explored. Conserving energy is similarly important. At the same
time, Western leaders should be aware that what Kissinger called in the
mid-1970s "economic strangulation" might also require military responses. Soft
power may not be sufficient to prevent the rise of an effective anti-Western
energy coalition.

The West must be prepared to defend countries such as Georgia or Azerbaijan to
prevent their falling into the Russian orbit. The West cannot afford
procrastinating regarding Iran to ensure Teheran does not acquire the bomb.
Finally, Washington ought to update its contingency plans for conquering the oil
fields if necessary.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 23, 2008 Tuesday

Russia's perception of reality

BYLINE: DAVID STROMBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 953 words

HIGHLIGHT: Why would it have decided to play the victim in the Georgian debacle?
The writer is editor of Zeek: Russified, a volume of works by contemporary
Russian Jewish writers, poets and artists.

Speaking of the Georgian military attempt to retake its breakaway region of
South Ossetia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said, "The world has changed
and it occurred to me that August 8 has become for Russia as September 11, 2001
for the United States." In case anyone begged to differ, he added, "This is an
accurate comparison corresponding to Russian realities."

Though it "occurred" to Medvedev to express this to the world on September 12,
more than a month after Russia's illegal occupation inside Georgia, on August
14, a week after the outbreak of the crisis, Russian Deputy Prime Minister
Sergei Ivanov had already been quoted as saying, "I may remind you - September
11, the reaction was similar."

It was a strange and surprising comment, as many people believed Russia already
had its own 9/11 - the Chechen terrorist hostage crisis in North Ossetia that
ended with the Beslan school tragedy of September 1, 2004, in which more than
300 people were killed, about half of them children. Then president Vladimir
Putin gave a speech then in which, like Medvedev, he spoke of a "changing world"
and used the events to abolish local governmental elections and replace them
with Kremlin-appointees.

HOW MANY 9/11s does the Russian government expect to exploit? For America, one
was more than enough.

PERHAPS IT is worth examining what this says about Russia's perception of
reality. If August 8 is Russia's September 11, then the democratically elected
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is approximately equivalent to the Saudi
rogue super-terrorist Osama bin Laden. The small Caucasus city of Tskhinvali, of
which most people hadn't heard until this battle and which had a population of
about 30,000, somehow compares in significance to the near mythical
8-million-person megapolis of New York City (or maybe Medvedev had the Pentagon
in mind). Georgia's under-equipped and under-prepared army is representative of
four hijacked airplanes used as missiles. And, most importantly, the threat that
Islamic extremists posed and realized to one of the world's most important
financial, cultural and social centers somehow compares with the threat that
Russia felt when Georgia led its offensive.

This last point holds some water: America was shocked and frightened by the
creativity and grandiosity of the attacks on the Twin Towers. Similarly, Russia
fears the Western-backed support that inspired such a bold (if misguided) move
by Saakashvili.

Unlike Russia, the US didn't get to pick and choose which historical event would
be its 9/11. In America, 9/11 was often compared to Pearl Harbor, which in the
element of a "surprise attack" looks, ironically, a little more like Russia's
August 8. The Pearl Harbor attack was carried out on a military base which was
on undisputed American soil, just like 9/11 was carried out against civilians on
undisputed American soil.

IF RUSSIA feels free to compare these two events, then it follows that it
considers South Ossetia to be Russian soil. And here we get to the heart of the
matter: Long before this military engagement between Russia and Georgia -
throughout 12 years of tension and 12 months of provocational Russian
overflights and cross-border incidents - Russia had already considered South
Ossetia its own.

So if Russia's assumption in this battle was that a region which the rest of the
world considers sovereign Georgian territory was actually Russian territory, why
is Russia suddenly painting itself as the victim in this debacle?

One reason is the overwhelming media backlash against what was perceived as
Russia's disproportionate response. The Western media has been critical of
Putin's regime ever since since it became clear that he was actively curbing
freedom and centralizing power. When Russia not only invaded and then occupied
Georgia, but held its occupying positions despite the called-for withdrawal of
the French- brokered cease-fire, and also acted as protector for South Ossetian
marauders who looted and burned Georgian villages in South Ossetia, murdering
those who didn't hide or flee, the Western press issued forth a critical
reaction that was consistent with its perceptions of Russia's actions.

PUTIN CALLS the free press "the propaganda machine of the so-called West" - this
after he systematically took state control of television and newspapers in a
country notorious for the murders of journalists during so-called peacetime -
but more telling is the fact that Russia had closed off access to Western media
from the devastation of Georgian villages in South Ossetia for which its army
provided cover. If a united critical response from a widely varying Europe and
America is proof of a "propaganda machine," then Russia's limiting of access can
only be seen as its fear that the machine will find something uncomely to
report.

Another reason why Russia needs to present itself as the victim - so much so
that Medvedev has no qualms disrespectfully invoking September 11 on behalf of
Russia's aims - is that despite its strong pose and brutal response, it feels
afraid and genuinely threatened. Russia perceives Western interests to be in
conflict with its interests, which Medvedev has pledged to "defend."

But if the interest is stability, there's an inherent and maybe even stubborn
misperception here: With Georgia as a NATO member, Saakashvili could have never
answered to the West for a war it didn't want, and Georgia would have never
attacked South Ossetia. What would be more difficult for Russia to admit is that
with Georgia in NATO, Russia also would have had to think twice about its
ongoing border provocations. And one underlying factor behind this crisis is
that Russia has no intention of doing this kind of thinking.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: A COLUMN of Russian tanks rumble near the town of Dzhava in the
separatist Georgian province of South Ossetia. (Credit: AP)

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September 23, 2008 Tuesday

Beyond the Israeli-Palestinian problem

BYLINE: ELI KAVON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 822 words

HIGHLIGHT: The reality of today's Middle East is the same centuries-old one of
ethnic and religious strife. The writer, based in Florida, is an adjunct
lecturer on Jewish history at Broward Community College.

Let us imagine that we were all to wake up tomorrow morning to the incredible
news that the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority had concluded a
peace treaty, including agreement by both parties on the issues of water rights,
borders and the status of Jerusalem. A Jewish state and a Palestinian state
would live forever, side by side, in blissful peace. The violence plaguing the
Middle East would end for good; Iran would cease both beating its war drums and
calling for the end of "the Zionist entity"; and calm would prevail over a
united Iraq and an independent Afghanistan. One of the world's most unstable
regions would be converted into an oasis of stability, with Jew, Christian and
Muslim living together in felicity.

Wrong - so much for imagination.

The reality of today's Middle East is the same centuries-old one of ethnic and
religious strife that extends far beyond the borders of the State of Israel. The
civil war plaguing Iraq is, in part, a 1,300-year old conflict among Muslims,
having nothing to do directly with the century of conflict between Palestinians
and Israelis. The Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians are far more afraid of an
expansionist and nuclear Iran than they are of Israel. The last words of Saddam
Hussein before the Iraqi government hanged him was not "Death to the Americans!"
or "Death to the Zionists!" His last words were "Death to the Persians!"

THE IRAQI dictator chose to curse fellow Muslims as he prepared to die. It is
apparent that even if Israel did not exist, the Middle East would be a region
divided by many sorts of conflict that have nothing to do with Zionism or
Israel. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only one of many bloody conflicts
rooted in an area with a long history of religious, political and ethnic strife.

I am not claiming that the Palestinian-Israeli issue is not central to a broader
peace in the Middle East. Yet, we ignore a more decisive reason than that of
Palestinian refugees in attempting to understand Arab and Muslim opposition to
the existence of the State of Israel. That reason is religion, specifically
Islam. The obsessive hatred of Zionism and Israel, especially in the realm of
fundamentalist Islam, can be traced back to the earliest years of the great
Muslim conquests of much of the known world in the early to mid-seventh century.

The Muslim conquerors, while granting Jews and Christians religious freedom and
autonomy, relegated these tolerated "Peoples of the Book" to the status of
dhimmi, "dependent peoples." Muslim rulers forbade Jews and Christians the honor
of riding a horse or camel, conducting religious ceremonies in public, carrying
weapons, converting Muslims to Judaism or Christianity and building places of
worship. Jews and Christians had to pay a special tax to signify their status of
inferiority for rejecting Muhammad as the final prophet of Allah's revelation.

While there were certainly periods in which Muslim rulers ignored the dhimmi
status and provided Jews and Christians with a modicum of power and influence -
the best examples are medieval Spain and the later Ottoman Empire - the
inferiority of Jews and Christians was and still is an important component of
Muslim theology and identity. In Yemen and in the Iranian Safavid Empire, Jews
were more harshly treated than in Muslim Spain and the empire of the Turks.
Wherever Jews and Christians lived in the Muslim world, they were at a legal
disadvantage that was almost always degrading and even sometimes lethal.

IT SHOULD, therefore, come as no surprise that there are some Muslims,
especially those in the fundamentalist world, who cannot live in peace with
Israel. The existence of Jews in a democratic state of proud independence - not
the dhimmi state of humiliating dependence - poses a threat to a centuries-old
Islamic theology that proclaimed the legal, social and religious superiority of
Muslims over non-Muslim infidels. The fact that the State of Israel with its
capital in Jerusalem resides in the heart of what was once Islam's greatest
empire - that of the Ottoman Turks - is a constant reminder to Muslims that the
glory days of their religion's military and political power is over.

The reality of 10,000 American companies doing business with or in the Jewish
state, helping Israel forge an economy the size of a small European nation,
infuriates some Muslims who are envious of a small country with its share of
Nobel Prize winners and global entrepreneurs. Israel, despite its size, its
crises and the plagues of war and terrorism, is no Third World nation. It is a
modern success story.

Fundamentalists in Islam yearn for a return to a time when Jews knew their
place. Too bad for them that the dhimmi finally tired of inferiority and
humiliation, choosing independence and sovereignty. This fact will remain a
factor in Muslim attitudes toward Israel whether Jews and Palestinians make
peace or remain in a perpetual state of war.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: US TROOPS secure the site of a suicide attack on an Iraqi army
convoy. The civil war plaguing Iraq is, in part, a 1,300-year-old conflict among
Muslims. (Credit: AP)

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September 23, 2008 Tuesday

Your abortions or your lives!

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1768 words

HIGHLIGHT: The two most powerful women in American politics could have joined
forces in opposing Iran's war against human freedom, sending a message that
would reverberate throughout the world and into Iran itself. But it was not to
be. OUR WORLD

American Jews have good reason to be ashamed and angry today. As Iran moves into
the final stages of its nuclear weapons development program - nuclear weapons
which it will use to destroy the State of Israel, endanger Jews around the world
and cow the United States of America - Democratic American Jewish leaders
decided that putting Sen. Barack Obama in the White House is more important than
protecting the lives of the Jewish people in Israel and around the world.

On Monday, the New York Sun published the speech that Republican vice
presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would have delivered at that
day's rally outside UN headquarters in New York against Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and against Iran's plan to destroy Israel. She would have
delivered it, if she hadn't been disinvited.

The rally was co-sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish
Organizations, the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, The Israel Project,
United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Council
for Public Affairs. Its purpose was to present a united American Jewish front
against Iran's genocidal leader and against its genocidal regime which is
developing nuclear weapons with the stated intention of committing the second
Holocaust in 80 years.

Palin's speech is an extraordinary document. In its opening paragraph she made
clear that Iran presents a danger not just to Israel, but to the US. And not
just to some Americans, but to all Americans. Her speech was a warning to Iran -
and anyone else who was listening - that Americans are not indifferent to its
behavior, its genocidal ideology and the barbarity of its regime. Rather, they
are outraged.

After that opening, Palin's speech set out clearly how Iran is advancing its
nuclear project, why it must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and why
and how the regime itself must be opposed by all right thinking people - not
just Israelis and Americans - but by all people who value human freedom.

PALIN'S SPEECH was a message of national - rather than simply Republican -
resolve against Iran's nuclear weapons program and its active involvement in
global and regional terrorism. She made this point by quoting statements that
Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton has made against the Iranian regime.

The speech detailed Iran's past and current attacks against the US, beginning
with its bombing of US servicemen in Lebanon in 1983 and continuing with Iran's
proxy war against US forces in Iraq and against Iraqis who oppose its intention
of taking control of their country.

By discussing Iran's role in Iraq she not only made a convincing case for why an
American victory there is essential for defeating Iran. She also made clear that
Iran is actively making war against the US, not just Israel.

From Iran's war against Israel, the US, and freedom loving peoples worldwide,
Palin's speech turned to the regime's war against its own people. She attacked
the regime for its systematic repression of Iranian women. She applauded the
extraordinary bravery of women like Delaram Ali who risked their lives and their
families to demand basic rights for Iranian women. Ali, she noted, was sentenced
to 10 lashes and three years in prison for having the courage to speak out. An
international outcry has temporarily suspended her sentence.

Then Palin returned to Iran's nuclear weapons program and its support for
terrorist groups pledged to Israel's destruction and to the destruction of the
US. She returned to Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel's annihilation. She
reiterated Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain's solemn promise
to work with Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and she
joined her name to his promise to stand side by side with Israel to prevent
another Holocaust.

IF PALIN had been allowed to deliver this speech at Monday's rally, she would
done just what the organizers of the rally, and what the Jewish people in
Israel, America and worldwide need to have done. She would have elevated the
imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the implicit
moral and strategic imperative of overthrowing the regime in Teheran to the top
of America's national security agenda. Given the massive media attention she
garners at all of her public appearances, Palin's participation in the rally
would have done more to steel Americans - across the political spectrum - to the
cause of opposing Iran than 10 UN Security Council sanctions resolutions could
do.

It was a remarkable speech, prepared by a remarkable woman. But it was not
heard. It was not heard because the Democratic Party and Jewish Democrats
believe that their partisan interest in demonizing Palin and making Americans
generally and American Jews in particular hate and fear her to secure their
votes for Obama and his running-mate Sen. Joseph Biden in the November election
is more important than allowing Palin to elevate the necessity of preventing a
second Holocaust to the top of the US's national security agenda.

The rally's organizers invited both Clinton and Palin to speak. It was a wise
move. In light of Iran's monstrous oppression of Iranian women, had the two most
powerful women in American politics joined forces in opposing the regime and its
war against human freedom, their appearance would have sent a message of
American unity and resolve that would have reverberated not just throughout the
US and in the US presidential race, but throughout the world and into Iran
itself. But it was not to be.

The moment that Clinton found out that she was to share a stage with Palin, she
cancelled her appearance. By cancelling, she signaled to Jewish Democrats - and
Democrats in general - that opposing Palin and the Republican Party is more
important than opposing Ahmadinejad and the genocidal regime he represents.

THE JEWISH Democrats on the rally's organizing committee got the message loud
and clear. Two of the rally's co-sponsors - the Jewish Council for Public
Affairs and the UJA Federation of New York demanded that the Conference of
Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations disinvite Palin.

The JCPA is led by Steven Gutow. Before joining the JCPA, he served as the
founding executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, which is
the Jewish support arm of the Democratic Party. The UJA Federation of New York
is led by John Ruskay, who began his Jewish communal career as an anti-Israel
"peace" activist in the radical CONAME and Breira organizations. Among their
other endeavors, CONAME and Breira opposed US military assistance to Israel
during the Yom Kippur War and called for US recognition of the PLO after the
group massacred 26 children in Ma'alot in 1974.

Gutow and Ruskay were supported in their demand to disinvite Palin by the
National Jewish Democratic Council and by the new Jewish pro-Palestinian
lobbying group J- Street.

In an attempt to assuage Gutow and Ruskay, the rally organizers invited Biden to
speak. But he had a scheduling conflict. So the organizers contacted the Obama
campaign and asked it to send a representative. The campaign offered Congressman
Robert Wexler.

But the Democrats knew that Wexler would be no match for Palin. So they
continued on the warpath, absurdly claiming that by inviting Palin (and Clinton,
Biden and Wexler), the organizers were endangering the sponsoring organizations'
tax-exempt status. That is, through Ruskay and Gutow, in their bid to prevent
Palin from appearing at the rally, the Democrats threatened to bring down the
organized Jewish community.

Never mind that the threat is absurd. The likelihood that the Internal Revenue
Service would open an investigation against every major American Jewish
organization for daring to invite Palin to a rally opposing Ahmadinejad's
appearance at the UN and Iran's stated intention of annihilating Israel is just
slightly smaller than the prospect of Ahmadinejad wrapping himself in an Israeli
flag and singing "Hatikva" on the UN rostrum.

But no matter. The fear that these Democratic Jews would openly split the Jewish
community on the need to confront Iran frightened the organizers. The notion
that the Democratic Party, and its Jewish supporters would openly turn their
backs on the need to confront Iran to advance the political fortunes of their
party and their party's presidential slate was too much to take. Palin was
disinvited.

LIBERAL AMERICAN Jews, like liberal Americans in general, and indeed like their
fellow leftists in Israel and throughout the West, uphold themselves as
champions of human rights. They claim that they care about the underdog, the
wretched of the earth. They care about the environment. They care about securing
American women's unfettered access to abortions. They care about keeping
Christianity and God out of the public sphere. They care about offering peace to
those who are actively seeking their destruction so that they can applaud
themselves for their open-mindedness and tell themselves how much better they
are than savage conservatives.

Those horrible, war-mongering, Bambi killing, unborn baby defending,
God-believing conservatives, who think that there are things worth going to war
to protect, must be defeated at all costs. They must intimidate, attack,
demonize and defeat those conservatives who think that the free women of the
West should be standing shoulder to shoulder not with Planned Parenthood, but
with the women of the Islamic world who are enslaved by a misogynist Shari'a
legal code that treats them as slaves and deprives them of control not simply of
their wombs, but of their faces, their hair, their arms, their legs, their minds
and their hearts.

The lives of 6 million Jews in Israel are today tied to the fortunes of those
women, to the fortunes of American forces in Iraq, to the willingness of
Americans across the political and ideological spectrum to recognize that there
is more that unifies them than divides them and to act on that knowledge to
defeat the forces of genocide, oppression, hatred and destruction that are led
today by the Iranian regime and personified in the brutal personality of
Ahmadinejad. But Jewish Democrats chose to ignore this basic truth in order to
silence Palin.

They should be ashamed. The Democratic Party should be ashamed. And Jewish
American voters should consider carefully whether opposing a woman who opposes
the abortion of fetuses is really more important than standing up for the right
of already born Jews to continue to live and for the Jewish state to continue to
exist. Because this week it came to that.

caroline@carolineglick.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin -
shown here at the Republican National Convention - have promised to work with
Israel to keep Iran from going nuclear. (Credit: Bloomberg)

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September 22, 2008 Monday

When the oil stops flowing

BYLINE: EDWIN BLACK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 695 words

HIGHLIGHT: No one has a contingency plan in the event of a protracted
interruption to America's oil supply. Edwin Black is the New York Times
bestselling investigative author of IBM and the Holocaust, Internal Combustion
and his just released book, The Plan: How to Save America When the Oil Stops -
or the Day Before (Dialog Press), from which this article is adapted.

It will come as a shock to most Americans and the media, but as the election
reaches a crescendo on the issue of preparedness and energy, neither
presidential candidate - nor anyone in local, state or federal government - has
developed a contingency plan in the event of a protracted oil cut-off. It is not
even being discussed. Government has prepared for hurricanes, anthrax, terrorism
and every other disaster, but not the one threatened daily - a protracted oil
stoppage, whether caused by terrorism, intervention in the Persian Gulf or a
natural disaster.

It is like seeing a hurricane developing without a disaster plan or evacuation
route. Our allies have oil shortage interruption contingency plans, but America
does not.

THE CRUDE realities: America uses approximately 20 million barrels of oil per
day, almost 70 percent of which is imported. If we lose just 1 million barrels
per day, or suffer the type of damage sustained from Hurricane Katrina, the
government will open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which offers a mere
six-to-eight week supply of unrefined crude oil. If we lose 1.5 million barrels
per day, or approximately 7.5%, we will ask our allies in the 28-member
International Energy Agency to open their SPRs and otherwise assist. If we lose
2 million barrels per day, or 10%, government crisis monitors say the chaos will
be so catastrophic they cannot even model it.

Exactly how could America be subjected to a protracted oil interruption, that
is, a 10% shortfall lasting longer than several weeks? It will not come from
hurricane action in the Gulf of Mexico, or even major refinery accidents or
other oil infrastructure damage. Such damage would be repaired within days and
the temporary losses absorbed by the small half million barrel per day global
cushion available.

NOR WILL fuel chaos arise from pinprick sabotage against oil facilities or
pipelines in such places as Mexico or Nigeria. Home-grown insurgents in faraway
places have long targeted petroleum infrastructure as a means of pressuring
their local governments. But those attacks can be defended against, the damage
repaired, and workarounds developed.

However, if one, two or all of three vital chokepoints are hit by terrorists
flying hijacked 747s or Iranian military action - the Abqaiq processing plant,
the Ras Tanura terminal in Saudi Arabia, or the two-mile per sea lane Strait of
Hormuz - as much as 40% of all seaborne oil will be stopped, as much as 18% of
all global supply will be interrupted, and from 12 to 20% of the US supply will
be cut off. Estimates are the US shortfall could be even higher. Repeat attacks
could prolong the crisis for many months, which is exactly what either al-Qaida
or Iranian terrorists have promised. Yet there is no plan.

THE BEST experts predict that if we suffer as much as 10% for any period of
time, let alone 20%, it will be a neighbor-against-neighbor "Mad Max" scenario
as food shortages swell and a storm of economic collapse surges across the
country. Indeed, experts have been warning about this looming calamity for
years. But the government and presidential candidates refuse to even consider
the possibility or develop a contingency plan.

Yet our allies have developed oil contingency legislation and other
administrative plans that will permit their nations to survive a stoppage. These
measures include severe vehicle traffic reductions, enabling fast alternative
fuel production and mass vehicle retrofitting, as well as rush public transit
enhancement, and mandated changes in driving habits. Unquestionably, for America
to survive such a catastrophe will require a very painful, multilayered program
of immediate-term, short-term, mid- term and long-term fixes that will change
our society and transform it off oil. The nation has no real alternative fuel or
retrofitting infrastructure. But every lawmaker, mayor, governor and every
candidate must develop such a plan - and now.

If the country waits until the disaster strikes, until the oil is shut off, we
have little or no chance. If we start now, the day before, we can survive. How
we start and when we start will define the degree of pain or success of this
process.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: A HURRICANE evacuation tapped out this Houston-area gas station.
Experts can't even model a 10% oil shortfall. (Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 22, 2008 Monday

Sixteen years inside

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 737 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

It's not often in our frequently ultra-lenient legal system that a homicidally
reckless driver is sent to prison for 16 years. When this relatively harsh
sentence was passed on 28-year-old Yaron Bracha of Yahud last Thursday,
prosecutor Or Mammon described it as "precedent-setting, yet fitting the crime."

Bracha's parents screamed, rioted in court and compared what was meted out to
their son with the paltry price paid by celebrity lawyer Avigdor "Dori"
Klagsbald in December 2006 for a crime no less horrific, even if it claimed
fewer lives. The comparison is indeed telling, but it is the punishment meted
out to Klagsbald that was outrageous, not that handed down to Bracha.

For too long, killer-drivers here have literally got away with murder. Most
glaring, indeed, is Klagsbald's case. Its notoriety stemmed partially from the
fact that the perpetrator, besides being affluent, was also well- connected.
Some of this country's top politicos were among his clients, including Ehud
Barak (in the Orr Commission hearings), Ariel Sharon (during the Greek Island
and Cyril Kern imbroglios) and Shaul Mofaz (about running for the Knesset
shortly after the end of his military service).

IN 2007 Klagsbald was freed after serving a mere eight months for the April 2006
killing of a young mother, Yevgenia Wechsler, and her five-year-old son, Arthur.
He had been sentenced to only 15 months in the first place, primarily because he
was tried on the lesser charge of negligence rather than criminal negligence or
manslaughter, which could theoretically carry a 20-year sentence. The 15 months
were further cut to 13. Klagsbald was then paroled for "good behavior."

From the start, he was treated with kid gloves by police investigators - either
that, or something more sinister - who astoundingly mishandled his blood-alcohol
test and never assessed the speed with which Klagsbald's powerful vehicle
rammed, without braking, into the back of Wechsler's stationary Fiat, waiting
for the traffic light to change at Tel Aviv's Derech Namir and Einstein
intersection. Besides killing the mother and child, Klagsbald wounded three
others.

A recidivist offender, Klagsbald had amassed 23 citations before the fatal
collision. His rap-sheet lists convictions for excessive speed, reversing
recklessly to the point of endangering pedestrians, driving left of a solid
white line, illegal U-turns, failure to yield the right of way, stopping inside
an intersection, ignoring stop signs, driving the wrong way on one-way streets
and using a cell phone while driving. Any of the above offenses could have had
fatal consequences.

The presiding judge rejected Klagsbald's contention that he had suffered
temporary "loss of orientation" on that April day two years ago, noting that the
attorney "drove at unreasonable speed and failed to slow down on approaching the
intersection."

And yet Klagsbald was incarcerated for a derisory term.

UNLIKE Klagsbald, Bracha was tried for manslaughter.

At 1:30 a.m. on March 7, 2007, disregarding a red light, he crossed the Ginaton
Junction near Lod at 171 km. per hour, ramming into a vehicle taking Egged shift
employees home. He killed Moshe Ben-Gigi ,44, the driver, and passengers Aharon
Benisho, 55, David Yona, 51, Michael Kashpur, 28, and Yitzhak Cohen, 42. The
final fatality was Bracha's own twin brother, Eyal, who sat in the passenger
seat of his car. Bracha, in his failed defense, tried to claim Eyal had been the
driver.

This time police did test both for speed and substance abuse. Bracha was high on
alcohol and drugs.

Although the death toll from Bracha's criminal unruliness was higher than
Klagsbald's, the bottom line is the same: Our highways are turned into extreme
danger zones by drivers who consider them their private playground. Easygoing
and compassionate judges only fuel contempt for the law. Klagsbald's example
hardly deterred other wild men at the wheel.

Much needs to be done to increase traffic safety. Improved infrastructure,
especially inexpensive instruments such as speed-cameras, can certainly help.
But in the final analysis, if the punishment won't fit the crime, drivers will
dread nothing.

While the Klagsbald sentence was a travesty at one end of the judicial
continuum, therefore, the Bracha sentence is anything but inappropriate. It is,
rather, a powerful disincentive to reckless motoring and a hopeful sign that
this society is, at last, opting to protect itself.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 22, 2008 Monday

Global and local gambles

BYLINE: LIAT COLLINS

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1094 words

HIGHLIGHT: Taking stock of the political and economic situation after the fall.
First appeared in the International Edition of September 19, 2008.

There are some pieces of advice destined to be passed down from one generation
to the next. It might not be conventional, but one of the pearls of wisdom that
my grandfather handed on was: Never gamble with more than you can afford to
lose. Another piece of unspoken advice - never voiced because it should be so
obvious: Don't gamble with anything that is not yours to lose.

My grandfather's "play-but-play-it-safe" approach came naturally to mind this
week as the world's financial markets all but crashed.

It turns out that somebody - in fact a large number of corporate nameless
somebodies - had been taking risks with money they didn't really have and which
didn't really belong to them.

THE SIGNS have been around for a long time. There has been a domino effect in
the world markets. And some people have been getting very rich gambling as if
this was all a game. Israelis are not immune to this global collapse, although
not as hard hit - yet. A few weeks ago, however, when I received the statement
of a small pension plan, I tried to call the bank to find out how come this year
I actually owed it money. I wasted even more hard-earned cash as a taped voice
told me to press this button for that department, as if all clients know which
unit to dial to complain about poor investment strategy. When I finally got
through to a human being - who I assume was sitting in Tel Aviv but for all I
know could be a Hebrew speaker in New Delhi - she was flummoxed. No one else had
called to ask this question, she assured me. She subjected me to another long
wait while the receiver played irritating tunes in my ear before taking my
number. Somebody higher up did indeed return my call but did not have any
answers.

Mr. Higher-Up suggested I put my question in writing. I don't suppose this piece
is what he had in mind but I don't owe him anything. On the contrary.

Israelis, like other residents of the global village, have suddenly had to get
used to a whole new world with its own jargon. I eavesdropped this week on a
conversation in which one elderly bus passenger earnestly discussed the collapse
of "Meryl Streep." I half expected him to talk about the Lehman Brothers as if
they were some kind of comedy team. But this is no joke. The conversationalist
and his partner - presumably unaware that half the bus was listening - briefly
flirted with the idea of pulling their money out of the bank and hiding it
"mitahat labalatot," under the floor tiles. I toyed with the idea of telling
them that the same bank that had lost some of their money would also charge them
a large fee for removing what was left.

Obviously the more you have, the more you stand to lose. Ditto the more you
gamble with - even unwittingly. Even when you have invested it in as solid a
savings program as you could find. When giants fall, ordinary people are likely
to get squashed and a shadow is cast over everyone else.

FOR THE most part, Israelis watched the drama on Wall Street, in London and
elsewhere much as we watched the reports of the rains in North America and
Britain. As the weather here continued to sizzle, we looked but found it hard to
believe that so much storm damage was possible. The difference, of course, is
that the weather is what insurance companies like to refer to as "an act of
God," while a financial storm is, any insurance company still standing should
admit, the result of human error and human frailties. The generation that
American-idolized the get- rich-and-get-famous-quick culture looked at a bubble
about to burst and saw only something big and shining.

Local well-paid financial experts have been issuing warnings and advice which
seem to boil down to: work hard at keeping your job. This seems especially sound
if your pension plan is actually decreasing in value. But my grandfather could
have offered that advice for nothing.

Israel was distracted by the economic situation. In a military crisis we know
the terms (or more often the abbreviations) and freely offer advice. A political
crisis? Katan aleinu, as Tzipi Livni would put it. That's nothing. A financial
crisis, however, is frightening in part because it demonstrates how dependent we
are on the rest of the world. If America, our biggest trade partner, stops
buying, there will be less money in our banks however responsibly they behave.

I looked around downtown Jerusalem, one mammoth construction site at the moment,
and wondered what happens if the investors digging the foundations of more and
more luxury housing projects suddenly find the bottom has fallen out of the
world market and there are no more funds.

THE MAN in the Jerusalem street - where one day, hopefully, the light rail will
run - instinctively knows, like my grandfather, that he has to be careful and
not gamble with more than he can afford to lose.

That message, however, might be too simple for some of our sophisticated leaders
to accept. In any sphere.

While the world markets were collapsing and on the eve of the Kadima Party
primaries that would replace him, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert parleyed with
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last week in Jerusalem. Ignoring
the economic meltdown, it was business as usual. The prime minister pledged to
continue with the diplomatic process until a new government is sworn in by the
Knesset, which could be anything from a few weeks to several months.

The ongoing dealing is even more disturbing when taken in the context of global
events. It's easy to see why Olmert, Abbas and their mate George W. Bush would
like to get together regularly for a chat. They are perhaps the only ones who
truly appreciate each other. But Olmert, sooner or later, will have to vacate
the official residence for his controversially purchased home nearby. Bush is
also so close to the door on his way out that it makes no difference to him if
he stumbles. And it's doubtful that even Abbas's most optimistic advisers would
consider his term in office a long-term investment.

WE HAVE yet to see who will lead either Israel or the US in the Jewish New Year
and civil new year. Olmert would be wise to avoid discussing Israel's future
before he leaves office as if it were just another real-estate deal. And his
successor should also take the opportunity for a reality check.

The world leaders should be busy fixing their own homes. We should be very
careful that they don't try to boost their stocks and standing by trying to
leave their mark on the Middle East diplomatic process - a quick fix. Trading in
futures is very risky. Ask your investment banker, if you can reach him.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: New York stock exchange traders on Friday, when news of a
government bailout helped Wall Street rally after its worst week in 60 years.
(Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 22, 2008 Monday

Whose side are they on?

BYLINE: MARK GOLD

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 710 words

HIGHLIGHT: Too many American Jewish groups place the community, the nation, and
Israel a distant second to their own political agendas. The writer does
volunteer work on behalf of US national security and Israel. He is retired from
a career in the transportation industry and lives in the northeastern US.

Many large, long-established mainstream American Jewish organizations have
outlived their usefulness.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Jewish
Community Relations Council of New York, United Jewish Communities,
UJA-Federation of New York, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs
commendably sponsored a "Rally to Stop Iran." But after Republican
vice-presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin accepted an invitation to speak at
the event, they disinvited her. This followed Sen. Hillary Clinton cancelling
her planned appearance upon learning of Palin's planned appearance.

The event organizers claimed they did not want political figures to appear at
the rally - despite the fact that they touted such appearances in the past, and
logically so, as high-profile personalities lend weight to the cause.

WHAT CAN we conclude from this chain of events?

1. The importance to Clinton of avoiding an appearance with Palin is greater
than the need to stand together and speak out against Iran's nuclear weapons
program and incitement to genocide.

2. For the Jewish organizations sponsoring the rally, placating some
behind-the-scenes groups with an apparent hatred of Palin is more important than
ensuring decency and fairness; the interests of the Jewish people and Israel;
and opposing Iran's nuclear ambitions.

There is an element of hypocrisy here, as well. Palin's appearance was deemed
"political," but Clinton's attendance would not have been?

THE UNFORTUNATE recurring theme seems to be that too many American Jewish
organizations place the interests of the community, the nation, and Israel a
distant second to their own political and personal agendas.

In 2003, when Israel was battling relentless, deadly Palestinian violence, one
major Jewish organization that one might have relied on to lend its support was
devoting its resources to filing a brief supporting the University of Michigan's
affirmative action program.

The next year, the Union for Reform Judaism criticized Congress "for passing
one-sided pro-Israel resolutions." The URJ leadership also opposed the US
intervention in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein, who was, among other things,
paying the families of Palestinian terrorists who killed Israelis. Did URJ
leaders oppose US action in Iraq because they were looking out for Israel's or
Jews' best interest, or because it was more important for their positions to fit
in with their leftist milieu?

Most recently, URJ President Rabbi Eric Yoffie declared that the movement would
not cooperate with Christian Zionists. That in itself is bad enough for Israel,
but the URJ and other Jewish organizations' hostility to Christian Zionists
hardly encourages more support for Israel.

OTHER MAINSTREAM Jewish organizations are slow to focus on fighting
Islamofascism's threat to the Western world as a whole, and to Jews in
particular. They don't realize or let on that anti-Semitism today is centered in
the Muslim world, with a virulence every bit as horrific as the Nazis'. They
prefer to warn us about the relative non- threats of conservative Christians,
sightings of neo-Nazis in Europe, or Jewish cemeteries being desecrated with
swastikas.

Often, the fact that Israelis in Sderot and elsewhere have been bombarded daily
from Gaza often doesn't rate as much concern as the neo-Nazi bogeyman. Is it a
perceived need for atonement for their failures during the Holocaust that these
organizations seem to prefer to wallow in its "lessons" and the last-war threat
of neo-Nazis, rather than face today's enemies?

Recent turmoil in the financial world has claimed a number of hallowed names.
Others were bailed out by American taxpayers. A number of the old-line Jewish
organizations will - no doubt - also have their saviors, but it would make more
sense to let the hoary, wizened ones pass from the scene and leave the
battlefield to the others. Newer groups like JINSA, Stand With Us, CAMERA, and
MEMRI, and a few older ones like ZOA* are better attuned to today's challenges
and more effective at meeting them.

*Acronyms stand for Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; Committee
for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America; Middle East Media Research
Institute; and Zionist Organization of America, respectively.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: IRAN'S SHIHAB-2 missile is transported past Teheran on Sunday.
Governor Sarah Palin was disinvited from the 'Rally to Stop Iran,' raising
questions about the organizers' priorities. (Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 22, 2008 Monday

Letters

BYLINE: Ruth Posner, Miriam Levy, Shlomit Grantz, Ellie Morris, V. Abraham,
Ronnie Feldman, Roy Susman, Miriam Rubinstein

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1155 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Welcome, Sir Paul

Sir, - How delighted and uplifted I was to read yesterday's Jerusalem Post! The
usual depressing news about politics, bribery and corruption etc., was offset by
almost two and a half pages devoted to the heartwarming visit this week of Sir
Paul McCartney ("Upbeat McCartney plays up his 'peaceful message' ahead of Tel
Aviv concert," September 21).

I am married to an ex-pupil of the Liverpool Institute, the then prestigious
high school at which Paul McCartney and George Harrison were students, and the
music of the Beatles is immensely enjoyed by three generations of our family.

Let's give a warm welcome and shalom to this world celebrity.

RUTH POSNER

Beit Shemesh

A hard day's night

Sir, - In 1962, I was 13 and living in London. An enquiry trickled down to me
via my father, who was friendly with the assistant editor of Vogue. The magazine
was doing a photo shoot with the Beatles - would I like to be one of the young
people included in the spread?

Would I like it? I daydreamed about it for weeks, and when the great day
arrived, my mother (chaperone) and I traveled to the designated location to
await the Fab Four. It was the first time she let me wear lipstick.

After two hours, someone approached our group, and said: "The lads are waiting
for you in (another place). Come on.... So we all (including mom) piled gamely
into a van and drove off to the new rendezvous.

Sadly, the Beatles never made it there either, and so there is no framed photo
of me with four of the most famous people who ever lived hanging in my sitting
room.

Vogue did, however, send a dozen glossy pictures of the group as a "consolation
prize," and they stayed on my bedroom wall for many years.

MIRIAM LEVY

Tel Aviv

Flowers from George

Sir, - In the early '70s, after my hippie days in San Francisco, I made my way
over to Hana, Maui, Hawaii, where I was the owner/manager of a popular vacation
rental business in the small, sleepy town of less than 2,000 people.

We were approached by an agent with a "client" wanting to rent one of the lovely
places located on Hana Bay while waiting for his home to be completed. After
negotiating the rental, I asked for the name of the family. The agent wouldn't
comply - and I didn't agree to rent unless I knew who the renters were. Finally
the agent gave in: It was "the Harrison family."

I met George, Olivia and little Dani, Dani's nanny and their bodyguard, and we
soon became friendly, though George was cautious of new friendships and of
people trying to get close to him.

Their home, down in lower Nahiku, was finally completed and they wanted me to
keep an eye on it while they were away, stock it with health food before they
arrived, and clean up.

I was experiencing marital difficulties, and a separation had left me and the
kids with the business, alone in a small town where everyone knew everything.

One day when I came in to collect the mail, the post office lady said: "You got
some flowers in da mail," and appeared at the window with this huge box of the
most gorgeous flowers I had ever seen, even for tropical Hawaii.

The note inside said: "Olivia and I appreciate you and wish you happiness, love
George."

It meant so much to me at that dark time in my life, and I will always remember
the day I got flowers from George Harrison.

SHLOMIT GRANTZ

Jerusalem

Fiscal finagle

Sir, - I cannot believe that anyone - except perhaps Prof. Jacob Frenkel - was
surprised by the current financial meltdown ("The fiscal lessons of Jacob
Frenkel," Calev Ben-David, September 21).

Throwing credit at anybody who asked for it; persuading the gullible that they
could borrow themselves out of debt; awarding themselves obscene salaries and
bonuses, and even more obscene severance packages for managers of even failing
companies - the financial/management sector only has itself to blame.

And who is going to pay? The taxpayer, as usual. I suspect that the top
management of those failed American companies will still walk away with
millions.

I believe it was only a few months ago that one of our ministers suggested that
tuition fees for business management degrees should be higher than for other
disciplines. Now we know why.

ELLIE MORRIS

Asseret

Sir, - Lehman tree very pretty / And the Lehman flower is sweet, / But the fruit
of the poor Lehman / Is impossible to eat.

V. ABRAHAM

Rishon Lezion

Loan offer

Sir, - About a year ago I received more than one phone call from my bank trying
to convince me that I should take out a loan. I thought this seemed strange -
the bank canvassing me that in order to be a good customer I should borrow
money, go on a spending spree and get into debt.

Banks in Israel are not the reputable institutions we expect them to be.

RONNIE FELDMAN

Hod Hasharon

Old MacDonald

had a farm

Sir, - You really don't get it, do you? ("Rotting fruit," Editorial, September
18). The problem isn't foreign labor - the problem is agriculture, and the fact
that this government doesn't particularly want an agricultural sector; nor did
previous ones.

Once the flagship of the Zionist dream, agriculture has become a burden - it
needs large amounts of capital, land, water and inexpensive labor. None of the
above is readily available locally, but no government wants to admit this and so
it is easier to slowly strangle the sector in the hope that it will quietly go
away.

Historically, this was not entirely the government's fault as Israeli farmers
were not slow in exporting their expertise to underdeveloped countries - who
were also not slow in realizing the potential in agricultural exports. With
their low labor costs and plentiful land and (in most cases) water, they were
quick to learn and have ousted Israeli agricultural exports from many of their
traditional markets.

In the early days of the state, agriculture provided both a livelihood and
much-needed food for its people; but in recent years, water has become even
scarcer and really can be put to better use in other less labor-intensive
industries.

But what to do with all the Israeli farmers, most of whom live in the periphery
of the country and still need to make a living? No government has come up with
an answer. Until someone does, every government will continue the policy of slow
strangulation of the agricultural sector, in the hope that the farmers
themselves will slowly fade away.

ROY SUSMAN

Moshav Sde Nitzan

True heroine

Sir - Etgar Lefkovits's "94-year-old Holocaust survivor reconnects with family
that saved her life" (September 19) moved me to tears.

Stanislawa Slawinska was a heroine. She stood up against evil. Esfira Maiman
should be praised for consistently seeking just recognition of her savior. And
the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation played a remarkable role in this
saga, not only by managing to reunite Maiman with Stanislawa's relatives, but
also by conveying the whole file to Yad Vashem, resulting in its well-merited
recognition of Stanislawa as a Righteous Among the Nations.

MIRIAM RUBINSTEIN

Tel Aviv

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The Jerusalem Post

September 21, 2008 Sunday

Note to European Union: Say NO to Syria

BYLINE: ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 721 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Europeans should take note of the regime's attitude toward the
many treaties it has already signed. The writer, a congresswoman from Florida,
serves as the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Even as the civilized world condemned Russia's invasion of Georgia, other
countries have rushed to praise it. Among these is Syria, whose strongman Bashar
Assad - on a recent visit to Moscow - proclaimed his support for Russia's
actions while eagerly shopping for advanced conventional weapons and announcing
his willingness to deploy Russian missile systems in Syrian territory.

Yet, European allies appear ready to reward Syria's belligerent regime with an
"Association Agreement" that would provide Assad's regime with eagerly sought
political legitimacy and material assistance.

These developments are worrisome indeed.

Syria continues to sponsor such Islamist terrorist organizations as Hizbullah
and Hamas, which undermine the stability and security of many countries in the
Middle East. Its assistance to these groups remains unbroken despite repeated
United Nations Security Council resolutions, as well as strenuous efforts by the
U. and other countries, including France, to force the regime to stop. But
French officials now appear to be reversing course, as we saw last week during
President Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to Syria.

MUCH OF the regime's activity has been focused on Lebanon, which Syria has long
considered a client state and where it deals ruthlessly with those who challenge
its authority. The Syrian regime has long refused to cooperate in bringing to
justice those responsible for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime
Minister Rafiq al- Hariri, a strident critic of Syria's intervention in Lebanon,
despite a United Nations Security Council resolution requiring it to do so.
Given that the available evidence points to Syrian complicity in the Hariri
murder, this is not surprising.

Prior to signing any agreement or further normalizing relations with Damascus,
the Europeans should take note of the regime's attitude toward the many treaties
it has already signed and the laundry list of violations of its international
commitments.

In 2005, Syria agreed to abide by the provisions of the Euro-Mediterranean Code
of Conduct on Countering Terrorism, which committed it to actively prevent
terrorists from acquiring money and weapons, disrupt their networks, and deny
them asylum or safe haven. Instead, the evidence shows that the Syrian regime's
provisions of arms, funding, and safe haven to Islamist terrorist organizations
remain uninterrupted.

EVEN MORE troubling is Syria's record on nuclear proliferation. As a signatory
of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty, Syria has pledged to never acquire
nuclear weapons and to do all in its power to prevent the technology and
materials necessary for these weapons to reach other countries.

However, despite vehement denials from Damascus, the evidence clearly shows that
Syria was nearing completion of a nuclear reactor built with assistance from
North Korea when Israel conducted its strike in September 2007. US intelligence
officials have publicly stated that this reactor, had it become operational,
would have been capable of producing enough plutonium to build at least two
nuclear weapons within a year. Damascus continues to bar inspectors from the
International Atomic Energy Agency from further examining the site to determine
the extent of Syria's nuclear activities.

Sound familiar? It is. Syria is following Iran's approach to nuclear weapons.
The world has done far too little to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions. We must
learn from those mistakes. The U.S. has called on France and other EU
member-states to force Damascus to grant IAEA inspectors full access to all
Syrian nuclear facilities. Our European allies must increase the pressure on
Syria if we are to thwart the regime's nuclear ambitions.

European leaders should cease all further action toward an Association Agreement
with Damascus. They must require that Syria verifiably end its interference in
Lebanon, its support for Islamist terrorist organizations, and its pursuit of
nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and the means to deliver them. They
must also clarify that this must be accomplished before Syria is treated as a
responsible partner and included in the councils of the West. If Europe ignores
the lessons of inaction and accommodation as it has with Iran and Russian
aggression in Georgia, and chooses a similar path toward Syria, we may all soon
regret it.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 21, 2008 Sunday

The jewel in Israel's crown

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 729 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

It's not easy to run publicly-supported institutions of higher learning in
Israel nowadays. These institutions rely heavily on the state for considerable
slices of their operational budgets. They are therefore also subject to
officialdom's strictures about just how much they may collect in tuition fees.

For better or worse, tuition-fee guidelines are adhered to - despite varying
degrees of controversy, squawking among students (who want to pay less) and
university administrations' moans about insufficient income. This year, however,
is shaping up into a unique, indeed unprecedented mess.

The three main players not only fail to act in concert but actually pull in
contradictory directions. The Finance Ministry has unilaterally moved to reduce
its tuition-fee subsidy - from 26 percent to 20% - i.e. by NIS 100 million. For
the past few years the already severely cash-strapped schools counted on the 26%
subsidy to underwrite a gradual fee-reduction for students, which was decreed in
2001.

Their minimal assumption was that this would continue this year as well. The
more optimistic expectation was that the Shochat Committee recommendations would
finally - if belatedly - be at least partly put into effect, thereby
incrementally ending the lean years for Israeli higher education. However,
instead of steady cash transfusions compensating for harsh cutbacks since 2003 -
NIS 2.4 billion over five years according to Shochat - further slashes are now
effectively threatened.

The Treasury, playing hardball, has dismissed the universities' outcry and
suggests they make up their losses via tuition hikes - by an average of nearly
NIS 1,000 per student.

In absolute terms this isn't exorbitant, as in absolute terms academic schooling
in Israel is a bargain (especially if compared to similar-quality education in
America). However, in terms of what can be practically imposed in the given
socio-political climate, the increase is a nonstarter. Students already threaten
a strike (they boycotted classes for a prolonged period in the 2006/07 academic
year).

They are, moreover, backed by Education Minister Yuli Tamir, at direct
loggerheads with Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On. Tamir opposes any raise and, as
head of the Higher Education Council, insists the status quo remain unless the
government plenum decides otherwise.

However, the council had demonstratively refused to heed her. In a move geared
to express resentment toward the ministerial tug-of-war, the council opted for a
laissez faire approach. Until the powers that be get their act together, the
council advises, universities can please themselves. In other words, it's
formally a free-for-all.

Two schools - Tel Aviv University and the Technion- Israel Institute of
Technology - have desisted from sending out any payment forms, though the
academic year starts in six weeks. They hope something will be sorted out by
mid- October, at which point they'll know what to charge. Some institutions,
diving deeper in the red, bill what they did last year. Others include the 6%
Treasury-mandated surcharge, with the proviso that students might be reimbursed.

The upshot is that the students are on the warpath, whereas the universities
doubt they can launch the new academic year under circumstances in which they
are denied the promised financial lifeline and are additionally faced with new
cutbacks.

All this comes hot on the heels of a strike by senior faculty last year and
threats of walkouts by junior staffers. Libraries and labs are neglected,
research grants are woefully insufficient and the oxygen is sucked out of
institutions upon which Israel's long-term success incontrovertibly depends.
Gray matter is Israel's single outstanding natural resource. In a globalized
world economy, temptations become ever more alluring overseas, even without
young academics getting pushed out by gross governmental mismanagement.

It's unrealistic to claim that all brain-drain is avoidable, but some most
certainly is. The overall sums involved in the current squabble aren't
prohibitive. The shameless ministerial wrangles only add insult to the injury of
the continuous indefensible failure to implement any facet of the vital Shochat
reform.

Its universities were the jewel in Israel's crown even in years of extreme
austerity. If the present discordant government wishes to destroy that jewel,
this is the way to go.

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September 21, 2008 Sunday

Canadian Israel advocacy in turmoil

BYLINE: ISI LEIBLER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1280 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Jewish establishment blackballs the small but effective Israel
advocacy group CIJR. Candidly Speaking

Canadian Jews can take pride in the remarkable infrastructure of educational,
religious and cultural institutions they have created. The fact that
assimilation and intermarriage in Canada are far less advanced than in the
United States is largely attributable to their magnificent network of Jewish day
schools. Canadian Jews also have a splendid record of support for Israel and
their donors are among the most generous contributors to projects in the Jewish
state.

Regrettably, in recent years the community's public advocacy on behalf of Israel
has dramatically declined. This paralleled a major upsurge in anti-Semitism and
demonization of Israel as a consequence of Muslim immigration and intensified
hostility from the Canadian left.

The downturn had its genesis in 2004 when the principal communal fund-raisers,
concerned about increased anti-Semitism and hostility to Israel, decided to
supplant the traditional communal advocacy bodies - the Canadian Jewish Congress
and the Canada Israel Committee - with a "more professional" organization. The
new entity, the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA), was
commissioned to deal exclusively with "advocacy on Canada Israel relations while
the Canadian Jewish Congress would handle issues of Jewish concern." This
effectively neutralized the central role of the Canadian Jewish Congress in
determining policies on Israel and anti- Semitism and replaced it with an
undemocratic body headed by professional public relations consultants.

The federations, via the United Israel Appeal, allocate very substantial funds
to the CIJA. The budget this year, including mega-salaries for the principal
officers, amounts to more than $11 million.

However, from the outset, the new team of PR professionals, headed by CEO
Herschel Ezrin, was soon identified as archetypical practitioners of the
discredited sha shtil approach, displaying passivity and determined to maintain
a low profile. Their vast financial resources concentrated on campaigns
emphasizing that Israelis "are just like the rest of us Canadians".

Their PR philosophy, depicted as a model that other communities would do well to
emulate, was outlined in a surrealistic internal document circulated in 2004
titled "The 10 Commandments." It was never formally repudiated and to this day
appears to reflect CIJA policy. The document must be seen to be believed.

Commandment 5 states: "Do not directly attack or assign blame to the
Palestinians or their leadership. Canadians will not tolerate - or believe -
that one side is more responsible for the violence than the other."

Commandment 6 says: "Do not ask Canadians to pick a side in the conflict or
assign blame. Very few Canadians are prepared to assign blame for ongoing
violence or attacks."

Commandment 7 states explicitly: "Do not ask the government of Canada to appear
- or be - more favorable to Israel... There is no support for further government
support of Israel."

Commandment 9 warns: "Do not attack the media for being biased against Israel...
There is no constituency to support a public effort to attack the media."

That such a document was not immediately condemned and withdrawn demonstrates
how a group of wealthy donors, dazzled by "PR expertise," bypassed the will of
the vast majority of Canadian Jews.

The obsession to avoid "confrontation" was especially acute on the campuses
where Hillel activists were explicitly directed to avoid debates, ignore Arab
anti- Israeli tirades and never display examples of Islamic anti- Semitism to
avoid offending Muslim groups.

Three years ago, the PR mavens even managed to convince the Montreal federation
to cancel the annual Israel Independence Day parade out of a fear of possible
anti-Israeli counterdemonstrations. Fortunately, independent communal leaders,
rabbis and school principals took it upon themselves to lead a grassroots revolt
to retain the dignity of the community and Independence Day parades were
reinstated.

THE CIJA has a virtual monopoly on Israel advocacy in Canada. The exceptions are
a plucky B'nai B'rith Organization which attempts to be more assertive and a
small but highly effective body known as the Canadian Institute for Jewish
Research (CIJR) headquartered in Montreal. It is headed by Prof. Fred Krantz, a
distinguished academic who for 30 years headed an influential program titled
"The Great Books in Western Civilization" at Concordia University and the
Liberal Arts College. There he opposed administration kowtowing to Arab and
radical students, which climaxed in 2002 when Binyamin Netanyahu was unable to
address the university because of violent campus riots.

CIJR, whose influence extends beyond Canada, operates on a shoestring budget of
less than $200,000 and is staffed overwhelmingly by volunteers. Among other
initiatives, it publishes a daily Internet newsletter viewed by more than
100,000 readers, which incorporates key data, original op- eds and reprints of
articles relevant to activists. Its greatest success was to create an elite
group of student activists willing to take up the cudgels on behalf of Israel on
the campus.

Since the creation of CIJA, the Jewish establishment has totally blackballed
CIJR and denied it any funding. When I accepted an invitation from Krantz to
participate in CIJR's 20th anniversary dinner, I was cautioned by various
parties that I would be associating myself with an "extremist" body. However, in
Montreal I discovered that far from being extreme, CIJR was a beacon of light in
the world of Israel advocacy in Canada.

When introducing me to the audience, Irwin Cotler, the former Canadian minister
of justice and global champion for human rights, an icon of Canadian Jewry
recognized as one of the most outstanding Diaspora Jewish personalities of our
time, lauded the outstanding work undertaken by the CIJR.

Equally telling was the address by Alan Baker, the Israeli ambassador to Canada,
who was retiring after a four-year term. Like Cotler, Baker a former legal
adviser to the Foreign Ministry, could hardly be described as an extremist. He
too cast lavish praise on the CIJR as the most effective Canadian body promoting
the case for Israel and, in particular, praised it for its splendid achievements
on the campus. He also castigated the Jewish communal leadership for failing "to
have the good judgment to appreciate an organization that is working so well in
the field... and should have wider community support."

Canadian Jewish leaders, who fear that protesting against this state of affairs
will shatter the "unity" of the Canadian Jewish community, are misguided. The
blind reliance of establishment machers on PR specialists who appear to dictate
policy in these areas reflects a malaise in Canadian Jewish leadership and
highlights a need for greater accountability and grassroots public involvement.

More importantly, if youngsters are dissuaded from confronting the scourge of
moral equivalency whereby Israel's acts of self-defense are deemed comparable to
actions of its enemies, or instructed that speaking up in defense of Israel is
counterproductive, then the ground is being established for future generations
to distance themselves from Israel.

The time for reform is now while Canadian Jews are blessed with a prime minister
who has emerged as one of Israel's staunchest international allies. Unlike the
cowardly cabal of "PR experts," Stephen Harper is willing to publicly
distinguish between Islamic fundamentalists seeking the destruction of the
Jewish state and the right of Israel to defend itself. However, we cannot expect
statesmen to be more pro-Israel than the self-appointed spokesmen of the Jewish
community.

ileibler@netvision.net.il

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GRAPHIC: Photo: IRWIN COTLER, the former Canadian minister of justice and global
champion for human rights, lauds CIJR. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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September 21, 2008 Sunday

Letters

BYLINE: Yehudit Collins, Raymond Cannon, Sarah Honig responds, Jeff Daube,
Marchal Kaplan, Matty Rotenberg, Mark L. Levinson, Sam Levy

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 926 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

'Victims' who

rocket innocents

Sir, - Re "Tony Blair's sister-in-law tells Iranian TV Gaza is 'world's largest
concentration camp'" (September 18): Lauren Booth's categorization offends the
millions of Jews, Gypsies and, indeed, Christians of conscience who died in Nazi
concentration camps.

The inmates of these typhus-infested camps, if not gassed immediately on
arrival, were starved, beaten and worked to death. In their pitiful, overcrowded
huts, sleeping on bare boards, they weren't secretly manufacturing bombs. They
were not lobbing rockets at the kindergartens of their Nazi guards' children.
They were not visited by the Red Cross, or given handsome donations by wealthy
foreigners.

Ms. Booth is free to leave the Gaza Strip, or she could ask to be smuggled out
in one of the tunnels her "concentration camp victims" use for smuggling arms
and drugs.

Ms. Booth may claim that some of her best friends are Jewish - and, indeed, they
include Prof. Jeff Halper and Angela Godfrey-Goldstein. But these are Jews with
their own agenda, and in this case criticizing Israel does equal anti-Semitism.

It isn't raining. It is this woman and her colleagues spitting on our memories
and perverting history.

YEHUDIT COLLINS

Jerusalem

Reticence factor

Sir, - In "The wooden-headedness factor" (UpFront, September 12) Sarah Honig,
quoting Barbara Tuchman's 1984 March of Folly on pursuing policies contrary to a
nation's own interests, included the critical qualification "a feasible
alternative course of action must have been available."

Yet throughout Ms. Honig's piece, there is no hint of the policies she would
advocate to alleviate, let alone resolve the current situation. This critical
omission characterizes so much of her admittedly eloquent writing, leaving the
reader to conclude that either she is satisfied with the status quo, or prefers
to avoid, at least on record, publicizing her own views on how to deal with the
Palestinians who legitimately live in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

RAYMOND CANNON

Netanya

Sarah Honig responds:

Our existence sometimes is like a precarious house of cards. Not pulling cards
from the bottom and bringing everything tumbling down is the first - indeed, the
vital - alternative course of action. The most important caution must be not to
behave rashly wooden-headed, but to learn from experience (unpleasant though it
may be) and not indulge in self-deception (pleasant though it may be, for a
brief fleeting moment in history).

Telling the truth

about Oslo

Sir, - Where does one even begin to respond to David Forman's supercilious and
totally wrongheaded claims in his defense of the Oslo Accords? ("The failure was
our fault, too," UpFront, September 12.)

I had to begin a second time to compose a response because, faced with this
polemic's unbelievable inversion, misinformation and, yes, disinformation, my
first attempt at rebuttal was fast turning into a full-blown op-ed. Actually,
nothing less than a tome could adequately address Forman's distorted
presentation of the Oslo reality that has cost so many Israeli lives and limbs.

If I were David Forman, instead of claiming credit, I would be hiding my face
for having had anything to do with convincing Yitzhak Rabin to go along with
this nightmare.

By evincing how misguided the "Land for Peace" policy turned out to be, perhaps
the only useful service these ill-fated accords have rendered is to help Israel
avoid the same mistake in the future.

JEFF DAUBE, Director

Israel Office, Zionist

Organization of America

Jerusalem

Sir, - Rabbi Forman declared that Yitzhak Rabin told him: "You were right."

I can only comment that when a person who says "You were right" proved so wrong
himself, it only means that both of you were wrong - in this case, fatally
wrong!!

MARCHAL KAPLAN

Jerusalem

Sir, - One has to feel sorry for Rabbi Forman. As a bleeding-heart liberal he
has to blame someone for the Oslo failure, so he blames Israel.

One has to wonder in what world Rabbi Forman resides. The deaths - nay, murder -
of 1,600 Israelis, Arabs included, is morally equivalent to roadblocks and
settlement expansion?

Has Rabbi Forman ever asked why the Palestinians rejected the Peel Commission of
1938, the UN Partition of 1947, the negotiations after Israel captured the
territories in 1967, and the Barak peace offer of 2000?

MATTY ROTENBERG

Petah Tikva

Sir, - David Forman wrote that by creating an antecedent to the Oslo Accords,
Menachem Begin showed he "understood the need for a two-state solution," and
that by following up on Oslo, Binyamin Netanyahu showed that he too anticipated
a Palestinian state.

Even if Begin somehow accepted Oslo "in advance," and even if Netanyahu accepted
it retroactively, one must note that the Oslo Accords do not guarantee - or even
mention - a future Palestinian state. They set rules for a limited trial period,
after which all options would be open as the resulting lessons were weighed and
applied.

The biggest question, then, was whether the Palestinian Liberation Organization
could be trusted to run a benign self-administration.

Oslo was about finding out the answer; and we did.

MARK L. LEVINSON

Herzliya

'Breathing in

the bank: NIS 9'

Sir, - Supermarkets and retail stores are obliged by law to display the prices
of their goods clearly.

Surely this law should be amended to apply to the banks too, allowing customers
to see, posted in a prominent place, a list of charges they will be debited for
each transaction.

Such a measure could bring about the true competition that is so sorely needed
("Gouge, ouch!" Letters, September 11).

SAM LEVY

Caesarea

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September 19, 2008 Friday

Livni's challenge

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 731 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Israelis woke up Thursday morning to discover that Tzipi Livni had defeated
Shaul Mofaz in the race to become leader of Kadima by a mere 431 votes. Most
pre-election surveys, and all the exit polls, had forecast a 10-point margin of
victory.

With polling stations allowed to stay open late, disqualified ballots, and
erroneous TV surveys showing Livni winning easily before voting had even ended,
Mofaz had good reason to feel deeply aggrieved. But in defeat, he demonstrated a
certain political nobility - first, graciously accepting the outcome, and then
announcing a "time out" from politics.

That departure, unless he can be prevailed upon to change his mind, serves as an
indictment of the Kadima election process and its media coverage, immediately
complicates Livni's road forward, and does Israel's wider interest no favors.
Mofaz has been the minister heading Israel's strategic dialogue with Iran - an
area where we can afford no vacuum.

Livni replaces Ehud Olmert as head of Kadima. Her task now is to replace him as
prime minister, by building a viable coalition.

Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu believes that were general elections held now,
his party would win the most mandates. Can Livni nonetheless entice him to join
her government? Highly unlikely. Labor's Ehud Barak claims, unconvincingly, that
he's not afraid of elections, allowing that a spell in the opposition might do
his party good. And Shas will drive its usual tough bargain, seeking financial
inducements in return for supporting a Livni-led coalition.

So staving off elections will not be easy - and, given the momentous decisions
the next prime minister will have to make, perhaps not even desirable.

Since her entry onto the national stage, Livni has become increasingly confident
in public. And her "clean" image may have gotten her this far.

But now, as party leader and possible premier, more is demanded. Assembling a
coalition and handing out portfolios alone does not advance the national
interest. What matters is an agenda - a vision.

DOMESTICALLY, we'd like to see Livni advocate reform of the political system to
promote representative government and diminish the influence of sectarian
parties; to see her reach out to citizens on both Right and Left who are
alienated from the system and to advocate respect for tradition and religious
pluralism.

Let's see her address our chronic water shortage by supporting desalination and
hear her views on environmental issues. Let her advocate for public
transportation and commit to investing in education. Does she support national
service for all?

But it is foreign and security policy that will dominate the next prime
minister's agenda. Livni must define the path for addressing the Iranian nuclear
threat.

In trying for an accommodation with relative moderates among the Palestinians,
she needs to articulate how this is an Israeli interest, and needs to talk about
the ticking diplomatic and demographic clocks. What does she think will happen
when Mahmoud Abbas completes his term as Palestinian Authority president in
January?

Livni needs to tell Israelis where the negotiations stand, especially on
Jerusalem and refugees. What steps are being taken to ensure that a "shelf
agreement" doesn't come back to bite us should the Islamists take complete
control of Palestinian affairs? And what are her - and Israel's - red lines in
the negotiations?

What's her plan for Gaza, where ever more extreme Hamas factions are solidifying
power? How does she propose to keep the West Bank from becoming a launching pad
for violence against Israel if the Palestinians get their state?

She will also have the opportunity to take a fresh look at negotiations with
Syria; the current approach of indirect talks does not instill confidence.

A well-negotiated agreement with Syria is in Israel's strategic interest. But
does she agree that the extent of any withdrawal from the Golan Heights must
parallel the depth of the peace offered? Does she understand that the finer
points of an accord, such as access to Israel's main natural water resource,
Lake Kinneret, are critical?

ISRAEL CANNOT afford a rudderless policy drift, for months on end, as party
politics sort themselves out. This is a nation longing for honest, capable and
inspiring leadership - urgently.

Can Tzipi Livni provide it? 16,936 of Israel's voters said yes on Wednesday. Now
she must persuade the rest.

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September 19, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Alex Hastings, Leo Solomon, Ari Weitzner, Celeste Eldor, Editor's note

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 484 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Demo-what?

Sir, - It is mind-boggling to consider that barely half of Kadima's 74,000
eligible members voted in Wednesday's primary, and only half for Livni. This
means that less than 20,000 votes in a nation of seven million people may have
catapulted her into the premiership of this democracy ("The meteoric Ms. Livni,"
David Horovitz, September 18).

But are we, in fact, living in a true democracy? I was always under the
impression that the word was derived from the Greek demos (people) and kratos
(rule/choice).

To fully appreciate how far we have traveled from being a democracy, however, we
must go back to 2005, when Likud prime minister Ariel Sharon betrayed his party
and founded Kadima. Lo and behold - a party that had never competed in an
election gained control of the government, something unheard of in any genuine
democracy!

ALEX HASTINGS

Tel Aviv

Sir, - Tzipi Livni will have to retrieve some of the mettle she and her
generation inherited, which was then melted away by the world's relentless
opprobrium. The pride and strength that created this nation must replace the
self-doubt and guilt that has taken us to the precipice.

LEO SOLOMON

Nahariya

Tone uwarranted

Sir, - As a Modern Orthodox Jew, I cringed at the tone Amotz Asa-El used to
describe the ultra-Orthodox in "How the Diaspora can help Jerusalem" (UpFront,
September 12).

He deplores the crumbling infrastructure of Jerusalem and implies it is a result
of haredi incompetence and corruption. Excuse me, but it is clear to even the
casual reader of The Jerusalem Post that the ultra-Orthodox are no less corrupt
or incompetent than their secular colleagues.

He deplores the dwindling numbers of the secular in Jerusalem as evidence of the
nefariousness of the ultra- Orthodox leadership there, yet it is well known that
the demographic shift was well under way before that leadership. A majority of
secular Jews in Israel have not even visited Jerusalem or its religious sites.
So it is disingenuous to suggest that the ceding of Jerusalem to the
ultra-Orthodox is worthy of Mr. Asa-El's angst.

Don't get me wrong: I find the ultra-Orthodox refusal to serve in the army or do
national service scandalous. But to imply that these people are some kind of
interlopers just because of their population boom is outrageous.

ARI WEITZNER

New York

'Overqualified'

Sir, - Re "Her best practice" (Ruth Eglash, September 18): After holding the
same position for 11 years, I was told that I was being made redundant as I was
"overqualified." I am over 50, and despite excellent qualifications have not
been able to find work since. My company did this to several other long-term
(read: older) employees with impunity, as they paid compensation (pitzuim) in
full. Surely this is discriminatory?

Please publish the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission hotline number.

CELESTE ELDOR

Tel Aviv

Editor's note: , The hotline number is (02) 666-2778 or 2701.

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September 19, 2008 Friday

It is time to act

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1909 words

HIGHLIGHT: COLUMN ONE

Iran is just a heartbeat away from the A-bomb.Last Friday the Daily Telegraph
reported Teheran has surreptitiously removed a sufficient amount of uranium from
its nuclear production facility in Isfahan to produce six nuclear bombs. Given
Iran's already acknowledged uranium enrichment capabilities, the Telegraph's
report indicates that the Islamic Republic is now in the late stages of
assembling nuclear bombs.

It would be a simple matter for Iran to assemble those bombs without anyone
noticing. US spy satellites recently discovered what the US believes are covert
nuclear facilities in Iran. The mullocracy has not disclosed these sites to the
UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged with inspecting Iran's
nuclear sites.

As to the IAEA, this week it presented its latest report on Teheran's nuclear
program to its board members in Vienna. The IAEA's report claimed that Iran has
taken steps to enable its Shihab-3 ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads.
With their range of 1,300 kilometers, Shihab-3 missiles are capable of reaching
Israel and other countries throughout the region.

In support of its swiftly progressing nuclear program, Iran has escalated both
its conventional military and terroristic adventurism. It has also ratcheted up
its diplomatic assault on the US. This week, Teheran conducted a countrywide air
defense exercise. Gen. Khatim al-Anbiaa, the commander of Iran's Air Defense
Corps, explained that the exercise was aimed at defending against both
electronic jamming systems and actual bombing strikes.

Also this week, Yahya Rahim Safavi, the former commander of the Revolutionary
Guards Corps and current senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
for security affairs, announced that Iran has shifted responsibility for naval
warfare on the Persian Gulf from its regular naval forces to its more fanatical
Revolutionary Guards. The Iranian navy will now be deployed only in the Gulf of
Oman and along the Caspian Sea.

The deployment of the Guards along the Persian Gulf means that the force will be
responsible for naval operations in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which
40 percent of global oil shipments travel. Issuing Iran's most explicit threat
to US naval forces in the area and global oil shipments to date, Safavi
declared, "The entire Strait of Hormuz is under the tight control of the Iranian
security forces, which are ready to defend Iran against any threat."

As for terror, al-Qaida boss Ayman Zawahiri's recent tirade against the Islamic
Republic notwithstanding, Iran has apparently intensified its cooperation with
al-Qaida. Over the past two weeks, Israeli counterterror officials have issued
explicit warnings to Israeli vacationers to immediately depart from Sinai. They
have stated that terror cells from al-Qaida and Hamas are working with Iran's
Hizbullah to abduct groups of Israeli vacationers to Gaza. Moreover, as Hamas
and Teheran have openly acknowledged their "brotherly" ties, more and more
reports have been published about al-Qaida's escalating presence in Gaza.

Beyond all this, both regionally and globally Iran is escalating its diplomatic
and strategic offensive against the US. It has widened its diplomatic operations
in the Western hemisphere from Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua to the
Caribbean by opening diplomatic relations with Grenada and St. Vincent, and it
is pursuing diplomatic ties with Jamaica.

Teheran has initiated its own pro-Russian diplomatic initiative to "stabilize"
the Caucasus. This week Iran's Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki caught the US
State Department by surprise when he arrived in Tblisi to meet with Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili. That meeting was part of a regional tour that
took Mouttaki to Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, as well as Germany.

Finally, of course, there is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's annual trip
to New York for the UN's General Assembly opening session next week. Aside from
being honored by leaders of the supposedly pacifist and clearly anti-Semitic
Quaker and Mennonite churches, Ahmadinejad will be feted by newly elected
General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann from Nicaragua.

COUNTERING TEHERAN'S sprint to the nuclear finish line and its intensifying
threats against Israel and the West are three Western initiatives to prevent
Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

First, the US, France and Britain have stepped up their rhetoric calling for
additional economic sanctions against Iran. During the General Assembly meeting
in New York, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to meet her
counterparts from the other permanent members of the Security Council and
Germany to try to agree on such sanctions. But this will be an exercise in
futility.

Russia has made clear that it will reject any further sanctions. Indeed it is
intensifying its military and financial ties to Teheran. Moscow has pledged to
have the Bushehr nuclear plant up and running by the end of the year. And Iran
is already suspected of diverting plutonium from the plant to develop still more
nuclear weapons.

Germany, too, has evinced no interest in curtailing its financial ties to
Teheran. To the contrary, German trade with Iran expanded 12% in the last year,
from $2.7 billion to $3b.

So the US will fail to pass additional sanctions against Iran in the UN Security
Council. And this is a shame. But even if a miracle occurred and Russia, China
and Germany agreed to adopt and enforce stiff sanctions against Iran, those
sanctions would come too late to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The uranium that the Iranians took from their Isfahan plant will be weapons
grade and attached to Shihab-3 missiles or transferred to Hizbullah, al-Qaida or
Hamas terrorists for use long before such hypothetical sanctions would even be
noticed.

The second way that the West - and particularly the US and Israel - have sought
to stymie Iran's nuclear ambitions is through sabotage. As Yediot Aharonot
reporter Ronen Bergman documented in his book, The Secret War with Iran, over
the past few years the Mossad and US intelligence agencies have had some success
killing personnel involved in Iran's nuclear weapons program. They have also
managed to sell faulty nuclear components to Teheran that have slowed down and
sabotaged its operations. As the assassination of Iran's terror master Imad
Mughniyah in Damascus in February demonstrated, Israel has the capacity to carry
out sensitive covert operations deep inside enemy territory. And more successful
covert operations could no doubt cause still more damage to Iran's nuclear
program.

But it is all but impossible to see how any such operations can prevent Iran
from acquiring nuclear weapons in the short term. With that uranium from Isfahan
hidden away in one of its covert facilities, with terror operatives deployed all
over the globe and in charge of Lebanon and Gaza, and with the Shihab-3 missiles
happily accepting nuclear warheads, it is apparent that no matter how bold,
limited covert operations have not and will not prevent Iran from crossing the
nuclear threshold.

Finally, there are the private initiatives to use international law, capital
markets and political pressure to deter Teheran from acquiring nuclear weapons
and to persuade states not to cultivate ties with Iran.

A year ago, The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs began a push to indict
Ahmadinejad as a war criminal for his breach of the Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. His calls for Israel's annihilation
make him guilty of the explicit crime of inciting genocide. The JCPA's
initiative has fomented similar calls by groups in Canada and Australia and,
most recently, by tens of thousands of evangelical Christians.

The Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC are waging public campaigns against
European oil and gas companies that are involved in developing Iran's oil and
gas fields.

The Center for Security Policy in Washington spearheaded the initiative to
divest US public employee pension funds from companies that do business with
Iran and other state sponsors of terror.

Several major American Jewish organizations are organizing a massive protest
outside UN headquarters that will take place during Ahmadinejad's address to the
body next Tuesday. Other groups, like the Israel Project, conduct intensive
briefings for the media in the US and Europe to educate reporters and editors
about the Iranian nuclear program.

All of these private initiatives are vital for raising public awareness in the
West about the lethality of the Iranian threat to Israel and to global security
in general. They are also important for embarrassing governments - particularly
Germany, Austria and other European governments with histories of anti-Semitic
violence - that refuse to end their bilateral trade with Teheran. Beyond that,
they serve the important goal of weakening the Iranian economy.

But again, none of these programs can do a thing against that uranium for six
bombs that Iran removed from its plant in Isfahan. They can't stop those
centrifuges in Natanz and in covert facilities throughout Iran from buzzing
along. They can't destroy those Shihab-3 missiles. They can't kill the
scientists assembling the bombs.

IN LIGHT of Iran's unrelenting and rapid progress toward the nuclear finish
line, it is clear today that while positive in their own rights, none of the
actions the West is taking will succeed in blocking its path to the atomic bomb.

For that matter, the one option short of war that might have put an end to the
mullahs' race to the bomb three years ago - namely supporting the Iranian people
in their wish to overthrow their regime - cannot be adopted fast enough to
prevent the likes of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad from pushing the button now.

Today, there is only one way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Israel must bomb Iran's nuclear installations. Such a strike will not end Iran's
nuclear program. It will not overthrow the regime. It will not cripple Iran's
economy. It will not end Iran's active support for international terrorist
groups.

All an Israeli air strike against Iran's nuclear facilities will do is set its
nuclear program back for a couple of years. Such a strike will buy Israel and
the rest of the world time. And during that time, Iran will no doubt expand its
diplomatic, terror and political offensives against Israel and the US. But if
Israel and the US are wise, they can use the time as well.

If Israel and the US are wise, they will use the extra time to ratchet up
international economic sanctions on Iran. They will use the time to conduct
covert operations against nuclear and regime targets. They will use the time to
increase international pressure on countries that do business with Iran and sell
it arms. And they will use the time that an Israeli military strike against
Iran's nuclear facilities will buy to support Iranian democracy movements and so
weaken the regime and perhaps eventually topple it.

It is clear today that the Bush administration will not take action against
Iran. This week five former secretaries of state said that the US should pursue
diplomatic ties with Teheran regardless of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
There will be no will in Washington to act against Iran until after Iran has
attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

So it is up to Israel. Too bad we don't have a government in Jerusalem.

caroline@carolineglick.com

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September 19, 2008 Friday

Misreading Abbas

BYLINE: David Horovitz

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 2232 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editor's Notes. Dennis Ross, the Clinton envoy who watched Camp David
fail, explains why Olmert and Rice, however sincere, are wrong to believe that a
deal can be done in the near future

As Bill Clinton's special Middle East coordinator, Dennis Ross was centrally
placed to observe the failure of that president to culminate years of concerted
commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal with an accord at Camp David in
2000. Indeed, Ross exhaustively documented the failure of those talks, day by
frustrating day, in his 2004 doorstop volume The Missing Peace.

Ross's US government involvement predated the Clinton administration - he had
served as director of Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security
Council staff during the Reagan era and as head of the State Department's Policy
Planning Office under George H.W. Bush. And his involvement might postdate the
Clinton years, too, since he now acts as an unpaid foreign policy and Middle
East adviser to the Obama campaign; when the Democratic nominee visited Israel
in July, for instance, Ross was with him.

In the meantime, though, Ross has also been serving as the first chairman of the
Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a cumbersomely titled but earnest
attempt to examine the challenges facing our future and formulate policies to
best meet them. The combination of heavyweight US government experience,
demonstrable commitment to Jewish well-being and ongoing ties to the key
regional political players makes Ross's assessment of where the Israeli-
Palestinian negotiations sit today particularly credible. And particularly
relevant - as the Bush administration's tenure draws to a close, Mahmoud Abbas's
term as Palestinian Authority president may have only months to run and Tzipi
Livni (just) takes the helm of Kadima, an imminent Olmertian resignation away
from trying to form her own government.

Ross, who is six months younger than the State of Israel, has just returned to
the US from a visit to the region, where he met with various Israeli and
Palestinian leaders. He promptly wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post
urging the Bush administration and others to pay heed to the fact that Abbas
could vacate his post and be replaced by a Hamas figure as soon as January. Ross
urged Secretary Rice to use next week's gathering of world leaders for the UN
General Assembly to take steps to avert that crisis.

"This is one problem the Bush administration can and should preempt before it is
too late," he wrote in the article's concluding sentence, prompting this reader,
at least, to wonder whether he was simultaneously implying that other crises,
perhaps including Iran's relentless nuclear drive, would be better left to the
handling of the post-Bush White House.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, however, Ross stressed that he intended
no such implication. "No, I don't want Iran put off for the next
administration," he said. "The next administration will have fewer options and
less time."

What role, if any, Ross himself might play in any such administration is a
matter of conjecture. Right now, Ross stressed, he was speaking to The Jerusalem
Post strictly in a personal capacity.

Ehud Olmert and Condoleezza Rice are still telling us that a 'shelf agreement'
with the Palestinians is possible before the end of the year. In your Washington
Post piece, you quote one senior Israeli official telling you, "There are only
two people in the world today who think that a deal is possible now: Ehud Olmert
and Condoleezza Rice." Well, what, if anything, do those two know that the rest
of us don't?

There's a genuine desire - it's not insincere - to achieve a deal. What they
feel is that Abu Mazen [Abbas], in his heart of hearts, is basically not that
far from [the positions] Olmert [is taking], so why not turn this into
something.

But Abu Mazen looks at the whole political universe, and any deal exposes him to
huge criticism for any compromise. And there's the concern that such a deal
would be a dead letter that can't be translated [into implementation, because of
the instability and change, respectively, in the Israeli and American
governments]. That makes him more cautious; less able to conclude.

But surely Olmert and Rice know that?

Olmert, in the circumstances [of his imminent departure and sullied reputation]
wants to achieve something. Maybe Rice feels the same desire for an achievement.
She's made this a signature issue.

The gaps may be small, but nonetheless represent deep differences. On territory,
for instance, the difference between the sides may be only a few percent, but
there is still a conceptual gap.

Abbas, on the size of the settlement blocs, [envisages them as] substantially
smaller than Olmert would have in mind. For the Palestinians, when you get above
a certain percentage, it becomes too much of a division of the West Bank. And as
for the terms [of a land swap arrangement under which Israel would expand
sovereignty to encompass settlement blocs in return for territory inside today's
sovereign Israel], a one-for-one swap is not where Olmert is.

So the gap may be very small, but the blocs' size and the equality of territory
are still conceptual gaps.

On Jerusalem, I'm not entirely clear where Olmert is on this and I don't want to
project where I'm not clear.

On refugees, again, the gap may not seem wide, but if you drill down there's a
conceptual gap. That doesn't mean it can't be bridged, but it must be
recognized. The Palestinians want Israeli acknowledgement of responsibility for
the problem. They want a certain set of numbers [of refugees being allowed into
Israel] per year for a period of years - numbers that are dramatically higher
than the Israeli ones [of a reported 1,000 refugees per year for five years].
And [financial] compensation. That's pretty far from the Israeli position,
[which requires the Palestinians] giving up the right of return.

Can you clarify some of that? On the issue of territory, we've had reports that
Olmert is prepared to relinquish as much as 98 percent of the territory, and
he's spoken of land swaps on a meter-for-meter basis. (At the Knesset's Foreign
Affairs and Defense Committee meeting this week, Olmert said: "If we want a
territorial compromise, the price would be closer to the equation of
one-for-one. This equation can be reached in many ways by swapping and merging
territories... I personally believe this price is lower than the price we would
pay in the future.")

There's no contradiction [in 98%]. That still accords with [the talk of] Israel
seeking to annex 7%, with 5% of that to be offset by a swap. That's not the
Palestinian position. If Olmert is saying "meter-for-meter," then that's not the
way things were when I was there a week ago.

It's not unreasonable to say, to be fair to Olmert and Rice, that in the
historical sweep it looks like the gap is not so great. But agreements are born
in psychology and there is [always] the need to make the case to the public.

If Israel under Ehud Barak had taken Olmert's positions at Camp David, would an
accord have resulted?

Arafat at Camp David had the capability and not the intention. He could not live
with an end of conflict [accord], giving up claims and grievances, because the
cause defined him.

The Clinton parameters are not dramatically different from what is being
discussed now. In a different context, with different leaders, these or other
ideas would be more likely to succeed.

These are not favorable times for concluding an accord. The Palestinians have
their problems. Your problems, I don't need to tell you: Is the Israeli
government prepared to embrace Olmert's ideas? And the US government doesn't
have particular credibility. To envelop any understanding with the necessary
huge international and regional embrace, you need a capable American
administration.

Do you believe Abu Mazen will quit in January?

I believe he would like to stay on. He has a personal sense of responsibility.
But not infrequently he has said he will leave. He may sometimes have said this
to affect folks on the inside and sometimes on the outside. But he's said it and
you can't discount it.

Is time on Israel's side, the Palestinians' side?

When we look at the Palestinians who believe in coexistence, this isn't getting
better. Olmert and Livni see this. You must look for ways to empower those
Palestinians. The greatest situation for Hamas is a situation that seems to have
no prospects and no credibility.

Israel is not going away. No deal is a prescription for further suffering for
the Palestinians, an absence of statehood...

Maybe Israel is more vulnerable than you think, with Islamic extremists on our
northern and southern borders championed by an Iran seeking nuclear weapons?

Of course Israel is concerned about extremism. But Israel will sustain itself.
What Israel has accomplished in 60 years, I don't need to tell you. The US is
going to stand by Israel. Israel faces real threats. Iran doesn't disguise its
agenda. But Israel will meet the threats as it always does, and it will have the
US with it. For those who think Israel is going away, they're just wrong.

The Hamas takeover of Gaza was a wake-up call in the West Bank and I'm seeing
lots of young Palestinians - young Fatah members and independents - trying to
put together grassroots organizations to compete with Hamas because they see
their own fate at stake. It should be a strong interest to find ways to work
with those who don't want an Islamist future. The long-term strategy must be to
see radical Islamists discredited.

Has there been any action on your call to use the gathering of leaders at the UN
General Assembly to work toward preventing a PA leadership vacuum?

Well, I hope it serves as a wake-up call. As I wrote, it can't wait.

Did your phrasing suggest that, by contrast, maybe Iran can wait?

No, I don't want Iran put off for the next administration. The next
administration will have fewer options and less time.

This week's IAEA report shows that they have overcome most of their technical
difficulties and their centrifuges are operating 80% of the time. They're still
not answering IAEA questions they were supposed to have answered by the start of
2008. There are the detonators that can create an implosion that are only
relevant if you're fixed on nuclear weapons.

We led our paper earlier this week with former top Cheney adviser David Wurmser
saying Bush will not order a strike at Iran in his final months. Do you share
that assessment?

If you listen to what Secretary of Defense [Robert] Gates has said publicly, the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [Adm. Michael] Mullen, even the president,
it certainly looks like that is where the Bush administration is coming from.

And rightly so?

Yes, it is sensible. Iran has an array of very profound economic vulnerabilities
and we haven't been playing upon them. The US Treasury has probably been the
most effective. But you need a more collective approach. The Iranians' oil
output is declining and their consumption is growing. The export of oil is the
key revenue the regime uses to buy off the Iranian public. Pressure that and you
pressure the leadership.

We don't have a lot of time. The sooner you begin to effect real economic
sanctions, the sooner they'll have to make hard choices.

In Israel I was struck by the assessment that the entire Iranian leadership
wants the nuclear weapon, but the pace is affected by the cost. They don't all
want it at any price.

(In a previous interview, with Nathan Gardels, Ross said that "for Israel, the
'red line' is not so much when Iran has enough enrichment capacity for
weapons-grade material. Their deadline is 18 months from now, when Iran's air
defense system, which is being upgraded by the Russians, will be completed. That
will make it much more difficult to successfully strike Iran's nuclear capacity
from the air. The closer we get to that window without resolution of the Iranian
nuclear problem, the more Israel will feel compelled to strike. Clearly, at the
moment, we are headed down the path of use of force. The slow-motion diplomacy
of the West simply does not match the rapid development of Iran's nuclear
capacity and the closing window when Iran's upgraded air defenses will be in
place."

(That interview was published in July 2007 - 14 months ago.)

Which specific steps would you urge right now?

First, Nicolas Sarkozy is now the EU president. So try to work with the EU to
cut off the oil and industrial gas, and cut back the provision of refined
products. Second, work with the Saudis. China's stake in Saudi Arabia dwarfs its
stake in Iran. The Saudis don't want Iran to go nuclear. And if you line up the
EU and China, that might build a Russian incentive to be more responsible.

And finally, what do you make of the indirect Israeli- Syrian talks - a year
after Israel bombed a Syrian nuclear facility?

Syria is looking at its own economic situation. Bashar Assad would like to
achieve a greater degree of acceptability internationally. The goal of the talks
from the Syrian point of view is to show the next US president that there is
potential. Even if Olmert were going to be around, nothing [concrete will
emerge] unless the US is part of it. I remember back in the 1990s, during the
Israeli-Syrian contacts, [Israeli ambassador to the US and point man on Syria]
Itamar Rabinovich said to me, "The Syrians are more interested in making peace
with you than with us."

I think that still applies. If [an accord] is possible, it could profoundly
affect the landscape. And you're not going to know it, unless you test it. *

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: ROSS TODAY: I don't want Iran put off for the next
administration. The next administration will have fewer options and less time.
Working with Clinton: Now Ross is an unpaid advisor to the Obama campaign.
(Credit: Bloomberg)

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September 19, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Toby Willig, John Williams

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 234 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

ENGAGING EXPERIENCE

I had the privilege of going to the new museum dedicated to the memory of Gush
Katif, which recently opened in Jerusalem. I am so glad that In Jerusalem had an
article on this museum ("Art vs disengagement," September 5). It is an
unforgettable experience to view the photographs and paintings that depict the
beauty of the lives people had in Gush Katif and the magnificent physical
surroundings.

Even more devastating emotionally was the experience of watching a particular
family who were living in Gush Katif and had to go through the heart-wrenching
trauma of abandoning their hope, their dreams and the life they loved when they
were expelled from Gush Katif. The film was made by the Ma'aleh Film School in
Jerusalem and should be shown in cinemas throughout the country.

Toby Willig

Jerusalem

THE STATE OF JERUSALEM

Whether you believe in Abraham, Jesus or Muhammad, what could be better than
being able to visit a peaceful State of Jerusalem and the surrounding states of
Palestine and Israel?

To divide Jerusalem would only continue the division between three religions
that all believe in the same God and basically the same values.

Jerusalem should become a state of its own, governed equally by the State of
Israel and the State of Palestine.

The whole area could be open to pilgrims from all religions - a good thing for
all believers and the local economies.

John Williams, Monona, WI

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September 19, 2008 Friday

Mailbag

BYLINE: Wendy Blumfield, J. Fischer, M. Schwarcz, Lynette Ordman, Response from
the Editor - Oren Klass, Larry Bigio, Trudy Gefen, B.B., Sarah Goodman

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1589 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Wise women indeed

Dear editor,

Re: Wise women (September 12)

They are indeed 'Wise Women,' this new generation of Israeli midwives who have
moved into the 21st century with a radical change of outlook. For many years
there was resistance to our organization's attempts to present a more human face
to hospital births, to provide more options in choice of birth-place and to
promote breastfeeding according to the recommendations of the World Health
Organization.

These midwives and others not mentioned in the article are now using their
experience and knowledge to further our vision of freedom of choice based on
information and support for the woman and her family during the childbearing
year.

I would nevertheless like to point out that a midwifery license is not an
automatic certification as a childbirth educator or lactation counselor. The
Israel Childbirth Education Center runs very specialized training courses and
many midwives, as well as other professionals, have graduated from these courses
with enhanced listening and counseling skills. Working together can only enrich
the childbearing experience for the parents and babies of Israel.

Wendy Blumfield,

Hon. President

Israel Childbirth Education Center

Higher tuition fees

for draft-dodgers

Dear editor,

Re: Students urge action to exclude draft-dodgers (September 12)

I was glad to see that the students' association at the Netanya Academic College
is urging the government to adopt regulations to keep draft-dodgers out of
academic institutions. Make them do a few years of Sherut Leumi (National
Service) for the country they live in and which provides them with all kinds of
services, mainly defending them! They could also pay higher university fees than
those who have served. My children, their spouses and grandchildren served in
the army before going on to study. My son, aged 48, still does his reserve duty
training - giving back to the State of Israel!

J. Fischer,

Michmoret

Kosher food for all

Dear editor,

Re: Parents angry over lack of kashrut on Poland trip

We were amazed and upset by the information in the article about lack of kashrut
for Ra'anana students in Poland. The children were there as part of an official
visit by Israeli students, and thus kosher food should have been supplied to all
the participants with no need to make advance requests.

Dr. Ida Selavan Schwarcz and Dr. Joseph M. Schwarcz,

Ganei Omer

Stunned at Metro

Re: Neither shall they study war anymore (September 5)

I was stunned that there were no letters of strong condemnation to Metro's four
pages of publicity for an organization that seeks to help those Israelis who
don't want to fight for their country.

Compare this to Sarah Honig's article "The wooden- headedness factor" from
September 12th, which included the comment that "the youngest Israelis are never
taught (the justice of their cause) and remain ignorant to a degree that
severely imperils Israel's self-preservation prospects." Dr. Dolev's
organization is clearly an example of the result of this failure to educate.

But far more is at stake when journalists choose to reinforce the way that our
enemies portray us. As Sarah Honig states, it is not "enlightenment and
broadmindedness." On the contrary, it is a totally irresponsible and
self-destructive activity, at a time when this country desperately needs to
inform its people of the facts.

Lynette Ordman,

Netanya

Response from the editor

What are "enlightenment and broadmindedness" if not utterly subjective
qualities? Indeed, one cannot fight a wrong unless one knows it exists, and it
is the journalistic obligation to ensure that the public becomes aware of its
existence. The article was neither a publicity piece nor an expression of any
editorial point of view. The comments made in the article by members of New
Profile speak for themselves, and it is up to every person to reach their own
conclusion and to act according to their own conscience. On a related sidenote,
earlier this week Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz ordered a criminal probe of New
Profile's web site.

Sincerely,

Oren Klass

This may come as a surprise to New Profile

Dear editor,

Re: Neither shall they study war anymore (September 5)

The description of the New Profile group by Carl Hoffman shows that this group
just doesn't get it (though they like to think of themselves as moral icons).
The Palestinians, Syrians, Hizbullah, Iran, etc. don't really want to create a
Palestinian state. They aren't "struggling for freedom." They aren't "resisting
the occupation." They only want to destroy Israel and kill Jews, at least those
who had the audacity to actually return to live in their ancestral homeland. The
enemy's missiles and suicide bombers don't and won't distinguish between New
Profile members and anyone else.

If the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states had really wanted a Palestinian
state, they could have built one following the partition in 1947. They could
have built, created, grown and developed peacefully next to Israel, rather than
putting rocket launchers on vacated farms in Gaza. It's not Israel's actions
that create the hatred. Israel's actions are a reaction to and defense against
the hatred (yes, including all those barriers that weren't there until the
suicide bomber rate started to skyrocket). Have you ever seen a Palestinian who
can say "gee, the Jews have some rights to this land also; they used to live
here and had a state here long ago; let's share the land with them"?

Seven years ago we made aliya to this land. Our daughter now serves in the IDF
working with volunteers who come from abroad to help Israel. Yes, it may
surprise New Profile, but there are many, many people who see service, be it in
the IDF or in National Service, as a privilege of our generation. It may
surprise them that there are many foreigners who pay money to come and help out
on Israeli military bases, all so that people like me and my family and the
folks of New Profile can live here in freedom and say what we think to the
newspapers.

Is this a perfect state? Of course not. Do we have a perfect government or a
perfect army? Of course not. That's why we are here trying to help, build,
develop, serve and grow ourselves in the process. If the people of New Profile
don't want to serve in the army, that's their prerogative (and, to some extent,
their loss). They should consider other ways of serving in order to make this a
better society, instead of teaching others how not to serve.

Larry Bigio,

Zichron Ya'acov

From Orwell to JFK: Musings on serving one's country

Dear editor,

Re: Neither shall they study war anymore (September 5)

I was pleased to read the responses by Zelda Harris, Barry Newman and Reida
Mishory-Isserof in last week's Metro Mailbag. I add the following observations
on pacifism by George Orwell during WWII, who was a communist in his youth
butÊsaw the light as he matured, becoming one of the strongest critics of
communism at that time:

1. "Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you
hamper the war effort on one side, you automatically help out that of the
other." (Partisan Review, 1942)

2. "We sleep safely in our beds because 'rough' men stand ready in the night to
visit violence on those who would harm us."

I hope the above will be read and ingested by Diana Dolev and the founders and
members of New Profile - i.e., all those who contemplate dodging their
commitments to their country, especially National Service.

They should also remember the words of John F. Kennedy, which went something
like this: "Do not ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for
your country."

Trudy Gefen,

Kiryat Ono

Still HOT and sticky

Dear editor,

Seems like this subject has developed into a "swarm of hornets" issue with all
the feedback you are receiving from the public.

One of your regulars, Mr. Barry Newman from Ginot Shomron, answered that the
public should already be aware of big business policies of "maximum profit with
minimum quality service."

Another answered that this way of thinking is an insult. I agree, it is an
insult to the consumer. It is for this reason that Better Business Bureau
started in the United States - in order to protect the consumers from the big
and small businesses that decide the consumer's brain is incapable of
deciphering the cheating nature of their business (big time con-artists?).

When a company agrees to give a specific quality service upon a consumer's
agreement, then that company is obligated to provide said service at the
specific price quoted. Furthermore, I believe that rates should not be changed
until the consumer is duly informed of the change and the reason. There should
be some type of warning in advance (mail, email, telephone).

Again, it seems to me that governmental supervision is lacking in the case of
cable companies' service and automatic raising of rates. That spells out to me
as negligence.

Another reader in Eilat answered that consumers shouldn't complain - that all we
have to do is not give in to temptation and cut ourselves off from satellite
cable television. Does he believe that all Israeli citizens live in homes that
can put up their own satellite dish? Naive.

B.B. (Not giving name as don't want Hot to raise my rates),

Haifa

My chase is over

Dear editor,

Thank you for publishing my letter in Metro, September 5th, in which I
complained about HOT overcharging me. I received a call from them on September
7th and a promise of a refund. Perhaps my letter in Metro was instrumental in
waking them up! I had been chasing them since May.

Sarah Goodman,, Haifa

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September 19, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Nathan Aviezer, Yonathan DeFreece, Hermione Cohen, UpFront staff

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 539 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

The violent game...

Sir, - Rabbi David Forman, former chairman of Rabbis for Human Rights, made a
passionate defense of the Oslo Accords on their 15th anniversary, calling them
"the only viable game on the global agenda" for achieving our "dream of peace"
("The failure was our fault, too," September 12).

The Oslo Accords consisted of an exchange of letters between PLO chairman Yasser
Arafat and prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Arafat's letter contained the following
assurance: "The PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence,
and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to
assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators."

The front pages of The Jerusalem Post have recorded how faithfully the PLO has
honored that pledge. Over the past 15 years, Palestinian terrorism has snuffed
out an average of one Israeli life every four days.

Instead of "viable game," it would much more accurate to describe the Oslo
Accords as "the violent game."

NATHAN AVIEZER

Petah Tikva

...of occupation forever?

Sir, - I was left gasping by Sarah Honig's "The wooden-headedness factor"
(September 12), especially after reading the levelheaded and moderate article by
David Forman.

The portrayal of Yitzhak Rabin as some sort of weak, manipulated pawn of the
Oslo negotiators is an abortion of history. Rabin was a full and willing
participant in the negotiations - and was completely right. After all, what have
Honig and the settlement fanatics ever offered instead of Oslo? Only "occupation
now, occupation forever."

The Right could have accepted the deal Shimon Peres made with king Hussein in
London, years before Oslo, but Yitzhak Shamir wrecked it because he wanted
territories and not peace. So instead of Hussein, we got the PLO.

And, by the way, how much longer are we going to hear the canard about Segev,
Goldfarb and the Mitsubishi? Ms. Honig knows perfectly well that two Labor MKs
at the time voted against the Oslo Agreement, betraying their party, and
defected to form the Third Way.

But I suppose that was all right!

YONATHAN DE FREECE

Ramat Gan

Light in their lives

Sir, - I was so pleased to read Barbara Sofer's account of Dvir Mussai's
marriage to Orly Caro ("Wake-up calls," September 12). We wish this brave young
couple a future filled with health, happiness and success.

It was interesting for me to see, in the accompanying photo, the wedding gift
they were opening. It was from DIVOTE (Durban Israel Victims of Terror), a
project of South African Jewry. I manage the Israeli side of this project,
together with other volunteers. For the last five years DIVOTE has been
providing gifts to both children and adults who are victims of terror.

These gifts are donated by Jews and non-Jews throughout South Africa, and we
hope to continue in our efforts to bring a little light to those who have
suffered so much.

HERMIONE COHEN

Ra'anana

CLARIFICATION, Many people who read Linda Maurice's "A guardian angel for the
children" (September 5) want to donate to the Neve Michael Children's Village.
Jack Stromfeld can be reached at charjacs@mailstation.com; or e- mail Sandra
Dobres at sandymovie@yahoo.com Alternatively, call (in the US) Jack at
954-432-5335 or Sandy at 954-252- 1966.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

659 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 19, 2008 Friday

What is Wall Street telling America?

BYLINE: AMOTZ ASA-EL

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1204 words

HIGHLIGHT: Middle Israel. Islamist terror's most unlikely victim, the Protestant
ethic of financial prudence, is screaming from the bowels of Ground Zero

At this writing, Wall Street is ablaze.

What began a year ago with a crisis in a little-known corner of the housing
market has since mushroomed into major mayhem. Last week this produced the
bailouts of two major mortgage banks, and this week, in what looked like a
metastasizing germ, it spread to the thick of the financial industry. There, it
plagued venerable investment banks Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and
mega-insurer AIG, as hundreds of bankers, accountants and lawyers spent the
weekend in their Manhattan skyscrapers, never turning off the lights.

Clearly, something larger than all of them combined is well under way, and it
isn't pretty. In fact, what Wall Street is experiencing these days is but an
extension of America's post-9/11 perplexity.

WHEN THEY arrived in the US as the Civil War approached, the Bavarian Jewish
Lehman brothers had no reason to believe they would give rise to a major
investment bank, or that one of them would give birth to a future New York
governor and US senator. Even so, such speculation would have sounded less
outlandish than the thought that their firm would some day generate history's
worst bankruptcy and shock the world.

Some, of course, would say that this is but another aftermath of Jewish money's
intricate ways, in this case a plutocratic octopus that emerged haphazardly from
a dry- goods store in Alabama that morphed into a cotton brokerage that
represented Southern traders in New York.

Middle Israelis won't bother with these charges, other than to remind those
making them that it's been 40 years since a Lehman headed Lehman Brothers. If
anything, Lehman was a symbol of caution and wisdom, unlike Bear Sterns, the
investment bank that had a reputation for adventurism before it went under in
the spring. And Lehman was also certainly no Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the
mortgage financing institutions that were semi-governmental and, for better or
worse, tied by the umbilical cord to the American housing industry.

In fact, Lehman's collapse is so odd that some ascribe it to the role of the
individual, fingering its longtime chairman Richard Fuld. The charismatic banker
who had restored Lehman's independence after its purchase last decade by
American Express was now too slow to respond to the rapidly unfolding events.
Had Fuld been agile enough, goes this critique, he would have done what his
peers at Merrill Lynch did, and allowed a takeover when Lehman still had viable
suitors. Others point to poor timing and bad luck. Had Lehman's collapse taken
place several months earlier, it may have been bailed out by the government, the
way Bear Sterns and the two mortgage banks were.

Still, such apologetics would not explain why the collapse happened in the first
place, why it is so sweeping and simultaneous and, most importantly, what it
means in terms of where America is coming from and going to.

Technically, the eye of the storm is in the housing market.

What began in the subprime markets, the part of the American housing sector that
offered long-term loans to lenders that the established banks found lacking
repayment ability, soon proved to have involved many more people, institutions
and dollars than was initially assumed. This meant that the original demand had
been unnaturally high, because many people who were buying houses actually could
not afford them and soon began to falter on their mortgages.

The more this market failure unfolded, the more demand for housing dropped and
supply rose, as defaulting buyers were being evicted and their homes boarded up
and put on sale. Last year this added up to 1.3 million foreclosure procedures,
and nearly $0.5 trillion in lost debts for assorted financial institutions, both
within and beyond the US. This meant that even institutions that did not extend
one penny of a subprime loan, like Lehman, were nonetheless affected, as they
were shoulder deep in the housing market; hence the series of institutional
dramas to which we were witness in recent weeks.

And yet, there was more at play here than merely one bad moment in one wild
industry.

FOLLOWING 9/11, the Bush administration's challenge was twofold: strategic and
economic. Economically, the supreme aim was to prevent the kind of negative
mood, and consequent recession, that such external blows are prone to cause.
This was delivered superbly by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who
gradually reduced interest rates that fall from 3.5 percent to 1.75%, a 40-year
low that indeed prevented a recession.

However, the strategic choice at the same time was to wage two wars, and they
demanded money, a lot of money, money that even mighty America did not have.
Fighting was, of course, a justified and plausible choice, but the thought that
it could be done quickly, cheaply and without demanding sacrifices from the
people was absurd. Yet the Bush administration nurtured among the people a
general attitude of business as usual.

That is why Bush cut taxes while he refrained from cutting spending, a sure
recipe for ballooning deficits under any circumstances, but even more so at a
time of war. That is also why Greenspan in '04 ignored signs that the economy
was overheating, and instead of raising rates to reverse the macro-economic
trend, he cut them further, all the way down to 1%. And so Bush is now
bequeathing his successor a record $0.5 trillion budget deficit, and well more
than $9 trillion in overall national debt, nearly twice its size before 9/11.

Faced with a jolt as massive as that America was dealt in September '01, making
demands on the people - to serve, volunteer and pay - was crucial regardless of
the situation's financial constraints; it was necessary for the sake of making
people feel that they, too, not only their government, were in America's war.
Instead, America made the war the private business of its volunteer army, where
most Americans have no first-degree relatives or close acquaintances.

The result was a general atmosphere of eat, drink and be merry. If the
government can spend so much more that it earns, and in fact continuously borrow
- money, people and time - why shouldn't everyone else? Curiously, the Islamist
attacks on America stripped it of its time-honored Protestant ethic of financial
caution. That is what the lenders and borrowers in the subprime market saw, and
subconsciously emulated.

Lehman's own response to 9/11 coincided with the general zeitgeist. The attacks
caught the firm well within the World Trade Center campus, which obviously
compelled it to quickly relocate thousands of employees on both sides of the
Hudson. That was done with remarkable speed and efficiency, and while at it
served the American interest in its defiance of terror.

However, eventually Lehman decided, unlike some of its competitors, to relocate
in midtown, a decision that soon proved controversial, as many thought the firm
should make a point of returning downtown. But Lehman, like Bush, Greenspan and
the subprime protagonists, wanted to add its voice to the Greek choir that was
singing "war is war and business is business." Well, now the White House, the
Fed and Wall Street surely all realize that business after 9/11, just like war,
could not possibly be what it was before it.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The American taxpayer was never told to join his country's war
effort. (Credit: 'Belshazzar's Feast,' by Gustav Dore)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

660 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 19, 2008 Friday

Automatic pilot?

BYLINE: NAOMI CHAZAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1084 words

HIGHLIGHT: Critical Currents

Israelis now face the enormous difficulty of living with the massive uncertainty
of political transition. On the one hand, we cannot allow the country, presently
on a tortuous path domestically as well as internationally, to proceed on
automatic pilot. On the other hand, we will not be able to afford the
introduction of major changes that might adversely affect our future. In these
circumstances, how is it possible to keep the country on a steady course until
the political dust has settled and a newly elected government is firmly in
place?

This dilemma has not escaped the candidates in the Kadima primary, nor has it
gone unnoticed by their major rivals in the Likud and Labor. Characteristically,
all eyes have focused on the fate of the diplomatic process under a caretaker
government. The Likud and its allies on the Right have cautioned against
proceeding with the Israeli- Palestinian negotiations during the impending
political hiatus. Proponents of the resolution of the conflict in Labor and
Meretz have advocated their completion during the forthcoming interregnum.

WHAT ALL sides have tended to ignore is the equally turbulent domestic scene,
which cannot remain unattended in the interim. Here, too, the challenges and the
dangers are immense. Indecision or, alternately, politically skewed policies
threaten to wreak havoc not only with the economy and social welfare, but also -
and most fundamentally - with the basic structures of democratic government.

How the new prime minister approaches these issues is the key to understanding
what should be done - and what should not even be attempted - during this
period. A mixture of prudence and courage (admittedly in short supply in our
political firmament) is needed in large doses in the coming months.

The role of civil society, that expanding network of voluntary organizations
striving for social change and equality, is therefore more important at this
juncture than ever before. Non-governmental actors, as well as individual
citizens, must be prepared to prevent the abuse of power by a temporary
coalition, while insisting on dealing with immediate problems both expeditiously
and fairly. A sensitive and politically astute leadership would do well to
listen carefully to these voices, shunning the temptation to create
incontrovertible facts, while simultaneously exhibiting the audacity to take
action where immobility would be nothing short of disastrous.

This is a daunting task, especially for a new and untried prime minister
entering office under inauspicious conditions and constantly subjected to
assaults by ravenous political opponents. Neither of the obvious choices on how
to proceed provides a ready answer to the present conundrum of governance. The
first option, to call for new elections as soon as possible, may unquestionably
limit the damage. But it provides no clue as to how to address pressing policy
questions. Doing nothing runs the risk of exacerbating real problems on the
economic and social, not to speak of the diplomatic, fronts.

Conversely, trying to form a durable coalition now may be as impractical as it
is dangerous. Since only Labor has a stake in maintaining a Kadima-led
government at all costs, other potential partners will try to exact an
exorbitant price for their participation. The insistence of Shas on the
restoration of prohibitive child allotments is just one example. Acceding to
such demands could not only prove a major political liability down the line, but
would also wreak havoc on demographic and employment patterns.

THERE IS no reason why the new prime minister has to be locked in such a binary
trap. There is a third alternative: to call for new elections immediately, thus
thwarting any untoward pressures and the damage they entail, while concurrently
setting in motion longer-term policies that any elected government can
fruitfully pursue in the future. This mixture of prudence and daring may yet
prove to be the only way to circumvent the prospect of a country moving forward
on automatic pilot. It may also provide a modicum of substantive political
continuity.

Several examples of such an approach on internal matters may serve as useful
guidelines. Economic issues cannot be ignored during the next few months,
particularly given the turbulence of the global economy and its imminent effects
on the local scene. Caution dictates firmly rebuffing particularistic interests.
Surely, however, this is not enough: Tightening the official shoestrings must
come together with the launching of a social welfare package that will cushion
the effects of an economic slowdown on the most vulnerable segments of the
population.

In the same vein, it might be tempting to bow to demands for increased support
for independent (haredi) schools, even though they are not subject to the
requirements of the core curriculum. To do so, however, would mean further
undermining the already fragile and underachieving general education streams.
The best possible course would be to take advantage of the economic uncertainty
to systematically upgrade educational investments - a long overdue reordering of
priorities that can be set in motion now.

Another area that requires attention immediately, but is under threat of further
erosion, is that of law and order. The continuous efforts to dabble with the
standing of the courts, and particularly to curtail their right of judicial
review, must be quashed before they gain further traction. At the same time, the
long and difficult task of restoring confidence in law enforcement agencies must
commence forthwith. Here community involvement is irreplaceable.

Other pressing challenges abound. None can be treated during this period of
transition - or for that matter in more predictable times - without applying the
one common yardstick that has been so elusive in recent years: the extent to
which policies truly serve the common interests of all sectors of society. Here
there is no substitute for the watchdog role of civil society organizations
separately and in coalition: Their engagement in these tumultuous times is the
single most important mechanism to prevent gross inequities and at the same time
avoid immobilization.

The first few days of the post-Olmert period are truly critical. His successor's
ability to sidestep the inherent pitfalls in the two obvious, but hardly
exclusive, directions available will prove to be the key not only to political
survival, but also to opening up new prospects for equitable societal change.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Shaul Mofaz and Tzipi Livni sit with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
in the last cabinet meeting before the Kadima primaries. (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

661 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 19, 2008 Friday

Community calumny

BYLINE: SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 2189 words

HIGHLIGHT: In The Diaspora

During the cavalcade of calumnies that was her speech to the Republican
convention, Sarah Palin added a new item to the conservative litany of
resentments. Recalling her own political background and alluding to Barack
Obama's, the vice presidential nominee declared, "I guess a small- town mayor is
sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual
responsibilities."

Her sneering comment echoed one from an earlier speaker, Rudolph Giuliani.
Preaching to the partisan choir, he said of Obama, "Maybe this is the first
problem on the resume. He worked as a community organizer. He immersed himself
in Chicago machine politics."

Giuliani's words betray him as a hypocrite and a liar; during his two terms as
mayor of New York, he enjoyed a productive working relationship with the
Industrial Areas Foundation, one of the nation's most prominent and successful
groups of community organizers. As for Sarah Palin, when it comes to community
organizing, she knows a lot about dogsled races.

One is tempted to disregard the Republican smear against community organizers as
the same old same old, the latest twist in attacking the "elite" - the media,
academia, trial lawyers, Hollywood. But the stupidity or mendacity, or both, in
caricaturing the gritty work of community organizing as ethereal do-gooderism,
or social engineering, or ward-heeler hackery deserves some corrective truth.

PART OF the purpose of explaining the reality of community organizing to the
uninformed, which means the easily deluded, is to illustrate the life and legacy
of Saul Alinsky, the Chicago Jew who invented and popularized the tough-minded
model of community organizing that Barack Obama among tens of thousands of other
staff members and volunteers learned and practiced.

The Alinsky mode of community organizing, as carried on since his death in 1972
by the Industrial Areas Foundation, represents a third way between the warring
poles of welfare-state liberalism and free-market capitalism. It marries
idealism to pragmatism, scrupulously avoids partisan alliances or endorsements,
and combines elements of the New Deal's social compact with the socially
conservative mores of religious congregations.

The results, as I have seen firsthand over the past 30 years, are as literally
concrete as the thousands of affordable, owner-occupied houses that have
restored life to the most ravaged sections of Brooklyn, the South Bronx, and
Baltimore, among other cities. These houses are formally known as the Nehemiah
Homes, and it would be hard to conceive of a finer manifestation of the
prophets.

It would be a stretch to say that Alinsky was only or primarily applying Jewish
values in doing his work. From the time he founded his first "citizens'
organization" among the Slavic immigrants of Chicago's Back of the Yards slum,
the Alinsky groups have formed their strongest bonds among white-ethnic and
Hispanic Catholics and black Christians. Only in the last decade have a notable
number of Jewish congregations begun joining the affiliates of the Industrial
Areas Foundation, in part because issues like education and public health led
the foundation to start organizing in suburbs.

Yet neither can one avoid the Jewishness in Alinsky. The son of a tailor and
seamstress, both of them Orthodox, Alinsky grew up first in the Maxwell Street
area of Chicago, the city's overcrowded equivalent of the Lower East Side, and
then in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Douglas Park.

Typical of American Jews of his generation, Alinsky moved away from religious
observance while holding onto Jewish pride and Jewish ethics. Importantly,
though, Alinsky was a street Jew, too, someone who from the alley brawls of his
childhood was a fighter, not a supplicant.

One particular incident in Alinsky's youth, as recounted in Sanford Horwitt's
excellent biography Let Them Call Me Rebel, distills the organizer's combination
of morality and pugnacity. After a Jewish friend had been jumped and beaten by
Polish kids, Alinsky went out on a retaliatory attack, which ended with his
arrest. Sarah Alinsky took Saul from the police station to the synagogue, where
the boy informed his rabbi that he had simply been following the biblical
formula of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The rabbi, in turn, told
Alinsky, "You think you're a man because you do what everybody does? I want to
tell you something the great Rabbi Hillel said: 'Where there are no men, be thou
a man.'"

ALINSKY'S APPLICATION of the rabbinical lesson included rolled-up sleeves and a
zest for confrontation. Unlike so many liberals, Jewish and otherwise, he never
expected right to prevail simply because it is right. He insisted on perceiving
"the world as it is" rather than the world as we wish it to be. His connections
went from Hyde Park professors to Capone syndicate gangsters to labor priests.

"Alinsky took a phrase from the dull vocabulary of social work - 'community
organization' - and turned it into something controversial, important, even
romantic," Horwitt 08 Photo

During the cavalcade of calumnies that was her speech to the Republican
convention, Sarah Palin added a new item to the conservative litany of
resentments. Recalling her own political background and alluding to Barack
Obama's, the vice presidential nominee declared, "I guess a small- town mayor is
sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual
responsibilities."

Her sneering comment echoed one from an earlier speaker, Rudolph Giuliani.
Preaching to the partisan choir, he said of Obama, "Maybe this is the first
problem on the resume. He worked as a community organizer. He immersed himself
in Chicago machine politics."

Giuliani's words betray him as a hypocrite and a liar; during his two terms as
mayor of New York, he enjoyed a productive working relationship with the
Industrial Areas Foundation, one of the nation's most prominent and successful
groups of community organizers. As for Sarah Palin, when it comes to community
organizing, she knows a lot about dogsled races.

One is tempted to disregard the Republican smear against community organizers as
the same old same old, the latest twist in attacking the "elite" - the media,
academia, trial lawyers, Hollywood. But the stupidity or mendacity, or both, in
caricaturing the gritty work of community organizing as ethereal do-gooderism,
or social engineering, or ward-heeler hackery deserves some corrective truth.

PART OF the purpose of explaining the reality of community organizing to the
uninformed, which means the easily deluded, is to illustrate the life and legacy
of Saul Alinsky, the Chicago Jew who invented and popularized the tough-minded
model of community organizing that Barack Obama among tens of thousands of other
staff members and volunteers learned and practiced.

The Alinsky mode of community organizing, as carried on since his death in 1972
by the Industrial Areas Foundation, represents a third way between the warring
poles of welfare-state liberalism and free-market capitalism. It marries
idealism to pragmatism, scrupulously avoids partisan alliances or endorsements,
and combines elements of the New Deal's social compact with the socially
conservative mores of religious congregations.

The results, as I have seen firsthand over the past 30 years, are as literally
concrete as the thousands of affordable, owner-occupied houses that have
restored life to the most ravaged sections of Brooklyn, the South Bronx, and
Baltimore, among other cities. These houses are formally known as the Nehemiah
Homes, and it would be hard to conceive of a finer manifestation of the
prophets.

It would be a stretch to say that Alinsky was only or primarily applying Jewish
values in doing his work. From the time he founded his first "citizens'
organization" among the Slavic immigrants of Chicago's Back of the Yards slum,
the Alinsky groups have formed their strongest bonds among white-ethnic and
Hispanic Catholics and black Christians. Only in the last decade have a notable
number of Jewish congregations begun joining the affiliates of the Industrial
Areas Foundation, in part because issues like education and public health led
the foundation to start organizing in suburbs.

Yet neither can one avoid the Jewishness in Alinsky. The son of a tailor and
seamstress, both of them Orthodox, Alinsky grew up first in the Maxwell Street
area of Chicago, the city's overcrowded equivalent of the Lower East Side, and
then in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Douglas Park.

Typical of American Jews of his generation, Alinsky moved away from religious
observance while holding onto Jewish pride and Jewish ethics. Importantly,
though, Alinsky was a street Jew, too, someone who from the alley brawls of his
childhood was a fighter, not a supplicant.

One particular incident in Alinsky's youth, as recounted in Sanford Horwitt's
excellent biography Let Them Call Me Rebel, distills the organizer's combination
of morality and pugnacity. After a Jewish friend had been jumped and beaten by
Polish kids, Alinsky went out on a retaliatory attack, which ended with his
arrest. Sarah Alinsky took Saul from the police station to the synagogue, where
the boy informed his rabbi that he had simply been following the biblical
formula of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The rabbi, in turn, told
Alinsky, "You think you're a man because you do what everybody does? I want to
tell you something the great Rabbi Hillel said: 'Where there are no men, be thou
a man.'"

ALINSKY'S APPLICATION of the rabbinical lesson included rolled-up sleeves and a
zest for confrontation. Unlike so many liberals, Jewish and otherwise, he never
expected right to prevail simply because it is right. He insisted on perceiving
"the world as it is" rather than the world as we wish it to be. His connections
went from Hyde Park professors to Capone syndicate gangsters to labor priests.

"Alinsky took a phrase from the dull vocabulary of social work - 'community
organization' - and turned it into something controversial, important, even
romantic," Horwitt writes. "'We the people will work out our own destiny' was
the rallying cry and motto."

In theory and practice alike, Alinskyism stayed simple. Organize around the
genuine institutions of a neighborhood. Find "specific, immediate, and
realizable" issues. Then win the battles over them with "the constructive use of
power." Not only can the poor beat City Hall, Alinsky maintained, they can "have
a ball doing it." His groups picketed slumlords at their suburban homes and
dumped uncollected garbage on the doorsteps of lazy ward bosses. "Someone once
asked me whether I believed in reconciliation," Alinsky observed at one point.
"Sure I do. When our side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to
it."

During the 1960s, Alinsky did falter. His organization in Back of the Yards
resisted racial integration. His attempt to work with blacks in the Woodlawn
neighborhood got him entangled with the violent fringe. It fell to his proteges
- among them Cesar Chavez, Nicholas Von Hoffman and Edward Chambers - to
perpetuate Alinskyism through unions, investigative journalism, and a revived
and expanded Industrial Areas Foundation.

THE SAME week when Sarah Palin and Rudolph Giuliani made sport of community
organizers, I happened to be in Baltimore with Arnie Graf, a Jewish son of the
Lower East Side who has been with the Industrial Areas Foundation for more than
30 years. We were chatting with one of the black ministers in the local
organization, known by the acronym BUILD, and he remembered a protest Arnie had
undertaken in the early 1980s against a bank that refused to make loans in black
neighborhoods. Arnie had residents of the afflicted areas line up in the bank
lobby to ask tellers to make change, tying up the whole operation until the bank
president agreed to meet with BUILD. Ultimately, the bank did change its policy.
The episode was vintage Alinsky.

Most recently, Arnie has helped raise about $2.5 million from black churches and
Jewish philanthropies, and gotten the state to subsidize mortgages, so that more
than a thousand Nehemiah homes can be built on the ruined streets of the Oliver
neighborhood, the place that the cable series The Wire turned into a national
symbol of nihilism.

In the Torah according to Saul Alinsky, Moses was a community organizer and God
a tough guy who had to be approached pragmatically. Alinsky once offered his
version of Moses convincing God not to destroy the Jewish people for worshipping
the Golden Calf. In this account, Moses doesn't plead for mercy. He says that
everybody else - the Philistines, the Canaanites, the Egyptians - has heard
about this covenant with the Jews. And if God wipes them out, then people are
going to say, "There goes God; you can't make a deal with him. His word isn't
even worth the stone it's written on."

Whether or not the conversation went quite that way, God stayed his hand, the
Jewish people survived, and Saul Alinsky was born and lived and worked and
influenced others to carry on. And if Palin and Giuliani think he's some kind of
punchline, the joke is on them.

www.samuelfreedman.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Saul Alinsky invented the model of community organizing that
Barack Obama practiced. (Credit: From the documentary 'The Democratic Promise:
Saul Alinsky and his Legacy')

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

662 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 19, 2008 Friday

Why not Uganda?

BYLINE: DANIEL GORDIS

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1179 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is senior vice president of the Shalem Center in
Jerusalem. His next book, Saving Israel: How the Jewish State Can Win a War That
May Never End, will be published by Wiley in March.

For many of us, the image of Rose Pizem's fragile smile refuses to fade. Her
tragedy, like the case of the Bat Yam mother who drowned her son, have aroused
painful conversations as to whether we're doing enough to give our children the
lives they deserve. We suspect we're not.

We're right that we're not, but for the wrong reasons. Even the most decent
societies occasionally produce pathologically sick parents. Sadly, horrific
stories like these, no matter how vigilant we may become, are to an extent
inevitable and unpreventable.

Not so, however, with a much more basic injustice that we're doing to the young
people of this country. That injustice has nothing to do with child abuse or
worse, murder. It has to do with the failure of too many to raise their children
with a sense that being Israeli ought to be "citizenship with a purpose." That
failure is not inevitable, and now is the time to address it.

THE DAUGHTER of friends of ours, in a well-known elite unit of the army,
recently told us a bit about her service. She's enjoying the work and getting to
know her fellow soldiers. She's liked almost all of her experience.

But not long ago, her commander brought the soldiers - the very best kids the
country has to offer - together for a discussion. The commander asked them a
question, simply to get a conversation going: "Why not Uganda?" And here, this
young woman became visibly upset, as she recalled what had happened after that.

"They had nothing to say," she said to me, the hint of a tear appearing in the
corner of her eye. "Nothing. I'd said what I believed, why I think this country
matters, and why it's important that we're here, and not somewhere else. And
they came up to me and told me that they were envious of me - because unlike
them, I'd been brought up and educated to believe in something."

"I really don't care what they believe in," she said after a moment. "I just
wish that they believed in something."

It was, I thought, a telling conversation to have just days before Israel's
schoolchildren returned to class. It's far too easy to allow ourselves to
believe that the fact that the school year got started without a strike points
to some sort of success. But the absence of a strike is no cause for celebration
- it's simply an opportunity to get to work.

AND THERE is plenty of work to do. Sadly, there's nothing unusual about this
young woman's story. Our son had told us something very similar about one of his
experiences at the superb mechina he attended between high school and the army.
Unlike many of the "gap year" programs that exist here, Avi's program admitted
both religious and non- religious students. They spent that mechina year
studying economics, literature, philosophy and Jewish texts. They read Zionist
thinkers, debated the tensions between demography and democracy and, toward the
end of their program, they spent three weeks hiking from the Golan Heights to
Jerusalem. It was, in many ways, Israeli education at its very finest.

But when they began to study Talmud at the beginning of the year, their teacher
knew he was up against a pedagogic challenge of no small proportions. The
religious kids had been studying Talmud for years. For the most part, the
secular kids had almost never seen a page of Talmud.

So he began with questions, not knowledge. He distributed copies of the very
first page of the Babylonian Talmud, which discusses the hours when the Shema
may be recited. "Pair up," he told the students, "one student with more
background and one student with less. I want you to come back to the group with
as many questions about the passage as you possibly can."

So off went Avi with a friend of his who'd never studied Talmud before. They sat
and read, at which point Avi suggested that they start listing their questions.
"What's the Shema?" his partner asked.

"Well," said Avi, "I'm not sure he means that kind of question. I think he means
questions about how the argument unfolds. You know, why does Rabbi X say one
thing, and why does Rabbi Y disagree?"

"But what's the Shema?" his friend asked once again.

At that, Avi suddenly realized that his study partner wasn't offering a question
to be submitted to the group. He was simply asking. An exceptionally talented
kid, he'd gone to Israeli schools his entire life and didn't know something so
basic that almost any American Jewish kid getting even a rudimentary Hebrew
school education would have considered obvious.

WHY DOES it surprise us that Israeli kids can't answer the question "Why not
Uganda"? Jewishly illiterate, they can't say anything about the great ideas that
have long pulsed through the veins of Jewish life or about what Judaism might
have to say about how one lives a life of substance and of meaning. If you know
nothing about Judaism, how can you possibly say anything about why the Jews
might need a state?

With the new school year under way, it's time for us to radically recalibrate
our standards for success and to ask ourselves what we owe our kids. The fact
that school is in session and not on strike says nothing about the education
that is, or is not, unfolding inside the classrooms. Ultimately, what we want
our children to have had at the end of 13 years (including kindergarten) is an
experience in which they've reflected on life well lived, what an ideal society
might look like and, in this country, what the Jewish tradition might have to
say about all that.

Our kids are begging us to help them think. Those conversations about "why not
Uganda" and "what's the Shema" point to a real thirst that many Israeli young
people have. Theirs is a generation craving meaning, seeing purpose.

The soldiers serving with our friends' daughter didn't disparage her for her
strongly held views. Quite the contrary - they told her that they were envious.
And when my son's friend had to make a decision about what to do after high
school, the path of least resistance would have been to go straight to the army,
or to some other program where he wouldn't have to confront how much he didn't
know.

But at an age when young people do not want to admit what they do not know, this
young man, and hundreds of others like him across the country, signed up for a
year that does not count toward army service, that did not coddle them and that
forced them to ask the most far- reaching questions possible about what kind of
people they want to be, what kind of country they want to build and how the
tradition called Judaism fits into any of that. Those kids walked away from
their mechina transformed, not because of the educations they received through
12th grade, but despite them.

That failure to teach is the most far-reaching crime being perpetrated against
the young people of this country. We dare not outsource real education to a
handful of mechinot, excellent though they are, leaving it to them to expose our
kids to the questions that they should have been grappling with for years. It's
up to us.

Israel's children are the innocent victims of our collective educational
failure. They - and their country - deserve more from us.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Do our kids even know about the 'Teheran children,' orphaned
Holocaust survivors brought to Mandate Palestine via Iran in 1943? (Credit:
Diaspora Museum)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

663 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 19, 2008 Friday

Identity deficit

BYLINE: JONATHAN ROSENBLUM

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 1226 words

HIGHLIGHT: Think Again

In his new book Defending Identity, Natan Sharansky once again mines his nine
years in Soviet prisons for crucial insights on the major issues of the day.
Defending Identity complements and enriches Sharansky's previous work The Case
for Democracy.

The two works draw on different aspects of the political activism that led to
Sharansky's arrest and imprisonment: The Case for Democracy on his work as a
human rights activist and spokesman for the Helsinki Watch group; Defending
Identity on his work for Jewish emigration. The two roles coexisted easily
enough in Sharansky, but colleagues in each movement doubted whether he was
really one of them because of his involvement in the other.

The Case for Democracy argued that totalitarian regimes are inherently
aggressive, while democratic societies are the opposite, since democratic
leaders need to provide citizens with that which they value most - their own
lives. Defending Identity adds the caveat that individuals and societies that
value nothing above life cannot summon the resources to defend themselves
against aggressive enemies.

IN PRISON, those with the strongest identity - such as Pentacostals - were the
least likely to be broken by the KGB. For those with a strong personal identity,
the fear of betraying that identity and thereby rendering one's life worthless
was greater than the fear of death.

The KGB's trump card, Sharansky quickly realized, was fear of the firing squad.
The only way to resist was to overcome that fear of death with a countervailing
fear even more powerful.

Though he then knew little of his Judaism, Sharansky termed that countervailing
fear the fear of God. "[T]he fear of not being worthy of the divine image, not
the fear of death, was what I was most afraid of in my interrogations with the
KGB," he writes. At that moment, the KGB lost its power over him.

AS WITH the individual, so with nations: "Without a strong identity, without a
commitment to a particular way of life, without a feeling of connection to the
generations who came before and to those who will come after, there can be
enjoyment of life but not the strength to defend that life when it is
endangered... [The] insatiable desire for the safety of the self can become the
greatest danger to the safety of all..."

Western Europe could serve as Sharansky's proof text. National identity is under
assault in Western Europe. The commonplace description of today's Europe as
having been born in Auschwitz contains within, says Alain Finkelkraut, the
message that anything that divides or distinguishes one man from another is bad:
Borders are bad; Internet is good. The European Union is good; nation states are
bad.

Differences led to Auschwitz - or so goes the argument. But turning Auschwitz
into the entirety of European history has resulted in severing a thousand years
of history and civilization.

That rejection of identity has left Western Europe unwilling to defend itself or
its values. Since World War II, Western Europe has allowed the United States to
defend it, while resenting it for doing so.

European peace movements, Sharansky notes, have consistently aided and abetted
totalitarian governments. First, by assuming, as a matter of faith, that the
ultimate desideratum for all nations is peace, and thereby ignoring totalitarian
states' reliance on high levels of external aggression to defer internal
criticism. And second, by treating the right of all governments to manage their
internal affairs as the highest moral value. In The Case for Democracy,
Sharansky relates that he and his fellow prisoners knew that the Soviet Union
was doomed when president Ronald Reagan declared it an Evil Empire to be
confronted. Europeans, however, were appalled at his simplisme.

Only Muslims, not notably shy about asserting their identity or its superiority,
are given a pass for doing so. Rather than defend freedom of the press or speech
in the wake of Muslim rioting over relatively tame Danish cartoons, the European
Union commissioner for justice, freedom and security counseled "prudence" with
regard to sensitive topics. Muslims marching in London chanting "Behead the
enemies of Islam," can count on protection by a phalanx of British policemen.
But those who point out how unlovely are such sentiments uttered in the name of
Islam will find themselves hauled before human rights commissions on charges of
Islamophobia.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA is the most cosmopolitan, the most European candidate, ever to
run for president of the US. His identification with America is measured
primarily by its readiness to submit to his guidance.

He presented himself to the Europeans as if running for president of the world -
as one of them, sharing their loathing of the "cowboy" president. Like the
adulatory crowds that greeted him everywhere on his European pre- victory lap,
he views America's dominant military power as more of a threat than a source of
hope. Obama has promised to slash tens of billions of dollars from defense
spending.

And like European peaceniks, he assumes adversaries are rational and peaceful at
heart. His "can't we just talk about this" approach to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - as
if he possessed a magical verbal formula unknown to European negotiators in four
years of being monkeyed around by Iran - bespeaks a faith that all conflicts can
be settled around the conference table with a little bit of goodwill.

Obama would also declare the internal affairs of other states matters of no
concern. During the primaries, he repeatedly insisted that no matter what
bloodbath ensued in the wake of an American withdrawal from Iraq, it could not
justify the death of one more American serviceman.

He takes no pride in the fact that American troops have made it possible for
Afghani women to once again receive medical care from a male physician or that
60,000- 70,000 Iraqi children no longer die annually of malnutrition due to
Saddam Hussein's diversion of billions of dollars in oil revenues to maintain a
security state, in which no one could ever openly share his thoughts with
another human being for fear of informers.

Attitudes toward military service are a rough litmus test of pride in the United
States and belief in its exceptionalism. For much of the Democratic base,
military service, like pregnancy, is something that happens to you if you are
too dumb to know better. The ban of voluntary ROTC (Reserve Officers Training
Corps) on most Ivy League campuses and San Francisco high schools is one
expression of that disdain. Fouad Ajami notes that when Obama spoke at Wesleyan
University on public service, he excluded military service. (On 9/11, he joined
John McCain in calling on his alma mater Columbia University to allow ROTC back
on campus.)

There will be only a small audience for Natan Sharansky's robust defense of
freedom, national sovereignty and identity in Western Europe. Defending Identity
will not resonate with Europeans any more than Sharansky's earlier argument in
The Case for Democracy that peace between Jews and Palestinians can only follow
the creation of a free Palestinian society.

But his ideas will find a large audience in America, where he is to receive the
2008 Ronald Reagan Award this week. And that audience will not likely be shaken
by European threats of everlasting contempt if American voters fail to confirm
their choice of the anointed one.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: President George W. Bush presents the Presidential Medal of
Freedom to Natan Sharansky: 'The fear of not being worthy of the divine image,
not the fear of death, was what I was most afraid of in my interrogations with
the KGB.' (Credit: Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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664 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 19, 2008 Friday

The Sergei connection

BYLINE: SARAH HONIG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1276 words

HIGHLIGHT: Another Tack

Poor Tzipi Livni - the burden of ministerial office can weigh heavy. It involves
obligations that produce not a little unease. For instance, among the last
follies ascribed to Ariel Sharon, just before his catastrophic stroke, was a
promise to Vladimir Putin to hand over the Russian Compound's famed Sergei
Building (the sumptuous "Sergei Imperial Guest House"). It's smack-dab in the
very heart of Jerusalem - in the western part thereof, the one that lies within
the Green Line, the one that ostensibly Israel may be allowed to keep after it
relinquishes all it liberated in its 1967 war of self-defense (including
Judaism's Holiest of Holies).

Claims for a pound of the Jewish national flesh, it so appears, are being made
not only by Arabs. We owe slices of our capital to all sorts of latecomers,
conquerors, glory- seekers, clout-hunters and would-be meddlers in our volatile
region.

With friends like Putin, let's not forget, we need no enemies. He actively helps
Iran gain the nuclear capability with which to obliterate the Jewish state.
Putin supplies Syria with missiles with which to decimate Israel's population
centers and down its fighter jets. Via Damascus, Putin succors Hizbullah and
Russian-made rocketry fired from Gaza's Hamastan explodes in Ashkelon. Putin
deserves none of the consideration that might perhaps be extraordinarily
extended a bosom buddy (though genuine allies wouldn't pursue archaic pretexts
for a foothold in another nation's capital and the cradle of its heritage).

Moreover, Putin doesn't politely request a special cordial gesture. A Russian
Foreign Ministry-sponsored Web site names the issue of "Russian property in
Jerusalem" as one of the most outstanding bilateral problems between the
countries, listing it under the heading of "Getting What Is One's Own" with the
further elucidation that "Russia has a number of complaints against Israel." It
goes on to assert that there's no contesting "the legitimacy of Russia's claim
to the St. Sergius Metochion and the building of the Russian church mission as
well as various other facilities in Jerusalem."

THOUGH NO written documentation exists anywhere of Sharon's alleged pledge to
Putin, its intrinsic logic and consistency are undeniable. An administration
prepared to divest Israel of some parts of Jerusalem won't shrink from
surrendering other parts too - even bits of its central downtown, in which
nobody would presumably portray our tenure as controversial or precarious.

Given such an ultra-appeasing mindset, it might well be that Sharon was loath to
disappoint Putin and so is Foreign Minister Livni. But had they and their Kadima
cohorts fully focused on the ramifications? The ultimate eviction from the
Sergei premises of Israel's Agriculture Ministry and environmental organizations
is the least troublesome consequence (the blow to national sovereignty
notwithstanding). In Kremlin hands, these holdings would de facto become
extraterritorial. What if terrorists were to flee and find refuge therein? Would
IDF troops break into Putin's toehold in the Holy Land?

The precedent, additionally, might stimulate other appetites. The Greek Orthodox
Church owns the land on which the Knesset and the prime minister's residence
stand. If a ministry can be evicted, why not the Jewish parliament and the head
of government?

Livni might not relish the complications, but noblesse oblige. If Arik
obsequiously promised, she is honor bound to fawningly fulfill Putin's wishes.
All foreigners, it seems, have more cogent claims to Jerusalem than do Jews. As
Sharon and sidekicks - with Livni prominently among them - demonstrated during
disengagement, Jews are portable and disposable.

And how did Russia's unchallengeable claims arise? The Russian Compound was
chartered by the Russian Orthodox Church from the Ottomans in 1858. It was
earmarked for the welfare of pilgrims. The Sergei Complex, occupying nine
compound acres, was constructed decades afterward by Grand Duke Sergei
Alexandrovich (son of Tsar Alexander II, brother of infamous Tsar Alexander III
and uncle to last Tsar Nicholas II) to accommodate visiting aristocrats. Among
his other distinctions, Sergei was president of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine
Society." Turkish law categorized his property as strictly private and
emphatically not a Russian state holding.

Post-revolution, "White" and "Red" Russian churches vied for compound ownership.
The Mandatory Brits commandeered the lot. Israel purchased most of the compound
from the USSR in 1964, but, being cash-strapped then, paid the $3.5 million
in... oranges. The Sergei Building, church and courtyard weren't included in the
deal and until the Six Day War served as the local KGB spy nook.

Putin reportedly won't countenance sale of the property due to a deep-seated
sentimental connection to Sergei and his legacy. Too bad Livni doesn't exude
similar emotional attachment to Sergei's victims.

SHE, OF all homegrown dabblers in statecraft, should know that the grand duke
was an avid practitioner of the recurrent Romanov theme: "Beat the Jews and save
Russia." His anti-Semitism was unrivalled even by the rabid anti- Semitism of
his royal kinfolk. In 1891 - mere months after Sergei's building went up in
Jerusalem - his brother appointed him governor-general of Moscow. Sergei's
immediate move was to uproot the city's 30,000 Jews. Moscow was to be "cleansed"
in three orderly phases - the poorest and least-veteran Jewish inhabitants
ousted first and the richest and longest-residing Jews removed last.

The banishment edict was published on the first day of Passover. The next night
police swooped down on Jewish homes, roused entire frightened families and drove
thousands of scantily clad men, women and children to the lockup where they were
crammed into filthy cells. Others hid out in dark alleyways and cemeteries, only
to be eventually rounded up and roughed up. All, shorn of their possessions,
were later driven out of town like vermin. Many were tortured. The infirm died
in transit. Some were dragged in wooden manacles, like outlaws, to do long
stretches of hard labor in distant prisons.

Over months and several expulsion installments, Moscow was rendered virtually
judenrein. While Sergei rejoiced, deported Jews were reduced to utter
destitution. In Sergei's Russia, however, they were the lucky ones. Elsewhere,
Sergei's clan unleashed gruesome pogroms - painstakingly premeditated as
diversionary tactics to quell internal unrest - in which Jews suffered all
manner of barbaric butchery, eclipsed only by the horrors of the Holocaust.

This is the Sergei whose individual real estate holding Putin elevates to a
sacred national heirloom for all Russians. But if Putin speaks in terms of
national birthright, why not also Livni? Why not demand at least a modicum of
quid pro quo - a central sliver of Russia's capital for a central sliver of
Israel's capital?

Why not demand that - in return for one ruthless Russian despot's property, for
which Putin yearns nostalgically - he pay with what Sergei stole from the Jews
he robbed and exiled? Moscow's Zaryadye historical district, adjacent to Red
Square, was the hub of Muscovite Jewry (particularly the sizable Glebov Yard,
site of the then-Jewish ghetto). Why not award that area to Israel in return for
Sergei's courtyard?

Putin may balk and assert that Israel isn't heir to the Jews Sergei
dispossessed, in which case Livni could note that neither is Putin's Russia heir
to Sergei.

That's how a proud foreign minister of the Jewish state and a prime-ministerial
aspirant should have reacted. But although Livni may not lack ambition, she is
woefully deficient in Jewish pride.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: The Sergei building in Jerusalem. Why not demand at least a
modicum of quid pro quo? Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. (Credit: Ariel
Jerozolimski/Courtesy)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

665 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 18, 2008 Thursday

Rotting fruit

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 733 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Any day now, some 2,500 essential Thai agricultural employees may be deported
from Israel. They were hired and allowed entry by special permission last
November, in order to meet an urgent demand for farm workers and give a vital
boost to agricultural exports.

So what has changed since then? Have Israelis unexpectedly begun clamoring to do
back-breaking seasonal work, at minimum wage? If anything, labor shortages have
only been exacerbated and the difficulties for producers to meet export
deadlines have grown more acute. So how is it that thousands of hitherto legal
employees are about to be sent home?

The answer is that in an effort to increase the number of Israelis doing
agricultural work, the system has tied itself up in bureaucratic knots. There's
no denying the many adverse effects of inundating Israel's marketplace with
cheap labor from less developed countries - much of it illegal. The first
victims are Israeli job-seekers, who cannot compete with outsiders' readiness to
take on unskilled and semi-skilled jobs for below minimum wage. Moreover,
employers spare themselves a host of ancillary expenditures for social benefits,
heath insurance and pensions.

Even earning the minimum wage, Israeli workers often become too expensive for
employers, while the availability of low-priced substitutes is enticing to the
greedy. When Israeli workers are priced out of the labor market, they rely on
the country's social-welfare safety net, collecting unemployment benefits and
income subsidies which often equal, and sometimes exceed, what can be earned
from menial labor. Thus the inducement to work is gradually eroded.

The combination of cheap foreign labor and Israelis' disinclination to perform
menial work at very low pay feeds into a social, economic and ethical phenomenon
detrimental to the country. The need to break this cycle is indisputable.

This newspaper has strongly supported moves to limit the damage wrought by
illegal labor and by the unwarranted and disproportionate granting of work
permits to various employee categories. We recommended that fewer construction
workers be imported. In return for fair compensation, this is a line of work
which can and should attract more Israelis; it did in earlier decades.

We also opposed frivolous licenses that allow foreigners to work in our
fast-food kitchens in the capacity of ethnic "chefs." We pointed out that many
such "imports" had never handled a skillet. And we urged the authorities to
crack down on the use of foreign workers brought in to work in the food sector,
but who then wind up doing shifts in factories, painting houses and repairing
roofs.

BUT excessive zeal in limiting foreign agricultural employees is exactly what we
don't need. Here exceptions need to be made to the otherwise rational desire to
cut back on the number of foreigners whose presence warps our labor market.

Exceptions should also be made in one other area: the often devoted care-givers
who look after our aged and infirm.

The jobs of agricultural workers are frequently seasonal; their arrival cannot
wait for the unsnarling of red-tape. Fruit not picked in time will rot, cause
inestimable losses to local growers and cost them valuable market niches.

Some 25,000 foreigners are already employed in Israeli agriculture. An
additional 2,500 were allowed in on condition that for each imported laborer,
local farmers recruit an Israeli. That was mission impossible because there were
no subsidies or other inducements to convince Israelis to sign on. The upshot is
that critically needed foreign workers are being threatened with immediate
deportation and their employers can't do much about it.

Thus, despite all the good policy intentions, Israeli agriculture is about to be
dealt a blow, endangering markets and causing prices at local supermarkets to
rise. The Arava region alone exports nearly NIS 1b. worth of produce annually.
Now it is 400 workers short.

THE LOT of Israeli agriculture isn't an easy one at the best of times, its
phenomenal successes notwithstanding. The climate is harsh, water is scarce,
vandalism and terrorist predations are never far away. And the younger
generation has been lured away from farming by more attractive options.

Having Israelis work in agriculture is a Zionist ideal. But the reality is that
most Israelis don't want to do it. If we are to cut our dependency on foreign
labor, let us do it elsewhere.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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All Rights Reserved

666 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 18, 2008 Thursday

My gay 'akeda'

BYLINE: DAVID BENKOF

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 682 words

HIGHLIGHT: Fabulously Observant

With the High Holy Days coming up, I thought I would offer my own Rosh Hashana
drash with reference to my fellow gay men and Torah Judaism.

Many gay and lesbian Jews have argued that since God made them gay, He must
certainly want them to express that sexual orientation in their family and
bedroom lives. Even Steve Greenberg, who has rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva
University, has made this argument. Now, I believe on most levels that God does
not give people sexual orientations, but that's a subject for another column.
For now, let's assume that being gay or lesbian does come 100 percent from God.

On the second day of Rosh Hashana, the Torah reading is from the book of
Genesis, the story of the akeda, or the binding of Isaac. One of the most famous
and challenging stories in the whole Bible, it goes something like this, at
least if you have my subject in mind: God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his
son, Isaac. So what did Abraham do? He did not reply, "But I'm not the kind of
father who is able to sacrifice his son. Maybe you should give that mitzva to
one of the Molech worshipers down the street. Every bone in my body resists your
commandment that I sacrifice Isaac. I'm not 'oriented' toward child sacrifice.
In fact, I think it's a mitzva not to kill one's own child."

Nor: "I have no other heir. Preparing Isaac to be a forefather is my entire
life's work. You're asking me to cancel everything I thought my life was about.
No!" He didn't say that either.

Instead he replied, "Hineini," which means "Here I am," and he brought Isaac up
the mountain, prepared to sacrifice him, and in the end God made it all okay.

Now, over the centuries there has been a tremendous amount of commentary,
creativity, energy and debate over just what the akeda means - albeit probably
never making this kind of reference to gays. There have, however, been some
gay-related interpretations of this story, including a 1995 homoerotic
photograph called "Akeda," which shows a shirtless man wearing tefillin and a
Band-Aid, as a commentary on the AIDS crisis.

A 2003 Rosh Hashana sermon by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld (of the Jewish Catalogs)
at the Conservative- Reconstructionist congregation Society for the Advancement
for Judaism said: "The clearest place where the tradition's voice is overruled
is when we have concluded that the tradition is out of step with contemporary
moral values. The values of equality, inclusiveness and pluralism then lead to
creating new traditions related to women and gay people."

BUT FOR me, the story reinforces my decision nearly eight years ago to stop
having same-sex relations and to eventually pursue traditional Jewish family
life married to a woman.

The idea that we should avoid following one of God's mitzvot because we're not
oriented that way is inconsistent with my understanding of Torah beliefs. For
example I know some men who feel they're oriented toward being attracted to
non-Jewish women, yet the Torah has no exception for them. Many, many men will
admit they are honestly oriented toward loving and being aroused by more than
one woman at a time, yet polygamy was never encouraged by Judaism, and since the
11th century it has been forbidden to Ashkenazi Jews.

Conservative activist and perennial candidate Alan Keyes got in a lot of trouble
for calling lesbian second daughter Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist." But the
term is not so far off the mark. A person who believes in God and the Torah but
overrules one of the commandments because it doesn't match his internal sexual
makeup is basically saying, "It's all about me, me, me. My pleasure, my
identity. Me." Judaism believes - and Abraham believed - that life is primarily
about God and what God wants, not what we want.

Now, some Jews don't believe that the Torah comes from God. That's a much larger
discussion. But what if my akeda drash can convince such people that if the
Torah comes from God (assuming Leviticus 18:22 means gay sex is wrong - another
larger discussion), then gay men should be celibate or marry women? If it can,
this essay will have done its job.

DavidBenkof@aol.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: Abraham was not 'oriented' toward child sacrifice. The Cheney
grandchild. (Credit: Bloomberg; 'Sacrifice of Isaac,' Caravaggio)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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667 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 18, 2008 Thursday

Letters

BYLINE: Frank Farbenbloom, Yaakov Peterseil, Monty M. Zion, Jeanette Dershowitz,
Victor Galindo, Stuart Pilichowski, Menachem Samuel, Martin Golumbic, Jerusalem
Post staff

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1121 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Come off it!

Sir, - Caroline Glick tells us that Tzipi Livni acts like a typical Israeli
politician ("Mrs. Clean is a fraud," September 16). What a discovery! How else
should she act if she wants to be elected?

Thankfully, Livni's worst crime is "her continuous bid to expand her power."
Isn't this is the natural goal of every politician?

It would be more enlightening to address the issue of why we cannot change the
electoral system than call a politician a fraud for playing by the rules of the
game.

FRANK FARBENBLOOM

Ra'anana

Not the Olmert I recall

Sir - Michael Freund's "Reverse the process of de- patriotization" (September
17) rang true and pointed to the abject failures of Prime Minister Olmert and
his Kadima Party. They evince a lack of interest in the land of Israel - not
only in "Greater Israel" but in any part of Israel.

Israelis have to give up their hills and valleys so the murderous Gazans and the
crooked PA can have their holy land? Why does every people, except the Jews,
have the right to love its land?

What riles me most is the insistence that we become a dreamless society, one
without a Jewish soul, with little belief and even less love for the land.

This is not the Olmert I remember as mayor of Jerusalem.

YAACOV PETERSEIL

Jerusalem

Playing God

Sir, - Liat Collins presented an incisive and critical analysis of Kadima's
actions in "Big bangs and little whispers" (September 17), opening with the
different connotations of "playing God." Regrettably, however, she seems to
question the actions of Ariel Sharon's doctors in keeping their unconscious
patient alive and suggests they are playing God. This betrays a lack of
understanding of the ethical and legal principles involved in discontinuing life
support.

In the absence of brain death, any action by the attending doctors to stop or
withhold life support would be both unethical and illegal - and that could be
construed as "playing God."

MONTY M. ZION

Tel Mond

Integrity, m'lord

Sir, - I have long appreciated Evelyn Gordon's incisive analyses of our judicial
system. In "Judicial hypocrisy on judicial review" (September 11) she pointed to
hypocrisy as a reason for the public's continuous loss of confidence in the High
Court.

She is, I believe, correct; however, I would go further and point out that
hypocrisy is evidence of a lack of integrity - a quality a judge must not only
have, but must also appear to have. Lack of confidence in the court is a
function of who its members are and how they are perceived, and not the result
of criticism leveled against it.

To restore the public's confidence in the court, we need (somehow) to ensure
that it be constituted of judges of impeccable integrity, there because of real
stature and not nepotism; judges whose agenda is justice and righteousness for
our people and not the furthering of their own value systems or the enhancement
of how they are perceived in the international arena.

It is hardly to the court's credit that the one outstanding candidate, Ruth
Gavison, was not coopted - perhaps because she possessed that integrity.

JEANETTE DERSHOWITZ

Jerusalem

Unprovoked, you say?

Sir, - In a sentence near the end of "Will America pay the price If Israel hits
Iran?" (August 26), MJ Rosenberg wrote "unprovoked attack." While the article
spoke extensively of "neo-cons" and the fear we all should have if Iran is
attacked, it said nothing about the many, many attacks by Iran that have already
taken place and will, without doubt, continue until Iran is crushed.

So I ask: Since when would an attack on Iran be "unprovoked"? Israel and the US
have been repeatedly provoked - i.e., attacked - by Iran since 1979, when
Iranian revolutionaries assaulted the US embassy in Iran and held its personnel
hostage.

There is a very long list of attacks by Iran that should include those carried
out by Iranian proxies such as Hizbullah, Syria, etc. The attacks in Iraq that
have killed more than 4,500 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi
civilians were supported and armed with Iranian assistance.

Rosenberg and his clone, Jeffrey Goldberg, would have us wait until the knife is
at our throats.

VICTOR GALINDO

Laguna Woods, California

Tshuva's no

magic wand

Sir, - Tova Landau's good intentions are misplaced ("Why bother to repent?"
Letters, September 17). She can't be serious in equating crossing the road on a
red light with Aryeh Deri's accepting of bribes that led to his imprisonment. He
has forfeited the trust of the people he was elected to serve, and therefore
cannot be their representative.

Yes, the Torah allows for teshuva - repentance - especially in Elul, the month
before Rosh Hashana. But the Torah also has strict rules that don't allow for
looking the other way.

Would Deri be permitted to act as a witness in a beit din - a religious court -
or at a marriage ceremony? I think not. His actions have disqualified him from
participating in certain aspects of Jewish life.

Teshuva is a wonderful means of correcting our actions and becoming better
individuals. It doesn't wave a magic wand and make the past disappear.

STUART PILICHOWSKI

Mevaseret Zion

Blight rail

Sir, - Two months before the municipal election, Mayor Lupoliansky has realized
that the light railway is behind schedule ("Jerusalem: City Pass failing to
carry out light rail work on time" September 11). He could have asked any
resident along the proposed route two years ago and learned the same thing, as
the system should already have been operating for a good while.

It would have been more economical for the mayor to cancel the whole project
when he took over from Ehud Olmert and, instead, build bus lanes and some
tunnels. Now Jerusalem, "the poorest city in Israel," is having to pay millions,
if not billions, over the original cost because of bureaucratic and other delays
by the contractor.

Many alternative proposals were cheaper, less disruptive and, above all, easier
to implement. All were rejected by City Hall. Why?

MENACHEM SAMUEL

Jerusalem

Don't forget Stanley

Sir, - Bravo to Ruthie Blum on the great interview with Mati Lazar ("Major key
to identity," September 16). But credit and kudos must also go to Stanley
Sperber, who founded the Zamir Chorale in 1969 in New York and, when he came on
aliya about five years later, handed over the baton to Mati Lazar. Mati then
developed the Zamir Chorale Foundation that we know and love today.

MARTIN GOLUMBIC

Haifa

CORRECTION , The animal shelter in the photo captioned 'Dog days,' taken with
ministers Shalom Simhon and Gideon Ezra (September 17) is The Society for
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Israel (Tel Aviv-Yafo) - SPCA Israel, and
not as stated. Founded in 1927, it was the first of its kind in the country and
is the only such shelter open seven days a week.

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September 18, 2008 Thursday

Russia is the problem, not the solution

BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1080 words

HIGHLIGHT: Civil Fights. Tough, independent EU sanctions could have a major
impact on Iran at minimal cost to the EU

After Russia invaded Georgia last month, one of the West's principal excuses for
inaction was the need for Russian assistance in halting Iran's nuclear program.
"It's Iran, it's the UN," explained Angela Stent, who until 2006 was the US
National Intelligence Council's top Russia officer, to The New York Times.
"There are any number of issues over which they [the Russians] can be less
cooperative than they've been."

Actually, it is hard to imagine how Russia could be less cooperative on Iran. It
has used its Security Council veto both to delay every sanction resolution for
months, and then, whenever it sensed that the West might act outside the UN if
Russia's obstructionism continued, to weaken the resolutions to the point where
they caused Iran no real pain. Consequently, the sanctions have failed to alter
Iran's behavior.

Russia also undercut whatever impact the watered-down sanctions might have had
by signing lucrative trade deals with Iran, and even actively assisted Teheran's
nuclear program by supplying technical aid and nuclear fuel for the reactor in
Bushehr. Just last week, it said this reactor's operation will be "irreversible"
by December 31. Moreover, it has reportedly supplied Iran with S-300
anti-aircraft missiles, thereby impeding military action against Iran's nukes.

And, lest anyone delude himself that this attitude might change, Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev scotched that notion at last week's meeting of the
Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow. "The world does not need to tighten its
sanctions on Iran at this time," he declared.

Incredibly, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Valdai group that this is
because Iran is now cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Since the IAEA's last two reports, in May and this past Monday, both accused
Iran explicitly of noncooperation, listing numerous questions Teheran has
refused to answer, this bald-faced lie speaks volumes about Russia's
determination to protect Iran's nuclear program.

IN A trenchant analysis published in The New York Times last week, Ray Takeyh of
the US Council on Foreign Relations and Nikolas Gvosdev of the US Naval War
College explained why: "Both Iran and Russia are essentially satisfied with
existing US-European policy of applying incremental and largely symbolic UN
sanctions on Teheran. Moscow feels that as long as the diplomatic process
remains in play, America is in no position to launch a military strike that
could destabilize the Middle East."

Moreover, by keeping the sanctions too weak to change Iran's behavior, Russia
perpetuates a situation it deems beneficial: "Not only does it destabilize
international oil markets - keeping prices higher than they ought to be - but
Iran's large natural gas reserves are effectively off- limits for European use,
reinforcing the continent's dependency on Moscow."

In other words, the current policy serves Moscow's interests perfectly: On one
hand, it forestalls military action against Iran; on the other, it enriches
Russia by keeping oil prices high, while also enabling it to largely dictate
European policy via that continent's energy dependence on it. Thus Russia has
every reason to continue doing just what it has to date: postponing new
sanctions as long as possible, then acquiescing whenever necessary to forestall
independent Euro-American action while weakening them sufficiently to ensure
that they will not change Iran's behavior.

Hence any attempt to end Iran's nuclear program through sanctions, thereby
obviating the need for military action, must begin with recognizing that far
from being part of the solution, Russia is part of the problem.

ONCE THIS recognition exists, effective sanctions become possible: The European
Union accounts for fully one- third of Iran's trade, while Iran accounts for
only about 1 percent of the EU's trade; thus tough, independent EU sanctions
could have a major impact on Iran at minimal cost to the EU. In particular, Iran
needs European know-how (which experts say Russia and China cannot currently
replace) to develop its natural gas fields; moreover, Teheran lacks oil refining
capacity, and therefore imports 43 percent of its gasoline consumption.
Sanctions in these two areas could thus devastate Iran's economy.

Clearly, such sanctions would be even more effective if Russia and China
participated. More importantly, however, broad-based Security Council action
would prevent Europe from becoming the principal target of Iranian (and perhaps
broader Muslim) wrath. That is why the EU much prefers working through the UN.
And since the US, whose trade with Iran is minuscule, can do little on its own,
it must perforce acquiesce.

Therefore, it is the EU that must be persuaded to change its approach. And while
the US should be doing more on this front, it is Israel, as Iran's first
potential victim, that must take the lead.

THERE IS certainly room for effective Israeli diplomacy. Germany, France and
Italy - Iran's major European trading partners - all currently have unusually
sympathetic governments. And newer EU members from Eastern Europe are
potentially strong allies, as they have few illusions about Russia.

Yet instead of making this case, Israeli officials keep proclaiming Russia part
of the solution. After meeting Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last month,
for instance, President Shimon Peres praised him for asserting that Russia
opposes Iran obtaining nuclear arms, instead of pointing out that Russia is
Iran's leading enabler in this quest. Similarly, after Ehud Olmert met
then-president Putin in Moscow last fall, his aides publicly praised Russia's
attitude on Iran, saying the premier had emerged "with an understanding that
Russia is concerned about Iran having nuclear weapons."

This is a classic "why be more Catholic than the pope" problem: As long as the
state most threatened by Iran insists that Moscow is behaving constructively,
the EU has a perfect excuse for maintaining this fiction as well. Thus Israel
must stop protecting Russia and start stating the obvious: Moscow is stymieing
any possibility of effective diplomatic action against Iran.

Given the narrow window of opportunity for halting Iran's nukes via diplomacy,
this issue is far too urgent to wait for new elections. Unfortunately, however,
it may have to, because with all four of Olmert's would-be replacements from
Kadima having been party to the current policy, a new Kadima-led government
seems unlikely to effect the necessary change.

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September 18, 2008 Thursday

What a load of garbage!

BYLINE: ANN GOLDBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 870 words

HIGHLIGHT: The downtrodden and scorned dustmen of my youth are now getting their
own back. The writer is a freelance journalist.

Whoever would have believed that it was possible to be intimidated by a load of
garbage - but that's exactly what it's come to in my old home country, England.

When I left around 25 years ago, garbage, or rather rubbish, as it's known
there, was simply stuff you didn't want, and so you threw it away. We had some
large dustbins (metal garbage cans) which we filled with whatever we wanted and
pulled outside the house into the street to be collected once a week by the
garbage men or, as we called them, dustmen.

These men, who did a long hard day's work with a cheery smile on their faces,
and collected whatever we decided to leave out for them, were not, I have to
admit, the most respected of individuals. It was no child's ambition to be a
dustman, and a constant threat issued by a parent to a wayward child was, "If
you don't do your homework and try a bit harder, you'll end up as a dustman."

But all that's changed now.

I FIRST noticed it a couple of years ago on one of my visits to my mother in
London.

As I tossed all the wrapping from the shopping I had done into the rubbish bin
in the kitchen, my mother called out, "You can't do that any more. Take out all
the paper and cardboard and put it in the black paper recycling box outside."

Not having any intention of digging around among the remains of our last meal, I
said, "I'll try and remember next time."

"Forget next time - they won't take the rubbish away if they see it's got paper
and cardboard in it."

And that was my rude welcome into the world of the garbage police and the power
they wield. It put George Orwell's 1984 and Big Brother right into the forefront
of my mind.

THE DOWNTRODDEN and scorned dustmen of my youth are getting their own back. They
now have the power to refuse to remove our garbage. They open the bin while we
watch and wait behind closed curtains with bated breath.

Will they find any reason to reject our discarded rubbish? Fine us for not
recycling? (I'm told that in some areas they have this authority.) Will they
reject our bin because the lid didn't shut, as the regulations stipulated,
because it was overstuffed ?

On a recent visit, I read in a newspaper's "Ask the Expert" column a query from
a man who was entitled to one garbage bin only (the local council decides the
quantity of garbage allowed, according to the number of people living in the
house). You are only permitted to leave your rubbish bin outside the house a
certain number of hours before the collectors come, so as not to cause a
disturbance to the neighbors.

This hapless guy had gone away on vacation, leaving the day before garbage
collection and, therefore, his full bin inside his garden. Now he had a bin that
hadn't been collected - but he wasn't allowed to put out more garbage than he
was entitled to. So by the next week, he had two bags of garbage, while the
collectors refused to take more than the one he was entitled to.

If the regulations were followed, he would forever have one bag of garbage that
would not be disposed of. He was begging to be informed how he could get around
this.

WHAT KIND of a life is this ? What kind of a recycling system? Around the time
of the Jewish holidays, will the authorities know or care that people have
guests and therefore a lot of extra garbage? Will non-Jews be allowed to dispose
of more garbage at Christmas time?

In a word, no.

It is quite apparent that different areas, towns and even streets are accorded
different treatment. In the old days all Brits, when they got together, used to
discuss the weather. Now they discuss garbage collection.

Discarded electrical and electronic items are a major problem. Some citizens pay
a special company a lot of money to remove them. One friend (who wants to remain
anonymous) admitted to leaving them on the sidewalk, hoping someone would steal
them before a policeman or garbage collector came around.

Others simply leave the items indoors, collecting dust, or bequeath them to
their children.

THE BRITISH government has admitted that its draconian garbage laws are
backfiring. Some families, stuck with garbage they can't dispose of, are
resorting to making bonfires in their gardens as a last resort, releasing all
sorts of poisons and toxins into the air, constituting a safety hazard and thus
rather defeating the whole principle of improving the environment.

As my friends discussed their garbage indiscretions, they turned to me. "What's
it like in Israel nowadays?" they asked.

Oh, what a pleasure it was to tell them about the large garbage bins in our
streets or parking lots into which we can throw just about anything we can think
of. I told them about our totally voluntary recycling containers for newspapers
and plastic bottles - and in some areas also for glass.

I also told them with pride about the extra garbage collections we get the week
before Pessah, not to mention the fact that many people purposely leave unwanted
furniture, electrical goods, and even clothes, next to these large garbage bins
for people to take away if they feel can make use of them.

"And after Succot," I added, "they come especially to clear away the s'chach,"
the leaves that have been used for the succa roof.

Now what, I wonder, do British Jews do with their s'chach?

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September 18, 2008 Thursday

Misguided 'Shooting Back' puts Palestinian kids in harm's way

BYLINE: JIM HUBBARD

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 839 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is the founder of Shooting Back and a professor at
University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication.

The first fundamental rule when working with children is their safety. They are
to be protected at all costs and especially in high-risk situations. They are
not pawns in the socio-political spheres of adults.

Ask Marian Wright Edelman, legendary founder of the Children's Defense Fund in
Washington, D.C., if she would support cameras being placed in the hands of
youths to photograph criminal activity in the most dangerous neighborhoods in
the nation's capital, and she would probably conclude that this would be far too
dangerous for the young people and their families.

In January 2007, B'Tselem launched "Shooting Back," a video advocacy project
focusing on the territories.

Its project provides Palestinians, including youths, living in high-conflict
areas with video cameras. Its goal is to bring the reality of life under
occupation to the attention of the Israeli and international public, exposing
and seeking redress for violations of human rights.

I first heard of B'Tselem's project in July 2008 when I received a call at my
home in Los Angeles from a friend in Boston telling me that Brian Williams of
NBC News had just aired a story about people using video cameras in Israel in a
program called Shooting Back. She asked if I was connected to this group, as she
knew me as the founder of Shooting Back. Apparently, B'Tselem, which has raised
substantial sums of money from US philanthropists and foundations, had been
visiting the US to make media appearances to further its cause and raise money.
As a result, its efforts were widely covered in mainstream publications.

I viewed the NBC story and researched the project on the Web, where one
publication, The Telegraph, featured B'Tselem's project and headlined its story
"Cameras as weapons." I was surprised to learn that the group in Israel was
calling itself Shooting Back - an infringement of my ownership of the registered
trademark and service mark - but I was even more surprised to find that my
personal name was also linked with this enterprise. While my own work, both as a
photojournalist and as a photographer working with disenfranchised children, may
resonate in some ways with the goals of B'Tselem's project, the more I
researched the more disturbed I was at being linked to a project whose actions,
in my estimation, violate youths rights to safety.

THE NONPROFIT organization that I founded in the 1980s in Washington, Shooting
Back, Inc., was dedicated to empowering children at risk by teaching them
photography to document their world and bring public awareness to critical
issues in their lives, such as homelessness. Work from children at Shooting Back
garnered international publicity through television and print media, traveling
exhibitions, books, video and, more recently, the Internet.

The work of Shooting Back is often acknowledged as a pioneering effort by the
literally hundreds of people worldwide who have subsequently created similar
projects under the rubric of participatory photography or photographic
empowerment - giving cameras to disenfranchised people, mostly youth, to
document their lives.

Giving people cameras to use as weapons against criminal activity can be a
dangerous act for the people using them, especially kids, their families and
other loved ones. It should be done with the utmost caution. People in the field
debate the ethics of our projects, how they are run, what their impact is on the
participants and how the images are subsequently used.

With B'Tselem's project, I was struck with the potential danger to the kids
given cameras to document human rights violations in an extremely volatile
environment in the Middle East. For a start, they were being drawn to potential
conflict hot spots in which they might be exposed to real physical danger, from
either side.

Furthermore, the kids are named on B'Tselem's website and their faces are shown
on television news. Criminal prosecution is an outcome of several of the videos,
putting the young videographer in the stressful position of potentially having
to testify in court and increasing his or her vulnerability. Additionally,
B'Tselem staffers have reported that they have been verbally and physically
attacked. Has it not occurred to them that a similar fate might await the kids
given the cameras to film abuses?

I don't claim to be familiar with the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. On the surface, the work of groups working to end human rights abuses,
such as B'Teselem, is laudatory. However, it astounds me that no one has talked
about the obvious risks and dangers to the youth.

The camera is sometimes a dangerous weapon not only for the subject but also for
the photographer.

In a recent letter to B'Tselem, I requested it cease and desist using the name
Shooting Back. I don't want my name connected to a project, whatever its
intentions, that I believe puts children at risk. The response was to retain a
large New York law firm to defend its use of the trademark without my
authorization and, in my view, infringement of my trademark.

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September 18, 2008 Thursday

Operation Barbara Ann

BYLINE: DOUGLAS BLOOMFIELD

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 882 words

HIGHLIGHT: Washington Watch. McCain sings, 'Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,; but so far
Bush is siding with those against military action

It's no secret Sarah Palin's words are carefully scripted and rehearsed. And she
delivers them effectively, though at times appearing more programmed than
spontaneous.

That pre-programmed quality was especially obvious in her response to ABC anchor
Charles Gibson's questions about a McCain-Palin administration's response to a
possible Israeli attack on Iran. He tried three times and each answer was
virtually verbatim.

"I don't think that we should second-guess the measures that Israel has to take
to defend themselves and for their security," she said.

There was nothing spontaneous about that answer; her handlers had expected it
and briefed her on just what to say. Gov. Palin may be a foreign policy novice,
notwithstanding Alaska's proximity to Russia, but McCain's hawkish foreign
policy advisers are not.

What message were they trying to send? And to whom? Was the McCain camp flashing
a green light for an Israeli attack without having to say so directly, thus
preserving a bit of Nixonian plausible deniability?

AT A campaign stop in South Carolina last year McCain was asked when he thought
the US might "send an air mail message to Teheran." His answer, widely seen on
YouTube, was, "You know that old Beach Boys song, 'Bomb Iran,'" and he sang, to
the tune of "Barbara Ann," "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." That would delight some
leading neocons like former UN ambassador John Bolton, Daniel Pipes and Norman
Podhoretz who have called for bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. That view is
reportedly shared by Vice President Richard Cheney.

Barring a US attack, they'd like to see Israel do the job. Cheney has publicly
suggested Israel "might well decide to act first" to thwart Iran's nuclear
ambitions.

They'd like to see it done between November 4 and January 20 - too late to
affect the presidential election and too early to leave the decision to the next
president, especially if it is Barack Obama.

Does that mean McCain wouldn't object to being presented a fait accompli if he
is elected, letting Bush take the heat for the attack? Or a scheme to force a
more confrontational approach if Obama is elected, since the neocons fear he
might be too inclined toward diplomacy?

Fueling the latest round of speculation was the announcement that the US is
sending 1,000 GBU-39 bunker buster bombs, but experts say they can't penetrate
far enough to knock out Iran's deeply buried nuclear facilities.

Bush so far is siding with his secretaries of state and defense, the Joint
Chiefs of Staff and his intelligence officials, who counsel against military
action. The Pentagon fears the first target of Iranian retaliation will be US
forces and interests in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf region, and we are in no
position for a third war, notwithstanding Cheney's unending bellicosity.

THE REPUBLICAN and Democratic platforms agree a nuclear Iran is intolerable, and
call for tougher sanctions and heightened economic and political pressure and
keeping "all options" on the table. The big difference is the emphasis on
diplomacy. Republicans reject the Democrats' call for "aggressive, principled
and direct high-level diplomacy, without preconditions," and insist Teheran must
first "improve its behavior."

There's little sign of good behavior, however. On Monday an International Atomic
Energy Agency report said Iran continues defying UN resolutions to halt uranium
enrichment and is not cooperating with the agency's efforts to verify its claim
that its nuclear program has no military dimension.

With Israel in a leadership transition, it would be difficult to undertake such
a major military operation. President Shimon Peres warned, "It will not solve
the problem" and only "trigger a bigger war." He has criticized the Bush
administration for relying too heavily on military action instead of economic
and political pressure.

Israel can't attack without help from others, particularly the US, Iraq or
Turkey, and none is so inclined. When Israeli leaders raised the question with
the Bush administration about opening an air corridor over Iraq for IAF bombers,
refueling tankers and electronic warfare planes, they were told to take that up
with Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki of the sovereign Republic of Iraq.
Translation: fuggedaboutit.

Even if Israel acted on its own, the US would be fully implicated; no one would
believe Israel would or could act without an American green light and full
cooperation.

"The security of the Persian Gulf region is an American responsibility, not an
Israeli one, and no one in their right mind is going to abdicate that
responsibility or contract it out," one expert said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this month warned Iran it is "taking a
major risk" if it tries to build a bomb because it could wake up and "find one
morning that Israel has struck."

Sarah Palin may think it is strictly Israel's business whether it decides to
attack Iran, but if she ever gets a chance to meet with this country's military
and intelligence leaders she may find that it can't be done without our
cooperation and will have serious implications for the US. And she might be
surprised to learn that such an attack would have serious implications for both
Israel and the US - something she apparently didn't learn as commander-in-chief
of the Alaska National Guard.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: IS PALIN aware of the serious implications for both Israel and
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September 17, 2008 Wednesday

The Kadima way

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 735 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

By tomorrow morning, if its leadership contest is resolved on the first round,
we'll know who'll lead Kadima. But the real question is: Can the party ever
offer a genuine "third way" alternative to Likud and Labor?

Some 74,000 Kadima members are eligible to vote; the results will be counted
overnight. Surveys predict that Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will defeat
Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, with Public Security Minister Avi Dichter
and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit trailing way behind. But Mofaz is well
organized, and Livni - unlike her rival - is not prematurely declaring victory.

Whoever wins is going to have to construct a new coalition. Mofaz will find it
easier to entice the pivotal Shas Party to support his leadership of Kadima
because he's prepared to acquiesce in their demands for increased child
allowances and more cash for haredi schools. Livni says she'll be less
forthcoming, making the prospects of her forming a stable government dicier.

It remains to be seen whether Olmert will honor his pledge to step aside after
the primary to enable the victor to lead both the party and the government. He
may wait until the winner puts together a coalition, or stay on until early
elections in March 2009.

IT'S A LOT easier to explain where Kadima came from than what it stands for.

In February 2001, the Likud's Ariel Sharon was elected to navigate the country
through the bloody Aksa intifada. Sharon believed, by December 2003, that he'd
gotten the security situation in hand, but that Israel's diplomatic position
vis-a-vis the US and Europe remained untenable. He recognized the Palestinian
Arab demographic threat, and the fact that Israel had no Palestinian negotiating
partner. So he came up with a controversial concept: unilateral disengagement.

Sharon had strong popular support for this approach - except within his own
party. He lost a referendum 60-40, in May 2004, but had sufficient cabinet and
Knesset support to go ahead anyway in August-September 2005 with uprooting
Jewish settlers in Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank.

Having alienated the Likud faithful, Sharon quit the party in November 2005 and
formed Kadima, attracting centrist politicians from both Labor and Likud.

Sharon headed a transitional Kadima government, readying the party for
elections, but suffered a disabling stroke in January 2006.

Olmert, who became caretaker premier, won the March 2006 elections promising to
continue along Sharon's pragmatic path. But Hamas's kidnapping of Gilad Schalit
in June 2006, its relentless shelling of Sderot, and the government's abysmal
handling of the Second Lebanon War later that summer essentially deflated
Olmert's premiership.

Since the Annapolis meeting in November 2007, Olmert and Livni have led what
appear to be fruitless negotiations on a "shelf agreement" with PA leader
Mahmoud Abbas.

IGNORING the Winograd Committee's recommendations and the crippling effects of a
slew of corruption investigations, Olmert put his political survival ahead of
country and party. Only recently did he agree to go. With this kind of
leadership, is it any wonder that Kadima suffers from arrested political
development?

Many of it "members" - in whose hands the fate of the nation may rest - have
come to Kadima not out of ideological conviction (though some did during
Sharon's tenure), but because they were recruited by the four leadership
candidates. More troubling still are those who will be delivered to the polls by
"brokers" - old-style political bosses who trade the support of large sectoral
voting blocs in the hope of patronage.

THERE'S A strong case to be made for a centrist third way party. But if Kadima
wants to rehabilitate itself and provide that possibility, it needs to address
Israel's tough security dilemmas with the right combination of diplomatic savvy
and military toughness. On the Palestinians, the Right has a record of
criticizing without offering alternatives, while the Left ignores the harsh
realities on the ground. Kadima must demonstrate a viable alternative.

The party also needs to spearhead electoral reform and define an economic
platform that jettisons dogmatism in favor of policies that will grow the
economy while caring for the less fortunate. Finally, it needs to champion
Jewish tradition in an environment of pluralism and tolerance.

Tomorrow's outcome will help determine whether Kadima is a third way, or another
dead end.

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September 17, 2008 Wednesday

Reverse the process of 'de-patriotization'

BYLINE: MICHAEL FREUND

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 754 words

HIGHLIGHT: Fundamentally Freund

With his departure from the political scene imminent, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
has apparently decided to slam the door on his way out. Like a boorish guest
storming out of a gathering at which he is no longer welcome, the premier used
this past Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting - possibly his last - to hurl
invective at those who remain faithful to the land of Israel.

In his parting shot, Olmert declared that "the notion of a Greater Israel no
longer exists, and anyone who still believes in it is deluding himself."

"Deluding himself"? Frankly, I'm insulted. I don't think I'm deluding myself
because I share the dream that Jews have nurtured for 2000 years to return to
all parts of our homeland. Nor do I think it is a flight of fancy to believe in
the promises that God made to our biblical forebears - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
- that this land would be ours and no one else's.

Indeed, it says a great deal about the state of our leadership, and our
political culture in general, that the head of government would so breezily
belittle the heartfelt beliefs of a large part of the nation.

The prime minister can choose to think differently, of course. But why must he
resort to insults to make his point? Needless to say, this is not the first time
that Olmert has used such disparaging terminology.

In a May appearance before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, he
branded those who believe in Greater Israel as "delusional fantasists." "Only
fantasists," he said, "can believe that in this day and age, and in the current
situation, it is still possible to cling to the vision of 'Greater Israel.'"

Not content that he had gotten his message across in May, Olmert evidently felt
the need to add insult to injury once again. But this time, however, he went a
step further. Because in addition to bad-mouthing the people of Israel, he also
ridiculed the land itself.

Hinting at media reports that he had offered 98.1 percent of Judea and Samaria
to the Palestinians, Olmert told the cabinet that "we have to ask ourselves if
losing a hill here or there is worth forfeiting the chance to achieve
something."

THAT SENTENCE alone embodies all that is wrong - not only with Olmert himself,
but with the entire leadership of this country. To demean Judea and Samaria, to
reduce the heartland of the Jewish people to just "a hill here or there," is to
denigrate the very cradle of our existence.

It reveals the underlying weakness behind Israel's position in the 15 years
since the start of the Oslo process: The Palestinians seem to want this land
more than our own leaders do. Hence, the ease with which Olmert and his
colleagues are so willing to part with it.

Such sentiments reflect a sorry state of ideological fatigue, weariness of
spirit and loss of resolve. More importantly, though, they indicate a failure to
dream.

Every person, every nation, has its dreams. Take that away, and what is left? As
the great French writer Anatole France noted a century ago, "To accomplish great
things we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan but also believe."
Sadly, however, many Israelis no longer seem to understand this.

WHAT, THEN, can be done to reverse this trend? Is it still possible to
reenergize and reinvigorate the public and instill within it a basic love of
land and country? Sure thing, though it will of course take time, and lots of
education, to reverse the process of "de-patriotization" that has set in.

But here is a simple idea that could go a long way toward reconnecting us all
with our ancestral patrimony: Let's launch an annual "Land of Israel Day." The
holiday would be devoted to celebrating the land and our eternal bond with it,
and should include a range of educational, social and cultural activities
stressing the Jewish people's attachment to this holy soil.

I suggest the 10th day of Nisan. Why? Because according to the Book of Joshua
(4:19) it was on that day that the Jewish people miraculously crossed over the
Jordan River and entered the land as a nation for the first time.

What could possibly be better than utilizing the anniversary of this momentous
historical event to underline our renewed commitment to this land so many
thousands of years later? Inaugurating such a day would also serve as a potent
reminder to us all that the notion of Greater Israel was around long before
Olmert and his sort, and it will outlast them well into the future too.

For, as Menachem Begin once put it so well, "Yet faith is perhaps stronger than
reality, for faith itself creates reality."

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Big bangs and little whimpers

BYLINE: LIAT COLLINS

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1113 words

HIGHLIGHT: What happens when scientists and politicians push buttons and limits
just because they can? First published in the International Edition of September
12, 2008.

The phrase "playing God" has taken on a different connotation lately. Scientists
from some 80 countries, including 30 Israelis, gathered near the Swiss-French
border on September 10 to launch an experiment of truly cosmic proportions. If
you are reading this, it's a safe bet that all the hype about creating a black
hole that could swallow the planet has fizzled out like a forgotten fallen star.
Popularly known as the Big Bang experiment, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
particle accelerator was launched after more than a decade of work by more than
6,500 scientists and an investment of $14 billion. The particle basher has
itself been bashed in the world media - including by this writer - as a waste of
money in proportion to its gargantuan size and scope. However in this world of
instant gratification, there is, I suppose, something admirable about a project
that took so many years to prepare and whose results - for better or for worse -
will not be known for several more months or even years.

One can't help but get the impression, however, that the physicists involved
were partly attracted by the ability to test new boundaries and limits.

There is no progress without risks. But one hopes the risks are calculated. The
scientists searching for the elusive "God particle" have carefully weighed up
costs and benefits and while seeking the answer to the secrets of the universe
are themselves answerable to the citizens of the world and its Creator.

Nonetheless, having the tendency to go right ahead and do your own thing because
you can is not always desirable. Not in science and not in politics. (And
definitely not where the two meet, a la Ahmadinejad's threats). This is
particularly true in a political system lacking mechanisms of accountability.

Whatever else Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is risking with his last-minute deals
and diplomatic efforts, it is not his reputation. He never had the respect as a
security expert or visionary that Kadima founder Ariel Sharon did. And he never
earned it.

Nor did Olmert ever manage to garner any real political support - not counting
the enthusiastic backing of George W. Bush and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Although he spent years in politics - as corruption scandal after corruption
scandal now serve as a reminder - he does not have either popular backing or a
real party base. His main achievement was being in the right place at the right
time, which resulted in him springing from the 33rd slot on the Likud list to
becoming Sharon's No. 2 in Kadima. Olmert himself admitted he is not a popular
prime minister - one of the few times the general public across the voting
spectrum agreed he was telling the truth.

His political legitimacy was challenged from the start (and - after the Second
Lebanon War, talks with the Palestinians and contacts with Syria - mutterings
about legitimacy of the non-political kind could be heard. But let's leave his
mother, wife and kids out of this).

As he tried to sell himself to the public, wags began to comment that he would
sell anything for profit. One lay political observer I know predicted his Syria
track as early as last Passover when Olmert took a vacation on the Golan
Heights. "He's probably checking into buying property there so he can get
compensation when he gives it back," she remarked, well before the indirect
talks with Damascus were announced.

WHEN KADIMA was born in 2005, the political realignment was described as the Big
Bang. Olmert became the meteor. But while doctors (playing God?) keep the
comatose Sharon alive, the party itself has never lived up to its name, Kadima,
"forward."

Even Olmert must realize there is no longer any point in fighting for his
political survival and instead is engaged in a race against time to enter the
history books with an honorable mention. Although nothing is impossible: We have
a vice premier - Haim Ramon - who was found guilty of a sexual offense on the
day war broke out; a defense minister - Ehud Barak - whose record includes the
hugely damaging Lebanon pullout; and a former interior minister, Aryeh Deri,
arguing that he is a good candidate for the position of mayor of Jerusalem
because when he was released from prison on corruption charges, the law only
required a five-year waiting period and not the seven years now demanded before
returning to a public position.

While Tzipi Livni, Meir Sheetrit, Shaul Mofaz and Avi Dichter all jockeyed ahead
of this week's Kadima primary election, Olmert feels safe to do what he wants to
do. Which suits the party philosophy, such as it is.

Hailed at birth as centrist, it is still difficult to pinpoint what exactly
Kadima stands for. Hence the very different approaches of the four candidates
for party leadership.

Three years down the line, it seems strange to recall that part of Kadima's
early attraction - Sharon's many investigations notwithstanding - was as an
antidote to the perceived corruption of the Likud's central committee system.
Whatever charges are ultimately filed against Olmert - and no matter what a
trial might reveal - he is never going to free himself of his shady image.

No wonder Livni is running on a "clean" campaign; Mofaz as Mr. Security
(although his term as chief of General Staff was not remarkable); Sheetrit is
stressing experience; and Dichter, for whom Kadima was his first political
venture, is placing the emphasis on both his defense background and clean past.

Where they actually stand on the major issues of the day has yet to be seen, or
as Post political reporter Gil Hoffman puts it: "Ideology has not been a factor
in this race."

Or indeed in Kadima at all.

In fact, for anything approaching an ideology there are basically only two -
vastly different - politicians around: One is Shimon Peres, currently ensconced
in the President's Residence and apparently enjoying every minute of it; the
other is Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, who appears to be counting the days
until Kadima's demise in a general election. No wonder he has turned down all
attempts to get him to join a "national unity" government, in effect bringing
him into the coalition with Olmert as Labor leader Ehud Barak did.

Kadima was born with a bang but seems doomed to disappear with a whimper. No
matter who wins the September 17 primary, the question uppermost in Israelis'
minds is when the general elections will take place. Even if there is no
political landslide this week there will definitely be tremors.

If Kadima can survive that as a party, it will most likely have some time out of
power in which it can finally think things through and formulate what it stands
for.

The particle pusher has been launched. The results have yet to be seen.

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An ordered world

BYLINE: ELLIOT JAGER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1167 words

HIGHLIGHT: POWER & POLITICS

News of Yuri Nosenko's death at 81, on August 23, place unknown, was recently -
belatedly - made public. He had been living under an assumed name, and chances
are that most of his acquaintances, maybe even his family, didn't know he had
been a Soviet defector; and that US intelligence once thought him the key to
connecting the Kremlin to the assassination of president John F. Kennedy.

Codenamed Foxtrot, Nosenko was a Central Intelligence Agency mole inside the
KGB. He sold himself to the CIA in Geneva in June 1962, when he was a member of
the Soviet Union's disarmament delegation. Nosenko needed money, he told the
Americans, to repay funds he had misappropriated from the KGB and spent on
alcohol, prostitutes and asthma medicine for his daughter in Moscow.

Over the years he provided priceless material. According to his obituary in The
New York Times, "He gave his American handlers vital information about Soviet
agents who had penetrated American and European embassies and about microphones
that Russians had planted in the US Embassy in Moscow."

In the wake of JFK's murder on November 23, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, Nosenko
assured his handlers that, having read the KGB file on Lee Harvey Oswald, he
could confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that the assassin had not acted on
behalf of the Soviet Union.

The dysfunctional Oswald, you may recall, had defected to communist Russia,
living there from 1959 to 1962, when he returned to the States with a Russian
wife and child.

The idea that a nobody like Oswald, acting on his own, could so change the
course of history was hard to fathom. Surely he was just a cog in an intricate -
and still secret - conspiracy?

In January 1964, against the CIA's wishes, Nosenko defected, claiming he feared
that the KGB was onto him. He was brought to the US for debriefing.

I FIRST read Nosenko's riveting story in Edward J. Epstein's Legend, and was
fascinated that Nosenko was never allowed to testify before the Warren
Commission investigating JFK's assassination.

The explanation had to do with James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's chief of
counterintelligence (and also, purely by coincidence, for many years the
agency's liaison to Israeli intelligence).

Angleton obsessed over the possibility that Nosenko's defection was part of an
elaborate KGB plot to cover up Soviet involvement in the assassination. Angleton
had earlier helped unmask Kim Philby, once his close personal friend, as a
Soviet mole inside British intelligence.

The more Angleton delved into Nosenko's story, the more contradictions he turned
up. He became increasingly convinced that Nosenko could be a false defector sent
by the KGB to muddy the waters.

First, Nosenko said he could not defect and leave his wife and children behind;
then, suddenly, he did. Much of what he told his debriefers about his education,
KGB rank and personal history was lies. The truth was that as a Russian spy, he
was mostly a flop. Fortunately for him, however, his family was part of the
nomenklatura - that small, elite subset of the Soviet population that went to
the best schools, got the best jobs and had the best connections.

Angleton could not bring himself to believe that all Nosenko really wanted was
what he claimed: simply to breathe the free air of the West. So Nosenko was
secretly imprisoned, deprived of sleep, interrogated without let-up, minimally
fed, isolated from the world in a tiny cell, forbidden to read and given one
lie-detector test after another.

This went on for three years. Nosenko did not change his story.

Finally, in 1968, the CIA accepted that he was the genuine article and set him
up with money and a new identity.

It's said he was not bitter about his treatment; that he eventually remarried,
and was from time to time brought to CIA headquarters outside Washington, where
his lectures on tradecraft were warmly received. Shortly before his death, the
CIA awarded Yuri Nosenko a special certificate of appreciation.

Incidentally, I refer readers to Gerald Posner's seminal Case Closed: Lee Harvey
Oswald and the Assassination of JFK for the definitive debunking of the various
conspiracy theories out there.

ANGLETON, who died in 1987 aged 69, was himself a fascinating figure. In Cold
Warrior, Tom Mangold tells us that Angleton was a man of obsessions. He was
addicted to booze and cigarettes, introverted, naturally secretive, dogmatic and
a workaholic. While he loved opera and films, he preferred hobbies he could
indulge in alone: crafts, orchid-breeding, fishing.

I imagine him as the archetype of John LeCarre's donnish, slightly stooped,
bespectacled George Smiley, the British spymaster who hunted moles inside MI5 in
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. One of LeCarre's goals at the outset of his
career, it seems to me, was to promote the view that in trying to understand the
complex world of politics and espionage, one should search for shades of gray,
not black and white.

Sadly for this fan, LeCarre's measured take on spies and politics came to be
replaced by a full-throttle moral relativism and a very deep hatred of America.
In effect, the novelist became indistinguishable from the Jim Haydon character
he created. Or had I been misreading him, and that was who he was all along?

THE NEWS of Nosenko's death reminded me why I had once been so enthralled by
spies - real and fictitious: Their narratives serve as a metaphor for
understanding life as a plot, with a beginning, middle and end; the occasional
betrayal and then the denouement.

In trying to unmask Nosenko by connecting Oswald to the KGB, or by arguing that
Yugoslavia's Tito had never really broken with Stalin, or that the Russia-China
split might have been staged, Angleton was trying to identify order in a chaotic
world.

To reveal life's coherent story line - where truth could be ascertained,
mysteries unraveled, motives deconstructed and context provided, an Angleton or
a Smiley made their way through a hall of mirrors, wading through reams of
disinformation in order to identify the good and bad guys.

The alternative system of ideas is to believe that there is no universal truth -
no "plot" - and, consequently, no basis for moral values. It's the antithesis of
the way we Jews strive to understand the world.

This dichotomy between coherence and the lack of it forces many people to choose
either moral relavatism or certainty in absolute truth. The relativist argues
that moral values have no underpinning. The absolutist insists that truth is
accessible - especially if you subscribe to the right creed.

In Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed, philosopher Simon Blackburn offers this
good advice: "We should not be slaves of simplistic relativisms, or of equally
simplistic absolutisms."

In remembering Yuri Nosenko's life and James Angleton's frustrated efforts to
make sense of it, I confess to retaining an admiration for Angleton, his
wrongheaded paranoia notwithstanding.

As my "rebbe," M. Scott Peck, taught, it is the search for the plot - and not
its unraveling - that gives life its meaning.

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Letters

BYLINE: Carrie Burns, Ariel Broch, Joseph M. Schwarcz, Norma Kuras, Miriam L.
Gavarin, Jonathan Zucker, Tova Landau, Blossom Rubin

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1176 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

A song for Rose

Sir, - I arrived in Israel last week, and am mourning, with the whole country,
the death of little Rose Pizem ("Rose's remains finally found in Yarkon,"
September 14).

I wrote a poem this summer while reading a book about children who perished in
the Holocaust. Perhaps the Lord knew then that it was meant for Rose too:

"Precious little one, nowhere safe to hide / Were I near, I'd give my life and
with God we'd abide / I'd sing to you tenderly, wrap you warm and tight / Where
none could harm you, I'd watch you day and night. / Now you must to God belong.
You're safe with Him / To Him you'll sing your song."

CARRIE BURNS

Jerusalems

Betrayal of the people

Sir, - Caroline Glick's "Mrs. Clean is a fraud" (September 16) was an
understatement. The gang that set up Kadima under Ariel Sharon did it with the
intention of overturning the principles of the Likud Party, which had won the
previous election on a platform of "No disengagement from Gush Katif."

All the current candidates for the Kadima leadership are equally guilty of gross
fraud on the electorate, and today's party primaries have the objective of
perpetuating that fraud for as long as possible.

ARIEL BROCH

Shadmot Mehola

Where's the balance?

Sir, - Re "Olmert reportedly offers Palestinians 98.1% of West Bank" (September
15):

After the creation of a Palestinian state, it is very likely there will be Arabs
living here who consider themselves Palestinians living in Israel. Some will
have Israeli citizenship, and some will have Palestinian citizenship and live
here as permanent residents.

Similarly, there should be Jews living in Palestine, some with Palestinian
citizenship and some as permanent residents with Israeli citizenship.

But if I understand correctly, Olmert is negotiating the creation of a Palestine
state where no Jew will be permitted to live. In other words, the future
Palestine will be Judenrein.

How could a Jewish government agree to participate in negotiations based on this
ugly, racist concept created by the Nazis?

JOSEPH M. SCHWARCZ

Omer

Indecisively yours

Sir, - "Sarah Palin may be hurting McCain among Jewish voters" (Hilary Leila
Krieger, September 12) said exactly what I have been turning over in my mind.

We made aliya from West Palm Beach, Florida, two years ago, and although I was a
Democrat, I am leery of Obama. Now I am leery of Palin, the first woman ever on
the Republican ticket. I wanted so badly to see a woman in the Oval office, but
would I want her?

My goodness, I had made up my mind to vote for McCain - but now I feel as if I
am between a rock and a hard place.

NORMA KURAS

Petah Tikva

McCain: Very much alive...

Sir, - Re "Obama accuses McCain camp of phony outrage over lipstick remark"
(September 12): More offensive was Barak Obama's comment that "You can wrap an
old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after
eight years."

This seems to refer to George W. Bush's policies, but the analogy is false:
After so many years, a fish will be down to its bones and will not stink any
more, and the paper will be long disintegrated.

The analogy, therefore, seems rather to hint at McCain's age, 72, almost
predicting that he would not last out a term as president. In fact, four vice
presidents have attained the highest office as a result of assassination, and
four as a result of the incumbent's death from natural causes.

All the swipes against Sarah Palin, including the "Miss Piggy" and "hunter"
images, are scare tactics aimed at burying, sooner rather than later, the very
much alive and vigorous John McCain.

MIRIAM L. GAVARIN

Jerusalem

...but Obama's my man

Sir, - This is not a choice of who is a bigger supporter of Israel, but of who
will be a more effective one.

Iran is closer than ever to acquiring nuclear weapons, Syria is breaking out of
its international isolation, Hizbullah is stronger and Islamic fundamentalism is
on the rise. Could the US have done better over the past eight years on these
issues?

After 9/11, someone in the White House's brain trust decided to go after Saddam
Hussein, who presented no imminent threat, instead of the real Mideast terrorist
threats like Iran or Syria. This has kept other countries from committing
themselves to the cause the US and Israel share.

John McCain wants to continue Bush's policies that have hurt America's standing
and, by extension, Israel's security, policies that have made the US weaker both
nationally, with an overstretched military, and worldwide. Even the strongest
military on earth does not have the manpower to go after Afghanistan, Iraq and
Iran, all at the same time!

Right now we need someone who can raise the US's standing. McCain is simply not
that person.

If Obama wins the presidency, the world will be more likely to renew its
allegiance with the US. If the US decides to take out Iran's nuclear facilities,
claiming it is a "clear and present danger," the world will not say, "There go
the neocons again." They will fight with the US, side by side.

When we look back at Nixon going to China, we understand that, at the time, only
a Republican could have done that. Today only a Democrat can actually take on
Islamic fundamentalism and hope to unite the rest of the world behind him.

I'm voting for Obama not in spite of my support for Israel, but because of my
support for Israel.

JONATHAN ZUCKER

New York

Why bother

to repent?

Sir - We are all guilty of some breach of the law, be it crossing the road on a
red light, tasting fruit in the supermarket and not paying for it, or falsely
parking a car in a spot reserved for the disabled. The signal difference between
us and Aryeh Deri was that he was caught, charged and convicted. He served time
and paid his debt to society - not by using a mop, as Jeff Barak suggested, but
by teaching illiterates in prison how to read and encouraging them to further
their education ("A run on city hall?" September 15).

There is no doubt about Deri's leadership qualities - which may be the reason so
many people are working so hard to ensure that he is denied the chance to prove
them yet again as mayor of Jerusalem.

What is painful is that during the month of Elul, when we should be examining
our own faults and asking forgiveness from the Creator, we are busy showing
Aryeh Deri a most unforgiving face.

What does this convey to future generations? Basically, that a crime of moral
turpitude can never be forgiven, no matter what one does. If so, why should
anyone bother to repent?

TOVA LANDAU

Jerusalem

Overturn the three Rs

Sir, - The apathy generated by the news that "Road death toll since 1948 hits
30,000" (September 14) is alarming. As long as RRR - "Rudeness Rules the Roads"
- continues here, accidents will cause much injury and death.

Drivers should be taught to drive defensively, to use the brake pedal, to slow
down and give right of way. Monopolizing the road in total disregard of other
drivers is an invitation to disaster.

Do we really need to breed a new category of Israelis - the suicide driver?
Let's be courteous and share the roads.

We could all live with that!

BLOSSOM RUBIN, Beit Shemesh

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Jewish blogs make up the ultimate shtetl square

BYLINE: STEPHEN LEAVITT

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 596 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is the founder of WebAds, a company that delivers niche-
and community-targeted Internet advertising, blog trend analysis and
consultation.

There is probably no more powerful and understated tool in democracy's toolkit
than the ability and freedom to stand on one's soapbox in the middle of the town
square and speak one's mind. The issue is not whether anyone is listening to
what you have to say, but that you have the right, the freedom and the ability
to try to convince those around you that your ideas are correct.

This free and open exchange of ideas is what makes democracies so healthy and
vibrant.

In our Web 2.0 world, the town square is the Internet and the modern day soapbox
is the blog.

Anyone can set up a blog, promote his ideas and beliefs and rally fellow
advocates around them. There is certainly no better way to refine your arguments
and positions than by tempering them in the fire of opposing views.
Simultaneously, there is no harsher way to find out that your opinions and
theories are wrong and indefensible than to have them unmercifully torn apart
one by one.

It is this freedom of speech that scares countries like China, Saudi Arabia and
Egypt, compelling them to block access to blogs and arrest bloggers who dare
speak their minds. What greater threat is there to an autocratic regime than
people challenging its authority?

MY COMPANY, WebAds, recently organized the first International Jewish Bloggers
Convention, hosted by Nefesh B'Nefesh. Some 1,600 Jewish bloggers from around
the world participated on-line and in person in Jerusalem.

"Two Jews, three opinions." After reading the comments on the blogs, and being
in a room full of some of the most diverse and stridently opinionated people in
the Jewish world, I will never doubt that statement again - from blogs such as
IsraelMatzav (on the political right) to DovBear (on the left).

The question arose: Do Jewish bloggers represent a community? Beside being
Jewish, what do they really have in common? At the convention we saw Jews of all
stripes and persuasions - liberals, conservatives, haredim, ultra- secular and
all the colors of the rainbow. The strongly worded outbursts made clear that not
everyone agreed with everyone else.

IS JEWISH blogging just a shared hobby or do Jewish bloggers actually form a
community?

Unlike the bloggers, I don't have an answer, but former prime minister Binyamin
Netanyahu, who spoke at the convention, certainly gave us a big hint. Netanyahu
asked to speak, not necessarily because he wanted to address a community of
bloggers, but rather because he wanted to reach the on-line communities these
bloggers created and to the real-world communities their readers are members.

On the simplest level, every blogger creates his or her own community of
followers, but these communities and their ideas then ripple out and trickle
down into the real world. It is the ultimate shtetl square for the Jewish
nation.

Whether Jews as bloggers are a community or not is unclear, but they certainly
are the gateway into Jewish society at large, since bloggers have the ability to
influence the communities of which they are a part.

Nefesh B'Nefesh's participation in the convention was to engage the bloggers
with the idea of aliya. The organization wasn't specifically interested in
bloggers themselves making aliya, but rather that aliya become part of the
common dialogue and conversation of the Jewish people.

Blogging isn't about beating someone over the head with your soapbox to win an
argument. Blogging is about dialogues that engage interest and introduce ideas
to create changes over time.

Simply put, Jewish blogging is about creating dialogue to help lead Judaism into
a healthy and vibrant future.

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Must counterinsurgency wars always fail?

BYLINE: DANIEL PIPES

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 775 words

HIGHLIGHT: They are winnable, but there's no signing ceremony or victory parade.
The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting
fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

When it comes to a state fighting a non-state enemy, the impression widely
exists that the state is doomed to fail.

In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy concluded that victory in Vietnam was "probably
beyond our grasp," and called for a peaceful settlement. In 1983, the analyst
Shahram Chubin wrote that the Soviets in Afghanistan were embroiled in an
"unwinnable war." In 1992, US officials shied away from involvement in Bosnia,
fearing entanglement in a centuries- old conflict. In 2002, retired US general
Wesley Clark portrayed the American effort in Afghanistan as unwinnable. In
2004, President George W. Bush said of the war on terror, "I don't think you can
win it." In 2007, the Winograd Commission deemed Israel's war against Hizbullah
unwinnable.

More than any other recent war, the allied forces' effort in Iraq was seen as a
certain defeat, especially in the 2004-06 period. Former secretary of state
Henry A. Kissinger, former British minister Tony Benn and former US special
envoy James Dobbins all called it unwinnable. The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study
Group Report echoed this view. Military analyst David Hackworth, among others,
explicitly compared Iraq to Vietnam: "As with Vietnam, the Iraqi tar pit was
oh-so-easy to sink into, but appears to be just as tough to exit."

The list of "unwinnable wars" goes on and includes, for example, the
counterinsurgencies in Sri Lanka and Nepal. "Underlying all these analyses,"
notes Ya'acov Amidror, a retired IDF major general, is the assumption "that
counterinsurgency campaigns necessarily turn into protracted conflicts that will
inevitably lose political support."

AMIDROR, HOWEVER, disagrees with this assessment. In a recent study published by
the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Winning Counterinsurgency War: The
Israeli Experience, he convincingly argues that states can beat non-state
actors.

This debate has the greatest significance, for if the pessimists are right,
Western powers are doomed to lose every current and future conflict not
involving conventional forces (meaning planes, ships and tanks). The future
would look bleak, with the prospect of successful insurgencies around the world
and even within the West itself. One can only shudder at the prospect of an
Israeli- style intifada in, say, the United States. Coincidentally, news came
from Australia last week of an Islamist group calling for a "forest jihad" of
massive fires in that country.

Victory over insurgencies is possible, Amidror argues, but it does not come
easily. Unlike the emphasis on size of forces and arsenals in traditional wars,
he postulates four conditions of a mostly political nature required to defeat
insurgencies. Two of them concern the state, where the national leadership must
understand and accept the political and public relations challenge involved in
battling insurgents and appreciate the vital role of intelligence, invest in it
and require the military to use it effectively.

Another two conditions concern counterterrorist operations, which must isolate
terrorists from the non- terrorist civilian population and control and isolate
the territories where terrorists live and fight.

If these guidelines are successfully followed, the result will not be a signing
ceremony and a victory parade but something more subtle - what Amidror calls
"sufficient victory" but I would call "sufficient control." By this, he means a
result "that does not produce many years of tranquility, but rather achieves
only a 'repressed quiet,' requiring the investment of continuous effort to
preserve it." As examples, Amidror offers the British achievement in Northern
Ireland and the Spanish one vis-^-vis the Basques.

After these conditions have been met, Amidror argues, begins "the difficult,
complex, crushing, dull war, without flags and trumpets." That war entails
"fitting together bits of intelligence information, drawing conclusions, putting
into operation small forces under difficult conditions within a mixed populace
of terrorists and innocent civilians in a densely-populated urban center or
isolated village, and small tactical victories."

Following these basic precepts does lead to success, and Western states over the
past century have in fact enjoyed an impressive run of victories over
insurgents. Twice US forces defeated insurgents in the Philippines (1899-1902
and 1946-54), as did the British in Palestine (1936-39), Malaya (1952-57) and
Oman (1964-75), the Israelis in the West Bank (Operation Defensive Shield, 2002)
and most recently the US surge in Iraq.

Counterinsurgency wars are winnable, but they have their own imperatives, ones
very distinct from those of conventional warfare.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: BELFAST'S NEW Victoria Square shopping development. The British
achievement in Northern Ireland is an example of what Ya'acov Amidror calls
'sufficient victory.' (Credit: Bloomberg)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 16, 2008 Tuesday

Wall Street quakes

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 699 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Henry, Emanuel and Mayer Lehman formed Lehman Brothers in 1850, in Alabama, to
trade in commodities, mostly cotton. Eight years later, having shifted to
investment banking, they opened a New York office.

Fast forward a century and a half: Lehman Brothers (no member of the actual
family has headed the company since the 1950s) announced yesterday that it was
filing for bankruptcy protection. Its fate and that of the global economy seem
intertwined.

People who don't ordinarily pay a great deal of attention to financial news are
taking notice. How could they not, with the Wall Street Journal telling readers
that "the American financial system" has been "shaken to the core;" the
Financial Times fretting that the stock market is facing "the most radical
reshaping" in its history, and the BBC reporting that we've just witnessed the
"most extraordinary 24 hours since the 1920s"?

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan is calling this the worst crisis
he's seen in his career.

The drama began at 6 p.m. Friday, when US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and
Fed Chairman Ben Bernake met with key bankers and decided that the United States
government would not bail out Lehman, America's fourth- largest bank - it would
not, to be precise, provide prospective buyers of the bank with loan guarantees.

Lehman is heavily invested in the sub-prime mortgage market, speculating in
companies which raise money in order to lend it to people who are poor
housing-loan risks. But these people couldn't repay the loans, while housing
values declined by an average of 25 percent. Thus the value of the investments
plummeted.

It's hard to muster sympathy for a company that entices people to take risks
they they can't really afford.

Having rescued Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - quasi- public mortgage companies -
and helped keep Bear Stearns afloat, the US government, in an election year,
simply did not have the political will for an even greater bailout.

Though the Fed had established a fund to help troubled banks, Lehman's needs far
outstripped the available resources.

The US government was telling Lehman: You and others in the subprime market took
greater risks than you should have, and profited from them. Had you taken fewer
risks, you would have made less money in the "good years." While no capitalist
would hold that taking more risk is necessarily wrong or irrational over the
long term, actions have consequences.

The good news is that most US banks are on solid ground. So we won't be seeing
1920s-like scenes of bankers selling apples on Wall Street.

In fact, 10 of the world's biggest banks are pooling their resources to create a
$70b. liquidity fund - a self- insurance scheme to mitigate the crisis.

But there's no doubt that Americans are in for a bumpy ride. For the situation
to improve, housing prices must be stabilized to reflect their true value.

PARADOXICALLY, Israelis have little to worry about. Israel has no subprime
mortgage market, and so is largely immune to the kind of crisis that has hit the
US.

Says Hebrew University Prof. Dan Galai: "When it pours in the US, we're bound to
get a bit wet - but no one here is going to get the flu. There's no reason to
expect a crisis or recession in Israel."

That said, Israel is part of the global economy; if it slows down, so will ours.
Seventy percent of our economy is export-based. And if there is a worldwide
liquidity problem - because of increased risks - our banks will also have
difficulty borrowing money.

Israeli banks are not obligated to publicly report their exposure to Lehman, but
the Bank of Israel has been successfully encouraging them to reduce these links.
Bank Hapoalim yesterday announced its involvement with Lehman - $109m., down
from $160m. By press time, Bank Leumi and Israel Discount had not released any
data. The approximate exposure of Israeli firms is a modest $250-300m.

Israeli regulators' more conservative approach to the economy, in seeking the
right balance between government regulation and market freedom, seems to be
paying off. And for being alert to the US housing and banking crisis, and
encouraging local banks to minimize their vulnerability to it, the Bank of
Israel is to be complimented.

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September 16, 2008 Tuesday

Modern forms of prejudice

BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 958 words

HIGHLIGHT: It's all about 'sophistication'. The writer hosts a daily US national
radio show on Oprah and Friends. His most recent book is The Broken American.
Male.

I recently participated in a CNN forum on racism, sexism and ageism in American
society. The discussion was obviously inspired by having the first ever black
nominee for president, the oldest ever presidential candidate and only the
second female nominee for vice president.

Significant prejudices against all three groups still remain in America, but not
the way you might expect. Today, we invite each group to be equal participants
in American life so long as they conform to societal definitions of
sophistication.

I do not believe, for example, that white Americans will, in any great number,
refrain from voting for Barack Obama because he is black. Not because America is
devoid of racism. It is not, although it has come a long way toward purging
itself of racial prejudice. Rather, it is because many white people see Obama,
with his unmatched eloquence and Ivy League education, as possessing the
sophistication of white society. But many of these same people who are jumping
for joy with Obama's candidacy might easily pass over a resume they receive at
work from an applicant with a first name like Deshawn, Shaneequa or Jamal, as a
June 2003 University of Chicago study found. This is an inversion of traditional
racism, whereby blacks who do not "look or sound black" are accepted into white
society because they are essentially seen as white.

Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, fell prey to this view, however
unintentionally, when he famously said about Obama, "I mean, you got the first
mainstream African- American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-
looking guy." Since modern forms of prejudice so often revolve more around
economic and educational status, the modern barometers of sophistication, Obama
was seen as having graduated directly from Harvard into white society.

We in the Orthodox community understand this kind of prejudice all too well.
Assimilated Jews often treat other Jews who look "too Jewish" - say, with
yarmulke, beard and a large brood - as more primitive. Many of our secular
Jewish brothers and sisters harbor a prejudice against hassidic Jews whom they
feel embarrass them with their primitive dress and primitive ways.

LIKEWISE, THE biases against women are changing as well. Women who, for example,
are professionals yet have a large family are seen as less evolved than their
more enlightened, less fertile counterparts. Even if it were true that Sarah
Palin lacks the experience to be commander- in-chief, what does that have to do
with so many critics savagely attacking for even daring to play on the national
stage when she has so many kids at home to take care of? What are they trying to
say? That she can't balance parenthood and profession? That can't be the
explanation, because Obama, who has two young children, has been campaigning for
two years and no one has called him out on the conflict. And surely dads have to
help out with child- rearing as much as moms.

Rather, Palin is being treated as a primitive country bumpkin who doesn't seem
to know that it is impolite to have so many kids. Is she so backward that she
even had a baby while serving as governor of Alaska. Geez, don't they have the
pill in Alaska? We in the West are always lecturing the more "backward" people
of the East - especially Africa - that if only they discovered the pleasures of
tiny families and stopped popping out so many kids, all their problems would be
go away. Can't you backward people control your ovaries? Don't you know that
contraception is society's highest barometer of progress? Educated women would
never ruin their lives with too many kids. If you were really advanced, you'd
understand that sex should be recreational as opposed to procreational.

I have several times in the past written of the unique prejudices that exist
against families with "too many" children and how, with nine, I find myself
apologizing for overpopulating the earth. Of course, we now know that precisely
the opposite is true. The birth rate in the Western world is so low that
countries like Japan, Germany, Russia and France are slowly disappearing, as The
New York Times Magazine reported in a cover story last June.

BUT NO doubt America's greatest prejudice of all is reserved for old people.
Reread those words: old people. Makes you want to skip to another article,
right? America is a country so obsessed with eternal youth that women will even
shove a needle filled with toxic poison into their foreheads to numb their
facial muscles, neutralize their ability to raise their eyebrows and show some
personality, all in an effort to erase lines. America is a country that has such
contempt for the elderly that most American women older than 35 would rather be
water-boarded than ever confess their age.

In the Bible, the elderly are celebrated as having acquired wisdom. They are
supposed to be looked up to by the younger generation who lack their knowledge
and experience. But not in America where they are seen as has- beens whose long
lives are siphoning off way too much of our scarce social security funds.

A society that does not respect the elderly and does not love babies is a
society that has seriously lost its moorings. Likewise, a society that does not
fully embrace the contributions of each of its constituent parts is a society
destined to become boringly monolithic.

The Bible's vision of society as an orchard, in which every community is rooted
in its own traditions, its own soil, while still growing out into, and
contributing its color, to the wider garden, has yet to be realized. But the
fact that a black gentleman, an elderly gentleman and a mom of lots of kids are
being considered for the nation's highest offices shows that the seeds of that
garden have at least been planted.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SARAH PALIN carries her son up a jetway. Has she got 'too many'
children? (Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 16, 2008 Tuesday

Letters

BYLINE: Judy Telman, Rabbi Uri Themal, Pesach Goodley, Simcha Rudman, Leo
Solomon, Sara Shaw, Kenny Fisher, Dov Aarons, Dan Vogel, Menachem Epstein, Toby
Willig

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1107 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Crime...

Sir, - Kudos to Jeff Barak for his insightful and straightforward "A run on city
hall?" (September 15) about Aryeh Deri's bid for the position of mayor of
Jerusalem

There is no doubt that Deri is charismatic - his followers' reaction underlined
that very strongly when he was convicted and jailed for his crimes against the
state and people he supposedly represented.

Many white-collar criminals can charm their victims; that's why they are able to
do what they do.

I believe that Mr. Deri is getting too much coverage in the media. If he becomes
mayor, it will be another black mark against the voters and their judgment.

JUDY TELMAN

Mevaseret Zion

...and punishment

Sir, - Re "Pogroms & vigilantism" (Editorial, September 15): If Arabs in the
territories behaved in this way against Jewish settlers, the police and army
would respond with appropriate force, as they have in the past, and as they
should. The question is, why do they not respond similarly to restore law and
order when it involves settlers?

Why do they not arrest those who incite settler rampages in Arab villages and
attack IDF installations and personnel? Does the moral principle of "The
bystander is guilty" no longer apply?

And one wonders about the settlers who are oh, so religious, whether in their
Mishna studies they have never come across Hillel's golden rule: "What is
hateful to you, do not do unto others."

RABBI URI THEMAL

Kiryat Tivon

Sir, - The settlers are castigated for their actions against the IDF. But since
the IDF's actions against Gush Katif discredited it as the Israeli Defense
Forces, why is the consequence of its loss of respect so "contemptible"?

As for "We understand that these settlers feel under siege," how generous! The
heroes of Yesha are under siege every day. On Jewish land given us forever.

PESACH GOODLEY

Telz Stone

Justice was served

Sir, - Whenever there is an article about the trial of the Rosenbergs as atomic
spies, it is always surprising that the real reason for their convictions is not
mentioned: their refusal to divulge the names of their confederates. While this
would not satisfy law professors, it convinces me that justice was served.

Indeed! The trial showed that there was an active Communist Party and that the
atheistic communism of the imperialist Russia of that time was a real threat to
the United States ("Rosenberg transcripts point to accusers' perjury," September
15).

SIMCHA RUDMAN

Jerusalem

Brave and true

Sir, - When Yitzhak Rabin succumbed to pressures within and without and shook
the hand of death, I, along with Yuval Steinitz and millions of others,
succumbed to the belief that the two-state path to peace was the right one. The
second intifada shattered that illusion.

Because Steinitz is not an ideologue and because he is free from the hubris and
personal ambition that afflict most of our politicians, he bravely and publicly
changed his mind, and his party. That act and subsequent judgments of his proved
to me that he is the one most qualified to lead this country ("Steinitz warns a
two-state solution would bring about Israel's demise," September 15).

LEO SOLOMON

Nahariya

Tough spirit...

Sir, - A few days ago I again watched Otto Preminger's 1960 epic Exodus. Though
"tinged with Hollywood," it essentially depicted the tough spirit of Israelis of
yesteryear.

As the peace process apparently continues, this inept government seems intent on
giving away our fought-for country, piece by piece.

Piece process! ("Olmert reportedly offers Palestinians 98.1% of West Bank,"
September 15.)

SARA SHAW

Kfar Saba

...like our premier

Sir, - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is to be commended on his last-ditch efforts
to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians before leaving office.

But rather than getting bogged down in irreconcilable issues like Jerusalem and
Palestinian refugees, why not offer the Palestinians 100% of Israel? If they
accept the offer, we will know at last that they are sincere about peace. If
they refuse, we can always resort to the well- worn Israeli negotiating tactic
in face of Arab intransigence - make a more generous offer.

KENNY FISHER

Jerusalem

Reverse crawl

Sir, - Is it not humiliating for Israel to have to beg, bow and scrape to Hamas
to get back Gilad Schalit? Would it not be better for a team of carefully
trained Israeli commandos to go into Gaza and grab Ismail Haniyeh and, say, five
of his fellows? Israel could then hold them against Schalit's release.

It would make a refreshing change to watch Hamas come crawling to the Israeli
government instead of the other way round, as has been the situation thus far
("'Sunday Times': Dughmush clan claims Schalit is living in a paradise,"
September 15).

DOV AARONS

London

Sins of omission

Sir, - I read the interview with Prof. Avishay Braverman and suffered two
disappointments.

First, I was disappointed that the MK, touting his desire to be the next
education minister, nowhere mentioned Jewish values or Zionism as parallel to
the gaining of wealth. Is this to be the solitary ultimate goal of his
educational program? ("'We need a better educational system for economic
growth,'" John Benzaquen and Sharon Wrobel, September 15).

Once upon a time, an Israeli youth was made aware that the Jewish Bible is a
legitimate source of history and civilized living. This element of
infrastructure as part of a financially comfortable way of life made Israel
worth living in and fighting for - but it was absent from Prof. Braverman's
program as laid out in this interview.

My second disappointment? That the interviewers did not ask him about it.

DAN VOGEL

Jerusalem

God's watch

Sir, - Re "Why rabbis are unfazed by quest for the 'God particle'" (September
12): The main reason religious people and scientists are excited is that, as
Einstein put it so crisply, "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is
that it is comprehensible."

Or, as Rabbi Akiva said thousands of years ago, "The watch implies the
watchmaker."

MENACHEM EPSTEIN

Jerusalem

Come Together

Sir, - "Islamic leader threatens McCartney over TA show" (September 15) is but
another example of Muslim intimidation. The idea that Muslims alone have the
right to determine moral standards for everyone is frightening.

Israel is a country which is tolerant of every religion, and of diverse
opinions. The Islamic world, in contrast, cannot tolerate diversity. It does not
permit freedom of expression, and when a country allows its Muslim minority such
freedom, it is immediately berated and blackmailed by this same Muslim minority.

Kudos to Paul McCartney for standing up to such blatant bullying, and to the
people of Israel who will ever have their Jewish state.

TOBY WILLIG

Jerusalem

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September 16, 2008 Tuesday

PAGO and the NGOs

BYLINE: BASSEM EID

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 652 words

HIGHLIGHT: By creating a body aimed at attracting foreign aid to the PA, Abbas
has blurred the lines between a governmental organization and an NGO. The writer
is founder and director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group based
in east Jerusalem.

A fight over external funding between the PAGO (Palestinian Authority
governmental organization) and other Palestinian NGOs is taking place at the
moment. This crisis was in fact created by the foreign donors who ceased
checking whether the NGOs were independent or not.

Today independent NGOs are considered "useless" and rather ineffective.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas created in his office a so-called
Jerusalem Unit, which is aimed at attracting foreign aid and funds which
previously would have gone directly to local, independent NGOs. As its head,
Abbas appointed a lawyer who used to work with an NGO. By this tactical move, he
successfully blurred the lines between a governmental organization and an NGO
and maintains financial and political control over the independent NGOs.

The head of this new unit is meeting with representatives of Western countries
to raise funds and convince and encourage foreign donors to give money to the
Jerusalem Unit, which will decide to which NGOs it will pass on the money. That
means that NGOs can no longer go to foreign missions, and if they attempt to,
some missions will tell them to go to the President's Office/Jerusalem Unit and
request money from them.

To give an example: A small independent NGO based in east Jerusalem applied for
funding to a European country's diplomatic mission in Ramallah. It was told that
the mission has an agreement with the President's Office/Jerusalem Unit (within
which there was created the Jerusalem Foundation), and that it had transferred
$1.5 million as a contribution from its country's Foreign Ministry. The small
NGO then contacted the Jerusalem Unit to get funds from it. The unit asked it to
submit a proposal of the project for which it was seeking funding. The NGO
complied and asked for $30,000. Months passed but the NGO has not yet received
an answer.

When the NGO asked whether its proposal had been accepted, it was told the
Jerusalem Unit was still dealing with the bureaucratic procedures concerning the
submission. The Jerusalem Unit received the money at the beginning of this year,
obviously without an idea of how and to whom it wanted to give the money. I am
convinced that the lawyer at the head of the Jerusalem unit will give his former
NGO priority in funding.

At one point the small Jerusalem NGO complained to the European country's
representative office that it had received no answer from the Jerusalem Unit.
The office wrote a letter to the Jerusalem Unit asking for a financial report
and a narrative report about what was happening with the substantial donation.

As a result the small NGO received a phone call from the unit deriding the NGO
for daring to complain about the President's Office to a foreign country. After
six months of warnings, threats and intimidation, the NGO has received only a
third of the money it originally applied for.

HOW CAN NGOs stay independent and politically neutral if they have to apply for
funds through the President's Office? How can they be effective when made so
dependent? How can ordinary people trust them after they have become de facto
employees of the president?

Democracy never has been imposed by political leaders or governments. Instead,
democracy is by definition determined by people. If the international donors
start playing the role Abbas and the Jerusalem Unit have created for them,
democracy in Palestinian will never be realized.

In August one Palestinian was killed by Israel whereas 36 were killed by other
Palestinians. Since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in June 2007, 282 Palestinians
have been killed by gunfire, 43 died of unknown causes, one was beaten to death,
seven fell victim to so-called honor killings and one Palestinian was legally
executed (the numbers of the West Bank are 19, three, eight, four, four).

The international donors should keep this state of violence and lawlessness in
mind when giving money to the PA.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: A CIVILIAN takes cover as Palestinian forces loyal to PA
President Mahmoud Abbas scan the street for Hamas gunmen during clashes in Gaza
City. (Credit: Bloomberg)

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September 16, 2008 Tuesday

Who needs prisons anyway?

BYLINE: FRIMET ROTH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 900 words

HIGHLIGHT: Yossi Alpher posits that two wrongs do make a right. RIGHT OF REPLY.
The writer's daughter Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in the Sbarro
restaurant massacre. She and her husband founded the Malki Foundation
(www.kerenmalki.org ), which provides support for Israeli families of all faiths
who care at home for a special-needs child, in her memory.

Readers acquainted with Yossi Alpher's Web site Bitterlemons.org must have been
puzzled by his op-ed "In praise of prisoner releases" (reprinted from that Web
site in The Jerusalem Post of September 9). Alpher's glee over the recent
release of 198 Palestinian prisoners collides with the views espoused by his own
virtual magazine.

Over the last few years, Bitterlemons has published several articles by Orit
Adato, a former head of the Israel Prisons Service and first international vice
president of the International Correction and Prison Association. In her
writings, and in a July 2008 interview, she presents her considered position on
prisoner releases.

Like Alpher she advocates the tactical use of prisoner releases to bolster
Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. She is convinced the matter can be
resolved more easily than the other core issues.

However, unlike Alpher, Adato recommends that releases be made only after a
series of preparatory steps by Israelis, Palestinians and the international
community. She disapproves of capricious releases made in the context of stalled
and aimless negotiations between Abbas and Olmert - the very sort they are now
engaged in.

The first change Adato advocates is the classification of the 11,000
Palestinians currently imprisoned into three sub-groups: hard-core terrorists;
petty criminals and those who assisted terrorists in minor ways for financial
reward; and those involved in terrorism but who are not as extremist as the
first group.

The second step is segregation of the above groups. Currently, members of the
various groups share cells and mingle often. This situation enables the
indoctrination of previous moderates. Adato maintains that segregation "would
reduce the influence of the extremist elements in the prisons and lower the PA's
commitment to minor offenders, whose proximity to the serious security prisoners
has turned them into heroes and turned the prisons into universities for
terror." The extremists who "are truly committed to the destruction of Israel
should be neutralized. They should be placed in two prisons in the south of
Israel, in isolation from other prisoners with minimal rights according to
Israeli and international law."

Adato assigns the PA a crucial role in this overhaul. "The PA should have a
functioning body - a committee or organization - dedicated to rehabilitation of
prisoners and monitoring their progress after their release. Moreover, there
will be international monitoring of the process."

REGARDING THE recent prisoner release to retrieve the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser
and Eldad Regev, as well the possibly imminent one to free Gilad Schalit, Adato
says: "[With] those deals... Israel de facto is only responding to terrorists.
This not only undermines our partner for peace but also makes future
kidnappings, God forbid, more likely... Beyond the creation of incentive to
kidnap more soldiers - clearly it pays off - it bodes ill for the negotiations
with Abbas."

Alpher accuses families of terror victims of constituting "a permanent and
strong lobby" that hampers the release of hard-core terrorists. The fact is that
we victims are as impotent in this arena as we are in most others. For decades
victims have been petitioning the High Court immediately upon publication of the
list of prisoners to be released. So far they have not succeeded in blocking
even one release.

A central argument of Alpher's is that the masterminds of terror activities
"often receive lighter sentences [than the perpetrators] simply because they
themselves didn't pull the triggerâ their weapon jammed, the explosives failed
to detonate, etc." He assures us that the hit men are "no less worthy of
eventual release than their accomplices or the masterminds of terrorist cells."

With utter preschool logic, Alpher posits that two wrongs do make a right. But
even his premise is erroneous. The truth is, the government does prosecute
terror masterminds with the full force of its judiciary. Tanzim leader Marwan
Barghouti and the Sbarro massacre perpetrator Ahlam Tamimi - my own child's
murderer - are just two of numerous terrorists who were convicted and sentenced
to multiple life sentences for "merely" planning and enabling bloody attacks.

Yet Alpher is so "release-happy" he is eager to throw open the prison gates even
wider. To appease his opponents, he urges balancing releases of Palestinian
prisoners with "measured steps to release Israelis jailed for many years for
murdering Arabs." Court proceedings, judges, deliberations, it seems, are
irrelevant. The judiciary plays no role in Alpher's utopia.

The dangers posed by this sort of meddling with the judicial branch of
government somehow are not on Alpher's radar.

Moreover, his conviction that "serving many years in prison" is a sufficient
punishment and deterrent for terrorist mass murder leaves one wondering whether
he appreciates the gravity of those barbaric acts. Life imprisonment without
parole is a fair and widely imposed punishment in jurisdictions that abolished
the death sentence.

Adato concluded her blueprint for change with this advice: "In an expedited
process Israel should now announce an organized plan to release prisoners as
part of the diplomatic track with Abbas. The announcement alone and a real move
toward implementing such a plan would immediately boost Abbas's popularity."

Unfortunately Alpher wasn't listening.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: A Palestinian prisoner waits to be released from the Ketziot
Prison in southern Israel. (Credit: Bloomberg)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 16, 2008 Tuesday

Silencing dissent and hushing up scandal

BYLINE: MICHAEL J. SALAMON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 604 words

HIGHLIGHT: How can the Orthodox world see music, but not abuse, as a threat? The
writer, a fellow of the American Psychological Association, is the founder and
director of the Adult Developmental Center in Hewlett, New York. His most recent
book, The Shidduch Crisis: Causes and Cures, is published by Urim Publications.

Two items recently crossed my desk. The first was an article that appeared in
The Jerusalem Post written by Matthew Wagner entitled "Haredim move to silence
'treif' music". It was about a movement to ban musicians who produce or perform
any music which the Guardians of Sanctity and Education deem inappropriate.
Musicians playing such music would be banned from playing in wedding halls,
their CDs would be banned and their concerts disallowed.

The other item was a breaking news piece from JTA indicating that Rabbi Benzion
Twerski had resigned from a task force in formation being brought together to
deal with sexual abuse in the Orthodox community. New York State Assemblyman Dov
Hikind, also an Orthodox Jew, is establishing the task force to deal with this
scourge. Twerski resigned because of the many threats against him and his family
made by several individuals from his community.

When taken together these two items suggest such a profound and disturbing
conflict regarding the current goals of the Orthodox world, of which I am a
member. If music is so important, is not the emotional welfare of members of the
community even more so? How can music be a threat and abuse not be? While some
may argue that this is not the message to be learned, that the insular community
is seeking ways to deal with the sexual abuse problem discreetly, it is clearly
not so when someone as prominent and discreet as Twerski can be so horrifically
threatened. But, he is not the only one to receive threats. Apparently so have
musicians. The canceling of a recent concert is evidence of this.

IN MY work I too have received threats, most recently for suggesting that the
rigid shidduch approach to dating seems not to be working. What this approach
has accomplished in recent years is to increase rigidity and unrealistic demands
for a spouse; rates of domestic violence are increasing and so are the divorce
rates.

There seems to be little balance left in the Orthodox world. There is no
allowance made for harmless pleasure and those who abuse are given a free pass.
Those who attempt to stand up are threatened.

Still there is a commandment that states "V'chai bahem"; we should live by the
rules. That command, however, requires that the rules are such that one can live
according to them. Additionally, we have lost sight of the adage "yesh chochma
bagoyim," there is knowledge, as well as arts and music, among the nations of
the world that is meant for us to share. I believe that is why much of our
liturgical music comes from a host of sources including the church. And our
great rabbis have not simply accepted it but enjoyed and encouraged this music.

When I look at the increasing rigidity that these events objectify, I think of
how we are pushing people away instead of bringing people closer to the core
values of Judaism. I also reflect on the experience of Ayan Hirsi Ali, currently
a member of the Dutch Parliament, reared as a devout Muslim who was forced to
evaluate the oppressiveness of her religion. She became a vocal critic of the
religion to the point where she has had to go into hiding. At the end of the
day, she may be the model that our children follow if we do not find a way to
balance the needs of our society with those of a firmly religious leaning.
Pushing people too hard will only force them to push back.

To suggest that the decisions of a few vocal individuals make are the only
correct approach and allow them to steer us away from doing what must be done is
simply illogical. Every society has its ills. So does ours. We must find
productive ways to deal with these ills if we are to survive.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: DJ MENACHEM Toker, who was fired by Radio Kol Chai for promoting
'inappropriate music,' appears with Yaakov Shwekey, a haredi pop singer who has
been banned by many rabbis. (Credit: Courtesy)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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685 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 16, 2008 Tuesday

From Oslo, back to Oslo

BYLINE: GERSHON BASKIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1079 words

HIGHLIGHT: Despite what many people believe, or perhaps even hope, the chances
for Israeli-Palestinian peace have not totally faded away. Encountering Peace.
The writer is the co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and
Information.

September 13 marked 15 years since the gala signing celebration of the first
Oslo agreement on the White House lawn. It certainly was a day of hope. Fifteen
years later hardly a mention of the anniversary was made in the local or the
international press - on both sides of the Green Line.

Oslo was a failed peace process, and not only in the minds of Israelis; most
Palestinians also share the assessment. The reasons for the failure are many,
and there are many people who own responsibility for Oslo's tragic fate. It is
very easy for one side to place the blame on the doorstep of the other, but in
truth, the failure of the process has its roots on both sides as well as among
various international actors, including the US. Much has been written on what
went wrong and on who is to blame; this is not another one of those articles.

DESPITE WHAT many people believe or would like to believe or perhaps even hope,
Oslo is not yet dead and the chances for Israeli-Palestinian peace have not
totally faded away. If and when the possibility of peace does fade away, the
Palestinian people will no longer be calling for an independent Palestinian
state in the June 4, 1967 borders, they will be calling for democracy and
"one-person one-vote" between the river and the sea. When and if that happens,
we will begin to witness the beginning of a new era which I would call "the era
of the demise of the Zionist enterprise." I only hope that our leaders and their
leaders will have to wisdom and the sanity to prevent us from jumping off the
brink into that abyss.

The only way to prevent the next round of violence, which will signal the
beginning of the end of the two-state solution, is to reach an agreement as soon
as possible. It may not be possible before the end of the Bush administration,
but the parties should already indicate their commitment to go beyond that
deadline into the beginning of the next US administration. Both sides will have
to make concessions on fundamentals, crossing lines that were painted "red" for
them in the past. There is a package deal that can be reached and agreed upon.

The Palestinian state will have to be established on about 96 percent-97% of the
West Bank and all of Gaza (once the political regime there changes). Israel will
have to give up most of the West Bank, including the "Ariel finger," and should
consider accepting a fair monetary price from the Palestinians for Ma'aleh
Adumim - two areas that take up huge tracks of land in the West Bank. Most of
the settlers will be able to remain in the areas where they live today.

The parties have already accepted the principle of a 50-50 split of the
"no-man's" land areas alongside of the Green Line. Finding 3%-4% of land inside
of the Green Line for a swap is not so problematic. The Palestinians already
understand and are willing to wait a period of at least five years for Israel to
vacate all of the settlements that will be transferred to them. They are also
ready to offer citizenship to settlers who may wish to remain within their
state.

PART OF the package includes recognizing that Jerusalem will be the capital of
both countries. The Palestinian capital will be in the Palestinian parts of east
Jerusalem and Israel's capital will remain in west Jerusalem. The Palestinians
understand that the Jewish neighborhoods within the municipal boundaries that
were built after 1967 will remain under Israeli sovereignty. They account for
about 1% of the West Bank.

The Old City will be shared under a special regime, perhaps with international
involvement, or through the division of sovereignty within its walls. The
Palestinians will have sovereignty over the Muslim, Christian and Armenian
Quarters and Israel will have sovereignty over the Jewish Quarter. The Jewish
Quarter is already physically separated from the other quarters by internal
checkpoints. The Palestinians will have sovereignty or guardianship over the
Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and Israel will have sovereignty or guardianship
over the Western Wall. Both sides will agree not to dig, excavate, renovate or
construct anything on, around or underneath the "Holy Compound" without mutual
agreement.

All of the mainstream rabbinic authorities agree that no Jew should enter the
area of the Temple Mount until the messiah comes. Until that time, the Temple
Mount will be turned over the Palestinians de jure instead of just de facto as
now. When the messiah comes, we can all agree to place the issue of sovereignty
in his/her hands.

Both sides will guarantee the right of access and prayer at holy places within
their sovereign areas for members of the relevant faiths from the other state.

PALESTINIAN REFUGEES will go home to the state of Palestine. Perhaps Israel will
accept some humanitarian cases of family reunification. There will be financial
compensation available for all Palestinian refugees for real property loss
claims and for suffering. The State of Israel will participate in an
international fund for that purpose.

Palestinians and Israelis will recognize the Jewishness of Israel and the
Palestinianess of Palestine. Both sides will agree to ensure the equal rights
and opportunities for minorities within their state. Palestinian Israeli
citizens will remain within the State of Israel, as part of their birthright and
Jewish citizens of Palestine will be welcome to remain within the Palestinian
state as long as they wish.

It may take years to implement the agreement. Everything will depend on the
security situation. Both sides will end up agreeing to an international force
being stationed within the Palestinian state for an agreed designated period.
That force will be composed of and led by European nations.

It is quite clear that both sides will have to allow their people to vote for
the agreement - for it to be ratified by the people.

Fifteen years have passed since that hopeful day on the White House lawn. We are
no longer drunk with hope. We are much more sober about our difficult reality
and the fact that there are still too many fanatics out there who would prefer
mutual destruction to making compromises and concessions for peace. So far those
fanatics have won, and in their winning they have transformed the Israeli-
Palestinian relationship into a "lose-lose" unbreakable embrace. The chance of a
"win-win" mutual liberation is still possible - but the price will be no less
than what is written above. There is simply no other way - either we both win,
or we both lose.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: MA'ALEH ADUMIM. To be sold to the Palestinians as part of a new
peace agreement? (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 16, 2008 Tuesday

Mrs. Clean is a fraud

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1686 words

HIGHLIGHT: That Tzipi Livni upholds the anti-democratic and corrupt electoral
farce of the Kadima primary as a legitimate path to the premiership puts paid to
the notion that she is dedicated to cleaning up politics. Our World

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni may not be a crook, but she is a fraud. And if
polls are to be believed, Livni the fraud is just one fraudulent election away
from becoming our next prime minister.

Her basic dishonesty is expressed both in her political maneuverings and in her
behavior as a policymaker. In both areas, she upholds herself as Mrs. Clean -
the servant of all of us who are sickened, demoralized and revolted by Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert and his hordes of corrupt Kadima colleagues and staffers.
But she is not our servant. Rather than serve us, like Olmert and her Kadima
colleagues, she lies to us in a continuous bid to expand her power.

Case in point is her participation in Wednesday's anti-democratic Kadima
primary, which will elect the party's new leader to replace Olmert, who of
course is both a fraud and a crook.

Unlike all the other party primaries that have been held over the years, this
one is designed not as a preparatory step ahead of general elections to the
Knesset. Rather, it is intended to replace general elections. The expressed goal
of Livni and her three opponents - Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, Public
Security Minister Avi Dichter and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit - is not to
ready Kadima for elections, but to select a new prime minister who will form a
governing coalition that will bar the public from electing its representatives
until March 2010.

KADIMA'S MOVE to trample the people's right to choose our leaders is not the
only reason that its primary is an affront to the public. The primary is not
just anti- democratic, it is also a fraud.

Only 15 percent of Kadima's members joined the party on their own initiative.
According to analyses conducted over the past several months, these 15% are
people who were swept up in the initial excitement when Kadima was formed by
Ariel Sharon in 2005.

According to pollsters, like most Israelis, these idealistic Kadima members
became disenchanted with the party over the past three years. Accordingly, they
are the least likely to vote in Wednesday's poll.

The other 85% of Kadima's 70,000 members are people who were brought into the
party by those nefarious standard-bearers of Israeli politics of recent years:
the vote contractors.

Vote contractors are political bosses and paid political operatives who peddle
their influence in various communities, labor unions and population sectors to
persuade citizens to join specific parties as bloc voters.

In its brief political life span, Kadima's membership rolls have been subject to
multiple criminal investigations. In one case now under investigation, up to
1,000 people were signed up for the party without their knowledge. Vote
contractors forged their signatures on membership forms and paid their
membership fees.

Although the media - which are openly biased in Livni's favor - have placed most
of the blame for this state of affairs on Mofaz, the truth is that Livni has not
shied away from backroom deals with influence peddlers selling votes. For
instance, she has used Deputy Foreign Minister Majallie Whbee to sign up blocs
of Livni voters in the Arab and Druse sectors. Arabs and Druse comprise 20% of
Kadima's members and it has been widely predicted that they will cast the
decisive vote. Livni is expected to win some 70% of their votes.

Then there is the Russian community. Here too Livni has hired vote contractors
to sign up blocs of voters on her behalf. And like the Arabs and the Druse,
there is no reason to believe that the Russian olim even support Kadima. They
are just as likely to vote for another party in the general election. Livni
knows this. She just doesn't care.

Owing to the basic fraudulence of Kadima's voter rolls, the fact is that
regardless of the identity of the victor, he or she will be beholden not to
voters, but to a few dozen influence peddlers. That Livni upholds this anti-
democratic and wholly corrupt electoral farce as a legitimate path to the
premiership puts paid the notion that she is an honest politician dedicated to
cleaning up politics and making politicians accountable to voters.

LIVNI'S EMBRACE of fraud is the thread that ties her political machinations to
her policy maneuvers. Indeed, fraud - that is deceit - has been her chosen
tactic for advancing her political fortunes since she first rose to prominence
in 2004.

The most blatant recent example of Livni's deceitfulness is her behavior on the
issue of sovereignty over Jerusalem. For the past year, Livni has led the
negotiating team with the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Authority. In her
position, she has been the architect of whatever agreements the government has
concocted regarding the surrender of Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem to
Fatah.

Supported by the local media, Livni and Olmert have denied the public the right
to know what they are discussing on our behalf and so prevented any public
debate about their actions. This is crucial for them because opinion polls show
that their presumptive plan to withdraw from some 98% of Judea and Samaria and
partition Jerusalem is not supported by the public.

The issue of Jerusalem is particularly sensitive. Olmert pledged to coalition
partner Shas that he would not discuss the city with the Palestinians. Since
Shas doesn't wish to leave the government, Shas leader Eli Yishai pretends he
doesn't know that Olmert's pledge was a fraud. For their part, Livni and Olmert
defraud the public by claiming that Jerusalem is not on their diplomatic
chopping block.

On Thursday, Olmert, Livni and Shas had their bluffs called when the US Consul
in Jerusalem Jacob Walles told the Palestinian Al-Ayam newspaper that the
government has agreed to give the Palestinians control over most of eastern,
southern and northern Jerusalem. Livni and her representatives were outspoken in
their angry denials of Walles's statement.

Yet as Channel 10 reported on Sunday night, just a few weeks ago, Livni told her
supporters that she is negotiating the partition of the city. Livni has told
sympathetic reporters of her intention to form a far-left governing coalition
with the non-Zionist Meretz party that will be supported from the outside by the
anti-Zionist Arab parties. But she doesn't want the general public to realize
how radical she is. So she lies.

LIVNI'S LIES about Jerusalem are of a piece with all the lies she has told and
all the frauds she has advanced over the past three years. In 2004 as justice
minister in Ariel Sharon's government, Livni concocted a detailed fraud to
compel her Likud colleagues Binyamin Netanyahu, Limor Livnat and Silvan Shalom
to vote in favor of Sharon's bid to withdraw from Gaza and northern Samaria and
expel all Jews from the areas.

Livni authored what she referred to as the "compromise agreement." Forming the
basis of the government's decision in favor of the withdrawal, it stipulated
that the Jews would be expelled in four stages over a period of several months.
At each stage, the government would stop to reevaluate and each new stage would
have to be separately approved. This decision was legally binding.

Right after she convinced her colleagues that Sharon would respect the
compromise deal and so secured their votes, Livni discarded her grand
compromise. Arguably in violation of the legally binding decision she had
herself crafted, Livni, together with Sharon, claimed that national security
considerations overrode the stipulations of the decision and therefore Sharon
was within his rights to order that the expulsions be carried out in one
operation that lasted a less than a week.

And defrauding her colleagues to advance her political fortunes wasn't the only
way Livni exploited her undeserved reputation as an honest woman during her
tenure as justice minister. In the months leading up to the expulsions, she
presided over the country's law enforcement bodies as they systematically
trampled the basic legal rights of law abiding citizens who sought to
demonstrate their opposition to the expulsions.

Thousands of protesters were illegally arrested and held in jails for weeks at a
time without charges being brought against them. In many cases, groups of
demonstrators were illegally charged as groups. Protesters were physically
assaulted by police. Buses carrying protesters to legal demonstrations were
illegally blocked on highways.

A few months after the withdrawal and expulsions were completed, Chief Public
Defender Inbal Rubinstein's office released a report documenting how laws were
prejudicially enforced based on the demonstrators' political views. Livni's
response was to threaten Rubinstein with firing. Rubinstein apologized for
releasing the report and mumbled something about it not representing the views
of her office.

This, of course, is not how one would expect a politician dedicated to the
sanctity of the rule of law and good governance to behave. But it is how one
would expect a politician motivated only by her will to power to behave.

In her belief that all ends justify the means, Livni is a loyal representative
of Kadima. She has defrauded the public by lying about the fact that she is
actively advancing the cause of Jerusalem's partition. She has defrauded her
political colleagues by crafting "grand compromises" she knows will never be
implemented. She is defrauding the public by using a fraudulent electorate to
catapult her way into the prime minister's office. And she does all of this
while deceiving us into believing that she is competent to lead.

She tells us that the cease-fire with Hizbullah she crafted which paved the way
for the Iranian proxy's takeover of Lebanon was a diplomatic success. She tells
us that we have no option of victory over our enemies and the best we can do is
beg others to defend us. And she tells us we should give her the reins of power
because she tells us the truth.

The public is powerless today to do anything in the face of Livni's and Kadima's
trampling of our democratic system and open contempt for our national interests.
It can only be hoped that whenever elections are eventually held, we will punish
them for what they have done.

caroline@carolineglick.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: WILL VOTE contractors crown her as our next leader? (Credit:
Ariel Jerozolimski)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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687 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 15, 2008 Monday

A run on city hall?

BYLINE: JEFF BARAK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 888 words

HIGHLIGHT: Someone convicted of abusing the public's trust should not seek to
get his hands on public coffers again. The writer is a former editor-in-chief of
The Jerusalem Post.

In 1963, Britain was rocked by a sex scandal. John Profumo, the defense minister
in the Conservative government and a married man, had a brief relationship with
a showgirl called Christine Keeler, who was also the mistress of Capt. Yevgeny
Ivanov, the naval attache at the Soviet Embassy in London and a spy. When news
broke of the affair, the mixture of adultery and espionage in this era of Cold
War tension and strict sexual mores, the British public was deeply shocked.

Profumo, initially, denied the reports. He told the House of Commons that there
was "no impropriety whatever" in his relationship with Keeler. Three months
later, however, Profumo confessed he had misled Parliament and resigned. By the
end of the year, prime minister Harold Macmillan resigned on the grounds of ill
health, exacerbated by the crisis, and in the general elections of autumn 1964
the Conservatives lost to the Labor Party.

The Clivedon country-house party where Profumo and Keeler first met was
organized by an osteopath named Stephen Ward, who soon after was charged with
living off the immoral earnings of Keeler and her friend, Mandy Rice- Davies,
another young "showgirl." Rice-Davies became famous at the trial when, in
response to the prosecution's question that one of her clients, a British lord,
had denied even having met her, stated: "Well he would, wouldn't he?"
Rice-Davies was shameless. She traded on her notoriety and later, after marrying
Israeli businessman Rafi Shauli, moved to Tel Aviv, opening night clubs and
restaurants bearing her name, and became a central figure on the Israel social
scene for many years.

But this article is not about Rice-Davies, Keeler or even Profumo. It's about
Aryeh Deri. It's true that the former Shas leader and cabinet minister has never
been accused of adultery or spilling state secrets in bed, but the charismatic
politician has been accused, and found guilty, of taking bribes while
director-general of the Interior Ministry and later interior minister. For this
crime, Deri received a three-year prison sentence and a conviction that carries
with it the status of moral turpitude.

Deri, like other convicted felons, wants to rehabilitate himself, which, in and
of itself, is a worthy desire. Unfortunately, he sees a return to public life as
mayor of Jerusalem as his means of rehabilitation and is now desperately seeking
a way round the law which prohibits any person convicted of an offense carrying
moral turpitude of running for election for a seven-year period after his
release from prison. For Deri, this period runs out in the middle of next year,
too late for this November's municipal elections. Thankfully, former Supreme
Court justice Eliezer Rivlin, who chairs the Central Elections Committee, has
refused to discuss Deri's petition to reduce this waiting period, although,
worryingly, Deri still has the option of seeking President Shimon Peres' help in
erasing his conviction.

THE THOUGHT of Deri running for Jerusalem mayor is deeply troubling, and not (at
least, in this context) because of the haredi party he represents. When Deri was
jailed, the cooling-off period for someone convicted of a crime carrying moral
turpitude before being allowed to run for public office was five years. This
period was lengthened when Deri was sitting behind bars mainly because of his
despicable behavior during his trial. He remained silent during his
interrogation, dragged out the court proceedings for as long as he possibly
could and then, after sentencing, led a wave of protest against the whole court
system. Instead of accepting his punishment for, let's not forget, taking
bribes, Deri lashed out against those upholding the law, a trend that has since
been followed by disgraced president Moshe Katsav and the present Vice Prime
Minister Haim Ramon, whose return to public life after kissing a young female
soldier by force, is also regrettable.

In fact, even after the cooling-off period runs out, Deri should not contemplate
running for public office. It is unpalatable that someone convicted of abusing
the public's trust should once more seek to get his hands on public coffers, and
the thought that Jerusalem, of all cities, should be run by an ex-con is simply
unconscionable. Like Rice-Davies, Deri is shameless. Had he any sense of
decency, he would understand that someone as deeply compromised as himself
simply cannot offer himself up for election, even if there are fools enough to
vote for him.

This does not, however, mean that a disgraced politician cannot redeem his
reputation. After resigning in disgrace, John Profumo kept a dignified silence,
telling one correspondent in 1995: "Since 1963, there have been unceasing
publications, both written and spoken, relating to what you refer to in your
letter as 'the Keeler interlude.' The majority of these have increasingly
contained deeply distressing inaccuracies, so I have resolved to refrain from
any sort of personal comment, and I propose to continue thus." Instead, he
worked, voluntarily, among the poor in London's East End, cleaning toilets at
the Toynbee Hall charity before being persuaded to use his talents to raise
funds for the charity. For this, he was made a commander of the British Empire
by Queen Elizabeth in 1975, signalling his return to respectability.

Does anyone have a mop for Deri?

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: JOHN PROFUMO redeemed himself through charity work following
his disgrace. INSTEAD OF accepting his punishment for taking bribes, Aryeh Deri
lashed out against those upholding the law. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
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688 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 15, 2008 Monday

Pogroms & vigilantism

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 722 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

This much can be said for the radical settlers who seem to dominate Yitzhar -
they know how to turn the rest of Israel against them.

In the latest incident, early Saturday, a Palestinian Arab bent on murder
infiltrated Shalhevet Yam, a satellite of Yitzhar near Nablus. He broke into
what turned out to be an empty caravan - the family was away for Shabbat - so he
torched it. He tried another home, but the woman there managed to close the
shutters just in time. The neighboring Shatman family, smelling smoke,
reportedly sent nine-year- old Tuvia to sound the alarm. Encountering the boy,
the terrorist stabbed him five times. Tuvia was able to wrench the knife away
from his attacker; who then picked up the boy, threw him toward a ravine and ran
off in the direction of an Arab village.

The young hero was taken to Schneider Medical Center in Petah Tikva, where he
received some 20 stitches.

Meanwhile, soldiers tried to secure the area and began searching for the
infiltrator.

Had the incident ended at this point or, better, with the capture of the
terrorist, media coverage would have been minimal. "Palestinian attacks settler"
is hardly news. Nor would the media have taken much notice of the stones hurled
over the weekend at Israeli motorists near the entrance to Tekoa, south of
Bethlehem, since they caused only "light" injuries.

The provocations did not go unanswered in either incident.

In Tekoa, a law-abiding community with a history of seeking coexistence - a
place, too, where Arab violence has claimed precious lives - residents did the
right thing: They called authorities. Soldiers were met with a hail of rocks.
And had the attackers managed to kill a despised "settler," or soldier, most
local Palestinians wouldn't have been wringing their hands and asking, "How
could our children do such a thing?" Some might even have been handing out
sweets. In the event, one of the rioting Arab teenagers was mortally wounded.

Reacting to the Shatman stabbing, Yitzhar settlers took the law into their own
hands, marching on nearby Asira el-Kibliyeh. They threw stones and fired their
weapons, wounding at least eight Palestinians. The IDF chased after the Yitzhar
men, earning the disdain of both Arab villagers and Jewish settlers.

Up and down Judea and Samaria, there is bad blood between radical settlers and
the IDF. Though most Israelis who live beyond the Green Line are law-abiding, an
increasingly growing minority is anything but. They have violently attacked
reservists, abused them verbally and destroyed IDF equipment.

The radicals' message: Don't even think about dismantling an unauthorized
outpost - much less an actual settlement - because the relative restraint we
showed during disengagement in 2005 will not be repeated.

We understand that these settlers feel under siege. The murders of Gilad Zar and
Harel Bin-Nun in the second intifada have not been forgotten. We insist,
however, that those who go out on vigilante raids against Arabs, or brawl with
IDF soldiers are an affront to Zionism. Such behavior is inexcusable - indeed,
contemptible.

AFTER 2,000 years, legitimate Jewish authority rests only with the state -
imperfect, but the only one we have. Fueled by a sense of political and
religious self- righteousness, settler radicals are descending a slippery slope
in which nothing - not even the preservation of the Third Commonwealth - is more
important than retaining Greater Israel.

Israelis understand that the West Bank is the cradle of Jewish civilization and
generally appreciate its strategic significance. There is far less consensus as
regards the Kadima government's effort, Arab violence notwithstanding, to secure
the future of the Jewish state by offering the Palestinians a state of their own
in most of that territory.

It is legitimate to challenge government policy as folly, within the parameters
of democracy. To do so in any other way is treason.

AND FINALLY: A small minority of settlers behaving badly does not a pogrom make.
In telling the cabinet on Sunday that "There will be no pogroms against
non-Jewish residents in the State of Israel," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
committed a grave injustice to Jewish history.

Mr. Prime Minister: A "pogrom" is vigilante violence - inspired, instigated and
enabled by the authorities. Clearly, Saturday's settler rampage was nothing of
the kind.

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September 15, 2008 Monday

Adequate housing is a right

BYLINE: GIL GAN-MOR

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 765 words

HIGHLIGHT: Whether by ending grants to help purchase apartments, lowering
mortgage subsidies or failing to institute rent controls, the state is shirking
its responsibility to its weaker members. The writer is an attorney at the
Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

'The right to housing" is a phrase that often raises eyebrows, but why? Why is
it obvious that the state must provide education for every child, but not that
it must ensure that all children have a roof over their heads? Why is it easier
to understand that health is a human right, and that therefore medical attention
and medicines must be ensured for those without means, than to understand that
adequate housing should also be ensured for those who can't afford to buy or
rent in the private market?

In recent years, state housing policies have changed beyond recognition, with
the dominant trend being to shirk responsibility and privatize. In the absence
of concrete laws and transparent procedures protecting the right to housing, the
authorities are only required to follow vague policies that are subject to
frequent change without public critique or judicial review. As a result, more
and more people find themselves without adequate housing.

In light of this situation, the state must face the current crisis and ensure
that all members of society, especially those most in need, can realize their
right to adequate shelter.

In a recent report entitled "Real Estate or Rights: Housing Rights and
Government Policy in Israel," the Association for Civil Rights in Israel found
that the state is violating the right to adequate housing on several fronts.

TO BEGIN, although the state encourages private ownership of property, it evades
its responsibility to help households seek assistance. The state stopped giving
grants to help in the purchase of apartments, and significantly lowered its
mortgage subsidies. In addition, after completely privatizing the mortgage
market, the state has not yet implemented protections such as obligatory
mortgage insurance to prevent foreclosure. As a result, thousands are evicted
from their homes each year.

With more families unable to buy apartments, rental has become the only option.
Yet the shortage of rental apartments has led to steep and frequent rises in the
cost of rent. As a result, the disadvantaged must change apartments frequently
or channel an ever-increasing portion of their income to rent rather than to
other critical needs such as food, medication and clothing.

At the same time, the country is one of the only states in the developed world
not to intervene in the terms of rental contracts, or institute regulations such
as rent control for long-term tenants. The lack of tenant protection laws
provides fertile ground for owners to violate their tenants' rights, such as
taking unreasonably high security deposits, demanding intrusive and unnecessary
documentation from potential tenants and not making urgent repairs.

Instead of boosting state aid to disadvantaged families, the government's
provision of housing assistance has decreased. Public housing - apartments
leased by the state at subsidized prices - is disappearing. As of 2007, only
1,628 remained for 50,000 eligible applicants.

To replace public housing, the state has been providing rental subsidies, but
without properly assessing the implications. Not taken into consideration, for
example, is the effect of higher rental prices on those who receive payments
from the Housing Ministry that are adjusted only every few years, or
discrimination in the rental market.

AMONG ALL these grave trends, the housing crisis is most acute in the Arab
sector. Essentially, Arab residents are caught in a perpetual catch-22. City
plans for Arab towns do not exist, or do not meet the basic housing needs of the
local population, and therefore construction permits cannot be issued. In the
absence of building permits, the state regularly demolishes homes built
illegally, leaving many families without a place to live.

To prevent the housing crisis from deteriorating even further, the state must
take steps to safeguard the right to housing of all its citizens and residents.
It must increase the allocation of resources to all forms of housing assistance.
It must develop comprehensive and fair housing policies for the Arab population.
In addition, it must ensure that affordable units be built as part of the many
new housing projects underway.

The government and Knesset, in cooperation with the public, must develop
protections enshrined in law which are comprehensive, multiyear, transparent and
clear, based on the principles of human rights and equality.

Yet this process can only begin once the state recognizes adequate housing as a
basic human right and not as a commodity, and understands its duty to safeguard
this right as an obligation and not a humanitarian gesture.

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September 15, 2008 Monday

Letters

BYLINE: M. Hagenauer, Gemma Blech, Ester Katz Silvers, Howard Burg, Mladen
Andrijasevic, Chayim Seiden, Cecilia Henry, Joyce Kahn, Davidah Koseff, James A.
Marples

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1165 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

The 'P' word...

Sir, - Re "Settlers rampage in Arab village after Jewish boy stabbed" (September
14): It may be that the action of the settlers, who live under the stress of
stonings and security threats around the clock, should be condemned in even
stronger terms than it has been. Even so, it was unforgivable for our prime
minister to use the word "pogrom" to describe it.

Such boiled-over anger has nothing in common with the large-scale, unprovoked
and murderous riots, often instigated by the authorities, from which Jews
historically suffered so much. Such attacks, which span millennia, frequently
eradicated whole Diaspora Jewish communities.

I hope the ADL at least will speak up against this regrettable trivialization
("PM: We will not allow pogroms against non-Jewish residents," On-Line Edition,
September 14).

M. HAGENAUER

Jerusalem

Sir, - How about a more Zionist headline, like "Jewish boy stabbed on Shabbat;
community responds"? His village is named Shalhevet, after a nine-month-old baby
girl killed in her stroller in the Jewish Quarter in Hebron a few years ago by a
sniper.

I prefer a few broken windows to a dead Jew.

GEMMA BLECH

Jerusalem

Sir, - Wouldn't "Nine-year-old stabbed, settlers rampage" have been a more
accurate headline? Even better: "Nine-year-old stabbed; neighbors react."

ESTER KATZ SILVERS

Shiloh

...and others

Sir, - "Intolerable," a word the prime minister used frequently at Sunday's
cabinet meeting discussing the weekend violence between settlers and
Palestinians in the West Bank, is one the nation has been using for quite a
while to describe our current government. And that we stand for such inept
people to govern us is, itself, intolerable.

HOWARD BURG

Netanya

Oslo record

Sir, - On reading Uri Savir's "It's either the continuation of Oslo or nothing"
(September 14), I asked myself: How is it possible that someone can go on
inventing the perpetuum mobile without first reading the laws of thermodynamics?

We cannot have this nonsense any more. With some 35 books on Islam and eight on
Churchill and the appeasement years in the 1930s that I have read since 9/11, I
think I have a fair grasp of what is going on. Any politicians who did their
homework would come to a similar conclusion. Alas, their ignorance of Islam is
profound.

There are alternatives to this parroting of the same failed policies without
even trying to understand the reasons why they failed. I have just come across
Moshe Ya'alon's watershed article "A new strategy for the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict." I believe that finally we have a clear, alternative path before us.

MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC

Beersheba

Sir, - The only people who found peace through the Oslo Accord were Yitzhak
Rabin and the 2,000 Jews murdered by Arafat and the terrorist army the Oslo team
brought into the heart of Israel and provided with weapons. Ironically, it was
Shimon Peres, prime minister after Rabin's murder, who ordered the IDF back
across the Green Line to put a stop to the mass murder of Jewish civilians on
our side of the line.

That was Uri Savir's peace.

CHAYIM SEIDEN

Jerusalem

Sir, - Once again, a perpetrator of Oslo puts the onus for its failure on Israel
- on Rabin being assassinated, on Bibi being elected, on Israel not developing
the Palestinian economy, on the settlements, on "upheavals" in the Israeli
political system. Where does he place the horrendous string of suicide bombings
and Yasser Arafat's encouragement of them? The supposed "culture of peace,"
which the Israelis implemented and Arafat didn't?

In the first few weeks after Oslo, we Osloskeptics thought it might work after
all and were prepared to accept and, indeed, welcome a friendly Palestinian
state alongside Israel. But that died with the continuous terrorism, followed by
Israeli withdrawals and concessions.

And now we're repeating all the same mistakes, giving and giving and demanding
nothing in return. Yet there will never be peace until the Palestinians accept
that they're not going to get everything they want, even though people like Uri
Savir apparently encourage them to think that they will, because it's all
Israel's fault...

For any chance of peace, the Palestinians have to make some concessions, too.

CECILIA HENRY

Kfar Bialik

Devil quotes scripture

Sir, - After reading "The devils' bible" by Benjamin Rosendahl (September 9), I
thought it may interest readers to know that in The Fantastic Story of Felix
Kersten, Himmler's Private Doctor, Joseph Kessel mentions that on a visit to
Himmler during the 1940s, Kersten found a number of bibles and other religious
tomes piled up on the Nazi leader's desk. He asked Himmler why he suddenly
needed all these religious books, to which Himmler replied that Hitler had asked
him to put together a Nazi Bible.

JOYCE KAHN

Petah Tikva

Medal for the

biggest mouth

Sir, - The entire Israeli Paralympic delegation has been discussing the Zuberi
incident as we continue to rack up honors ("Two more medals for Israel in
Beijing," September 14). All the members of our delegation are as angry as I,
physiotherapist to the Israeli team, at what that young idiot Shachar Zuberi
said.

The NPOC has bent over backwards to make us Jewishly comfortable. We have been
provided with delicious food by the Chabad community here in Beijing. Rav
Freulich is at our beck and call with whatever we need, including kiddush wine
and halla. Special efforts have been made to ensure that those of us who are
more traditional can take part in all the ceremonies without breaking Shabbat.

As for the language barrier, perhaps Mr. Zuberi should remember that more
citizens in the world speak Chinese than speak English, and instead of being so
arrogant as to expect everyone here speak to English, perhaps he should have
made the effort to learn some Mandarin or Cantonese before leaving Israel.

There are over 50,000 volunteers here in Beijing making sure we feel
comfortable, ordinary citizens who start working at 8 a.m. and keep going until
well after 10 p.m. It's one more thing for Mr. Zuberi to think about as he
accepts the thousands of shekels he is getting and all the perks of managing to
stand on a surfboard.

Perhaps part of the training of an Olympic athlete in Israel should be in
manners and behavior.

Each member of our team has been proud to be an Israeli representing our country
- except for when Shachar Zuberi opened his big uneducated mouth.

DAVIDAH KOSEFF

Beijing/Jerusalem

Paul for peace

Sir, - I am glad that Sir Paul McCartney has decided the "show must go on" to
celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary of statehood ("Palestinians to McCartney:
Don't play in Israel," September 2). I have attended two of McCartney's
concerts, which were enjoyed by many Jews and Christians - especially the song
"Let it Be."

Do the Muslim extremists who made such threats privately tap their toes to his
music too, I wonder? Unfortunately, their theme song is: "Fool on the Hill," and
their eyes start spinning round. Maybe they should hum along with "Give Peace a
Chance."

JAMES A. MARPLES

Longview, Texas

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September 14, 2008 Sunday

Character, not gender, counts in a crisis

BYLINE: ABRAHAM RABINOVICH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1298 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is author of The Yom Kippur War (Schocken, New York).

That 3 a.m. phone call that roused Hillary Clinton during her campaign has been
forwarded to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni whose opponents have picked up on the
query, "Who do you want answering the phone?" Their answer is that Livni, and by
inference any woman, should not be wakened by phone calls that may require tough
military decisions.

"Whoever lacks understanding in security matters, cannot serve as prime
minister," declared former defense minister Shaul Mofaz. Labor Party leader Ehud
Barak concurred. "I'm not convinced that when it comes to important security
issues... the foreign minister has what it takes to provide answers."

As it happens, the only Israeli leader ever wakened by a predawn warning of
imminent war was a 75-year-old grandmother, Golda Meir - perhaps the only female
national leader ever to receive such a wake-up call. Her subsequent behavior
supports the notion that it is not gender but character that counts in a crisis.

MEIR'S BEDSIDE phone rang at 4:30 a.m. on Yom Kippur 1973. The caller was her
military aide, Maj.-Gen. Yisrael Lior, passing on a report from the Mossad that
a two-front war would break out this day at dusk. The warning had been received
by the intelligence agency during the night from a top aide to Egyptian
president Anwar Sadat serving as an Israeli informant.

Meir's instinctive response was less than decisive: "Yisrael, what do we do
now?"

Golda Meir's personal courage was a matter of record. On the eve of the War of
Independence in 1948, she had journeyed to Jordan dressed as an Arab woman in a
failed attempt to persuade King Abdullah to stay out of the fighting. But she
knew nothing of military matters. She once admitted to Lior that she did not
know what a division was. However, she had two military stalwarts on whom she
could confidently rely - defense minister Moshe Dayan, the country's military
icon, and Chief of General Staff Lt.- Gen. David Elazar, a strong leader.

When she arrived in her office on Yom Kippur morning, grey-faced at the prospect
of heavy casualties, she discovered that Dayan and Elazar had only conflicting
advice to offer. With the Arab armies deployed on the country's borders, Elazar
wanted immediate mobilization of the reserves, which constituted two-thirds of
the IDF. He also wanted the air force to undertake a preemptive strike. In a
meeting between the two men, Dayan had refused to authorize either one of
Elazar's requests.

Despite the Mossad warning, the defense minister was not certain war was
imminent. A similar alarm in the spring had proved false. Mass mobilization, he
said, would be viewed by the world as an act of war and could provoke the Arabs
to attack. Likewise, he said, the world - read Washington - would not accept
another preemptive strike only six years after Israel had carried one out in the
Six Day War. Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Eli Zeira, who for weeks had
been dismissing the Arab buildup as non- threatening, supported Dayan's
skepticism.

As the generals and other advisers debated the issue in her office on Yom Kippur
morning, it became clear that Meir herself would have to decide. An inveterate
chain smoker, she lit cigarette after cigarette, filling the room with acrid
smoke that made those present squint. She hesitated, but in the end made a clear
decision. Agreeing with Dayan on the matter of a preemptive strike, she ruled it
out. Israel might soon be needing American aid and it was imperative that it be
clear to Washington that Israel had not started the war. "If we strike first we
won't get help from anybody."

But she accepted Elazar's demand for immediate mobilization of all reserve
combat units. "If war does break out, better to be in proper shape to deal with
it even if the world is angry with us," she said.

FALLING BACK on common sense and political experience, she had come to the right
conclusions. Her decision on mobilization saved the Golan Heights when
reservists, summoned from Yom Kippur prayers during the day, helped stem the
Syrian tide in fierce tank battles that night. Likewise, refraining from a
preemptive attack ensured vital political and logistic support from Washington
in the critical days ahead.

Meir made another fateful decision that day, this time under her mandate as
grandmother rather than prime minister. Dayan had wanted evacuation of children
from Golan Heights settlements to be put off until late afternoon, since he
believed it possible that the perceived war threat would dissolve before then,
obviating the need for evacuation. Meir ordered the evacuation to get under way
immediately. When the war began hours earlier than expected with a massive
Syrian artillery barrage on all the settlements, the children and their mothers
were safely away.

At a cabinet meeting shortly after noon, amid mounting signs of an imminent
attack, Dayan briefed his colleagues in a wavering voice. Shock was evident in
his demeanor. Two massed armies were going to attack within hours and the bulk
of the IDF was still unmobilized. Meir walked heavily when she entered the room
and her eyes were downcast, but when she spoke her voice was firm. She would
leave the running of the war to Dayan and Elazar, particularly the latter, but
when called upon to make decisions in the coming weeks she did so sensibly. She
never broke down even though strong men about her wavered as the country's very
survival appeared in jeopardy.

Five days into the war, she made another critical decision when her senior
military advisers were unable to agree among themselves. The Syrian divisions
that broke through on the Golan Heights the first day of the war had been driven
back to the prewar line in battles that littered the Golan with hundreds of
disabled tanks. Some of the generals wanted to cross the line and drive toward
Damascus once their exhausted troops had had a day's rest. Others pointed out
that the Syrians had fallen back in good order to a strong defense line and
warned that any attack would be costly and risk failure. The latter group
advocated remaining in place on the Golan and shifting one of the three armored
divisions there to the southern front where the decisive battle had yet to be
fought with the Egyptian forces that had crossed into Sinai.

Meir may have missed some of the more arcane tactical points in the heated
exchange of views, but she understood the essentials. It would take four days to
transfer a division from the Golan to the southern front. But strong calls were
already being made in the UN for a cease-fire. If a cease-fire were imposed
before the division arrived in Sinai, the war would end with a territorial loss
in the south where the Egyptians were dug in on the Sinai bank of the Suez Canal
and no gain in the north, adding up to a clear defeat.

Grasping the political dimension of the dilemma, her decision was unhesitating -
to drive toward Damascus. She wanted captured Arab territory to bring to the
bargaining table when the fighting stopped and Syrian territory was most in
reach. The ability of Israeli forces to reach within artillery range of the
Syrian capital before the war ended may help account for the Golan having
remained the most peaceful of the country's borders for the past 35 years.

Unlike Golda Meir, Livni has a security background, one that includes service as
a lieutenant in the army and several years as a Mossad operative in Europe. In
addition, her father, Eitan, was a formidable operations chief for the pre-state
Irgun underground and presumably inculcated his daughter with security insights.
All this is no guarantee that she would deal with a crisis as well as did Meir.
But the latter clearly demonstrated in 1973 that being a woman does not preclude
confronting a pre-dawn crisis more acute than a crying baby.

abra@netvision.net.il

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GRAPHIC: Photo: THE PRIME MINISTER consults with chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen.
David Elazar. She didn't know what constituted a division, but she had the
ability to make clear decisions. (Credit: JP archives)

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September 14, 2008 Sunday

You've been warned...

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 731 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Israel's Counter-Terrorism Bureau has the unenviable task of warning travelers
away from destinations considered particularly dangerous by intelligence
analysts.

Assessments are never sure-fire forecasts, though they are too often understood
as such. An inevitable consequence is that the bureau is often derided as crying
wolf. Some eager holiday-makers may perceive its persistent admonitions as
killjoy annoyances.

Perhaps this is because we Israelis have learned to live perilously. We hear
more warnings than our counterparts abroad and tend to take them in stride. This
laid-back attitude can, however, prove unfortunate for the Israelis who throw
caution to the winds, and for the security experts who strive to keep them safe.

With the approach of the extended High Holy Day season, as many Israelis gear up
for vacations and to visit family, the issue usually intensifies. And this year,
the travel advisories are sounding a far more urgent and insistent note.

The bureau is convinced that Hizbullah is plotting assiduously to kidnap
Israelis overseas. Solid information is said to exist of how this will be
perpetrated, but not where - a fact which deepens the authorities' discomfiture
and puts their credibility more than ever on the line.

THE MOST critical cautions are directed at high- ranking reserve IDF and
intelligence personnel, many of whom have begun second careers in the
international security market. Their ventures take them to places which alarm
the bureau, notably to unstable Muslim countries throughout Africa and various
parts of Asia.

Hizbullah is thirsting to avenge the February assassination of terror kingpin
Imad Mughniyeh, perhaps by carrying out a kidnapping like the one of Elhanan
Tannebaum. He's the former IDF colonel - and shady businessman - who was
released as part of a costly prisoner exchange in January 2004.

Capturing a member of Israel's security community would be another coup for
Hizbullah, to say nothing of a valuable source of classified information. The
terrorists would demand an exorbitant ransom for our captive, and recent Israeli
policy has led them to believe they'd get it.

These dangers have moved MKs from across the political spectrum to suggest that
officers' service and retirement conditions stipulate a cooling off period
before they can visit Muslim countries. Further study is necessary to determine
the practicality of this suggestion.

At the next level of risk are businesspeople who spend long periods abroad and
whose identities and routines are known. They are easy to track and attack. Just
last week, the bureau disclosed that two Hizbullah attempts to abduct Israelis
overseas had been thwarted.

While tourists on short junkets are at lower risk, they too aren't immune,
especially if they head for Sinai or South Thailand, which now top the bureau's
to-avoid list.

The Sinai threat is regarded as the most acute; the cease-fire with Hamas may
send terrorists there in search of Israeli victims. Other bureau warnings
include Jordan, India's Jammu and Kashmir, Kenya, Indonesia and Morocco.

WHAT CAN be done to overcome Israelis' apathy toward these warnings? Legislative
efforts are already under way to make it easier for travelers to change their
plans in the face of dire terror warnings. Travel agents and airlines would be
obliged to refund ticket costs to passengers who cite official Israeli warnings
as a reason for their cancellation - even at the last minute. This strikes us as
a sensible measure.

Another initiative we support would put the onus on tour operators and travel
Web sites to direct their customers to counter-terrorism information; travelers
would be required to declare in writing that they have been thus warned.

In cases of where travelers are particularly irresponsible, ignoring all
warnings, a firmer tactic should perhaps be considered.

For example, the border with Egyptian Sinai cannot be closed. So Israelis who
want to vacation there this season - despite the bureau's warning them off -
should be required to sign a form at the border crossing confirming that they
have been apprised of the dangers and assume personal responsibility for
disregarding them. The mere exercise might give some people pause.

That said, let's bear in mind that the real culprits here are not errant
business or leisure travelers who may take terrorist warnings too lightly, but
the terrorists themselves.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 14, 2008 Sunday

Letters

BYLINE: Helen Sullum, Ron Pomerantz, Mark L. Levinson, G. Uri Kozma Klein, David
Benkof responds, Naomi Feinstein

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 908 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Courtesy in class

Sir, - Israel's poor educational showing should surprise no one who has any
contact with our abysmal school system. One of our major failures not mentioned
in your news report "Int'l education survey gives Israel failing grade" or Calev
Ben-David's fine analysis "What the OECD report doesn't say" (both September 10)
was the near non- existence of discipline and common courtesy among students in
many, possibly most classrooms.

University seniors who are education majors face their student teaching
experience with trepidation after reports of fellow students reduced to tears by
classes of unruly, disrespectful pupils.

Who are the adults responsible for teaching common courtesy to children? This is
not part of the job description of our educational professionals. Where are the
parents who should be raising their offspring to show respect for others, peers
as well as adults? These lessons need to be taught before youngsters begin their
formal education.

Rules of proper conduct must be established for the school system and clarified
to students and their parents, along with the penalties for breaking them.

HELEN SULLUM

Jerusalem

Very dirty laundry

Sir, - Re "Defense Ministry: Barghouti unlikely to unite Palestinian factions if
freed" (September 10): Israel must not negotiate the release of Marwan
Barghouti. This would show incredible weakness. It would invite further
kidnappings, and the Gilad Schalit situation would degenerate to being a laundry
list of future demands.

Why would the current government risk freeing a killer? Such an act cannot
enhance any politician's future. What it would do is signal our many enemies
that the State of Israel can now be manipulated by gangsters.

I live thousands of miles away, but I see see no future in these negotiations.

It's complex? Sure. If it was easy, everyone would be a leader.

RON POMERANTZ

Parkland, Florida

Sir, - Yossi Alpher wrote that as Arab terrorists are released, so should
"Israelis jailed for many years for murdering Arabs" be.

Two problems: First, not many Israelis have murdered Arabs. Second, Israeli
society doesn't care if they stay in jail - in contrast with even our supposed
peace partners among the Arabs, who hail murderers as role models.

It is the moral imbalance between the sides - and not this or that tactic of
freeing or not freeing prisoners to Hamas, Fatah or Hizbullah - that makes
today's peace efforts futile ("In praise of prisoner releases,"September 9).

MARK L. LEVINSON

Herzliya

Transitioning from gay

Sir, - I was surprised at David Benkof's claim that JONAH promotes the ideas of
a Christian convert (Richard Cohen), one of the expounders of the ways to
transition from the gay life-style when it is felt as a burdensome addiction
("'Ex-gay' isn't kosher," August 11).

JONAH is a self-help group for transitioning same-sex addicts like myself, and
its Web site has information about many different groups and experts in this
field, not only Jewish ones.

I used to live a gay life-style in my twenties, but in my thirties I did teshuva
and am now living as a contented husband and father of two children. (My family
knows about my past problems).

By using various techniques, among them years of the Freudian analysis of the
Socarides-Nicolosi school, 12-Step programs like Sexaholics Anonymous,
Co-Counseling and religious techniques of self-discipline plus suggestions from
Cohen's books and lectures, I am now relieved of the compulsive part of this
partly "parenting-deficit-related" inner struggle.

There is not much difference between the Jewish-origin religions on the issue of
gay sex, and it is fairly frequent nowadays - and particularly before JONAH was
created, in 2000 - for some Jews to opt for a (Jewish- friendly) charismatic
Christian denomination to treat their problems.

It is understandable that Mr. Benkof hopes Mr. Cohen will eventually do teshuva
regarding his conversion to Christianity, but to vilify a whole self-help
organization - with the risk of endangering the healing process of hundreds of
effectively progressing clients like myself - for a minor "defect" such as this
is a doubtful endeavor.

And it is, hopefully, counterproductive: As a JONAH member, I would even thank
Mr. Benkof for his attacks, because nowadays any non-mainstream venture needing
some PR gets mention in the media only if attacked on some unimportant point -
as Mr. Benkof has done.

G. URI KOZMA KLEIN

Rabbinical Seminary

Budapest

David Benkof responds:

Richard Cohen was only a small aspect of my article. I encourage Mr. Klein to
get in touch with me (davidbenkof@aol.com) because in nearly a decade of
searching, I have not encountered a single JONAH member who changed orientations
as a result of JONAH's techniques.

Maybe they exist; but I don't understand why JONAH won't let me speak with them.

What about it, Shmuley?

Sir, - Once again Shmuley Boteach espouses his views of a meaningless life in
America and a negative place to raise one's children ("Should a new mother run
for vice president?" September 9). This constant America-bashing boggles the
mind.

In great part because of such evaluations, my husband, myself and our three
children made aliya 36 years ago and continue to live here with our
grandchildren and great- grandchildren, the country's problems notwithstanding.

Rabbi Boteach: Why not put your money where your mouth is and join your fellow
Americans who chose to make their lives in Eretz Israel?

NAOMI FEINSTEIN , Givat Ada

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The Jerusalem Post

September 14, 2008 Sunday

There's something about Sarah

BYLINE: JONATHAN S. TOBIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1163 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in
Philadelphia.

One of the most intriguing episodes of American political history, and one with
particular resonance for observers of this year's presidential race, took place
at the Democratic National Convention in 1896.

At that time, the Democrats were split between supporters of the policies of
outgoing conservative incumbent president Grover Cleveland and the party's left
wing, known to history as the Populists.

During the course of the platform debate, a little- known former congressman
from Nebraska named William Jennings Bryan ascended the podium and made the
radical argument for dropping the gold standard in favor of a system in which
the currency would also be pegged to the value of silver. This foolish policy
was favored by farmers because they believed devaluing the dollar would benefit
debtors in a depressed economy.

The 36-year-old Bryan was a political nobody when he started what would come to
be known as the "Cross of Gold" speech. When he concluded with a dramatic
warning to the eastern business establishment that it would not be allowed to
"crucify" mankind "upon a cross of gold," he had changed the face of American
politics.

According to historical accounts, Bryan's oratory sent his listeners into a wild
frenzy. A day later, the Democratic delegates, most of whom could not have
picked him out of a police lineup before the convention, nominated him for
president in a shocking upset.

During the ensuing campaign, Bryan went on to travel the country, giving the
rest of America a taste of his talent for speech-making - an unprecedented
development in American politics. His opponent, Republican William McKinley,
would, by contrast, spend the fall as every other previous presidential hopeful
had done, merely receiving visitors on his front porch in Ohio.

But McKinley had what Bryan did not - an army of expert fund-raisers and
organizers (tactics that were not invented by Karl Rove). As a result, he won
the presidency that November.

Although Bryan is chiefly remembered today for an incident at the end of his
life - his pathetic turn as the prosecutor in the Scopes "monkey trial," wherein
a teacher was criminally charged for instructing his students about evolutionary
theory - his charismatic run for the White House ushered in the modern era of
political campaigning.

THERE IS no "wayback" machine to return us to 1896 to witness how a single
speech could launch a national political career, but last week we may have seen
history repeat itself.

When Sarah Palin walked onto the stage of the 2008 Republican National
Convention, she was the focus of a firestorm of speculation and condescension
centered around the soap opera pregnancy of her daughter.

Even those in Republican standard-bearer John McCain's corner assumed she had
been tapped for the vice presidency as an act of affirmative action, and was
bound to be exposed as a lightweight. The analogies drawn with former vice
president Dan Quayle, whose "deer in the headlights" look would burden the first
Bush presidency from the get- go, were rampant even though Palin had yet to make
her first national appearance.

But by the time she finished speaking, Palin had become her party's biggest
star, eclipsing the popularity of even the honored war hero on the top of the
ticket.

Granted, Palin's acceptance speech was no "Cross of Gold" in terms of eloquence.
But her authentic "hockey mom" personality and tart criticisms of her opponent,
as well as of the media and the Washington establishment, enthralled not only
the delegates but a great many of those television viewers who had tuned in
because of the hullabaloo.

Republicans embraced Palin with the same sort of unexpected delight that the
Democrats experienced with Bryan 112 years ago.

YET, THE din of criticism has not diminished, although her address made it quite
clear that she is no "token female." Rather, it is she, not McCain, who has
become the principal political attraction on the GOP ticket.

Though one expects Democrats to disagree with the substance of her remarks, the
patronizing contempt with which Palin's candidacy has been regarded must go
deeper than simple partisanship.

Palin's nomination has reignited the culture wars of the 1980s and '90s, as
liberals view her not merely as a representative of the political party they
oppose, but as an icon of a culture they regard with snobbish distaste and
trepidation.

These sentiments span the liberal spectrum, and quite notably reside within the
Jewish community, a portion of which had heretofore been open to the McCain
candidacy. Judging by the reaction she has generated, Palin is well on her way
to becoming the evangelical bogeywoman for liberal Jews who view her beliefs as
the antithesis to all they hold dear. For them, the Palin phenomenon is a
nightmare.

Although soundly criticized for his remark, Barack Obama's slip of the tongue
about small-town Americans who cling to guns and religion rang true to more than
just his inner sanctum. To feminists, Sarah Palin is the embodiment of that
"small-town American," and while she may be a woman, she is not "their kind" of
woman. Even more to the point, the idea that a conservative woman may be the one
to finally break the ultimate political glass ceiling is met by many Democratic
women with particular dismay.

Last week, columnist Barbara Amiel wrote in The Wall Street Journal to compare
Palin to Margaret Thatcher, a fellow conservative who bucked feminist sentiment
in her rise to power in Britain. While it is way too early for such a
discussion, no one should be surprised if Palin vaults to the top of the ticket
in four or eight years, leaving more seasoned male GOP big shots in the dust. If
she does - as was the case with the similarly middle-class Thatcher - liberals,
and in particular, liberal women, will never forgive her for it.

Just as Palin's working mother persona has surely compelled some religious
conservatives to rethink their antediluvian beliefs that a woman's place is
still not in the governor's or vice president's office, so too should liberals
examine some of their overarching generalities.

She is from an overwhelmingly Republican state where independence is paramount.
She, like many others from Alaska, hunts. She's an evangelical Christian.
Finally, she's a woman whose faith guided her not to abort her Down syndrome
fetus. Liberals may insist upon smearing her as a yahoo coming in to trample the
rights of the few remaining freethinkers, but they'd be kidding themselves if
they deny that Palin is independent, unequivocating and a political natural
whose talents should not be underestimated.

On the strength of one remarkable speech, Sarah Palin has risen from obscurity
to become the darling of conservatives and a political star.

Her critics may hope that she never catches the brass ring, just as Bryan
ultimately failed to do. On the other hand, it is possible that we have just
been introduced to the woman who may become our first female president.

jtobin@jewishexponent.com

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GRAPHIC: Photo: SARAH PALIN and her husband return to Alaska on Wednesday.
Conservatives and liberals should reexamine some of their overarching
generalities. (Credit: AP)

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Oi, Jerusalem

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 737 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

For political junkies, there's fodder aplenty in the cast of characters and
machinations surrounding Jerusalem's November 11 mayoral election.

Let's begin with the super-charismatic, ultra-Orthodox Sephardi politician,
former Shas leader Aryeh Deri. Can he circumvent the statute barring some
ex-cons from running for local office within seven years of their release? Deri
used his tenure at the Interior Ministry to funnel money to a project headed by
his brother.

Victory would probably mean what he most wants - a return to the national arena.

Can Meir Porush, a Boyaner hassid and scion of one of the wealthiest and most
well-connected haredi clans, solidify his position as "official" candidate of
the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox community?

Polls show he'd have trouble winning. But victory would mean continued patronage
to the haredi sector.

Should Mayor Uri Lupolianski, the likable ultra- Orthodox Ashkenazi hailing from
the Lithuanian camp, give up hope of retaining the job? Among the fervently
Orthodox, Lupolianski is tarred as "haredi-lite." He's been known to attend
state ceremonies where (gasp) "Hatikva" has been sung.

Is it curtains for Israeli-Russian billionaire tycoon Arkadi Gaydamak? He's
supposedly been liquidating assets. For the campaign?

Then there's the wily Ya'acov Litzman, a Ger hassid and chairman of the United
Torah Judaism Party. It was UTJ's rotation deal between its Degel Hatorah
Lithuanians and the hassidim of Agudat Israel that forced Lupolianski to bow out
in favor of Porush.

But there's bad blood between Litzman and Porush.

Maybe this will be Nir Barkat's lucky year, after all. He's the so-called
secular candidate, a successful hi-tech entrepreneur who garnered 43 percent of
the votes five years ago and stuck around to serve in the thankless role of
municipal council opposition leader.

Barkat has made up with popular former Jerusalem police chief Mickey Levy. All
has been forgiven over that nasty incident in which someone hired a private eye
to dig up dirt on Levy at the time the ex-cop was thinking about making his own
mayoral run.

Is former chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, a venerated figure in the
national-religious camp, now hospitalized, really backing the non-observant
Barkat? Or is the rabbi's "blessing" a gracious gesture, rather than a political
endorsement?

ALL THIS leads to the question of whether the haredi political machine that
controls politics in the capital, doling out jobs and patronage in return for
votes, can unite to overcome the threat of Barkat. But such a focus misses the
most stunning question about this local election: Can a Zionist be elected mayor
of Israel's capital?

Jerusalem residents - there are 746,300 - have their heartfelt day-to-day
concerns such as not enough jobs being created, ever more unaffordable housing,
and sky-high rents. And everyone's upset about the excavation work on a light
rail system, now years behind schedule, that makes travel within the city a
nightmare.

Modern Orthodox and secular Jewish parents see the education system tilting in
favor of haredi pupils, who already comprise 58% of Jewish enrollment. Zionists
are troubled about a migration of thousands of Jews annually from a city that is
33% Arab. Arabs, while refusing to vote out of opposition to Israel's control of
Jerusalem, worry about atrocious city services.

Jerusalem desperately needs a mayor who can, without favoritism, minister to
this complex mosaic. The capital of Israel begs for a Zionist mayor who
understands that talk of an undivided Jerusalem is hypocritical when services
and infrastructure in Arab neighborhoods are scandalously inferior.

In theory, such a mayor can easily be elected because the ultra-Orthodox
comprise just 20% of the city's population and 30% of its Jews.

The haredim's advantage is that practically 100% of their eligible voters turn
out to vote for the candidates endorsed by their spiritual leaders. In contrast,
less than half of the non-haredi voters bestir themselves to cast a ballot, and
often split their vote.

It is intolerable that our capital be administered by anyone who does not
wholeheartedly embrace the ethos of Israeli society. Jerusalem deserves a mayor
who embodies tolerance and a respect for tradition, someone who will distribute
resources on the basis of fairness and pluralism.

Someone who won't feel uneasy when the national anthem is sung.

The majority rules - but only if it bothers to vote.

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September 12, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: David Rogers, Berel Koseff, Daniel Sass, Joseph Weissman

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 461 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Empathy...

Sir, - Re "Iran petitions UN over Eitan's 'threat'" (September 11): I am not
Jewish, but I support the Jewish people and their cause to stop Iran in building
nuclear weapons. The Iranians will certainly use such weapons if acquired at
some point in time. They must be stopped before they are able to attain such
weapons and use them against Israel.

DAVID ROGERS

Coventry, UK

...antipathy

Sir, - Re "Diplomatic storm breaks out over Zubari Chinese comment" (September
10):

In case our Olympic medalist does not know it, the whole world eats an enormous
amount of pig. And unless he does not accept Chabad's kashrut, they have been
providing kosher food at the Olympics on a daily basis - probably including
hummus.

Our man should also pay more attention to the way many Israelis misuse the
English language before commenting on other nationalities' use of it.

Reports from the Paralympics describe the wonderful, caring and efficient
service the Chinese are providing to everyone. To ensure their arrival in time,
special transport was provided for Orthodox Jews to the opening ceremony, which
started shortly after Shabbat ended.

I hope that severe action will be taken against this sportsman for his foolish
remarks.

BEREL KOSEFF

Jerusalem

'Is everything

satisfactory, Sir?'

Sir, - I believe that the abhorrent treatment by certain Tel Aviv hotels toward
the religious community goes beyond economics and standard business practice. In
my opinion it is a conscious attack against the religious community.

I booked a room at the Dan Panorama for this Shabbat (not by choice). I had to
pay an additional 50-percent charge for a late checkout. The catch: The hotel
stated that late check-out - with its additional 50% charge - only gets us an
additional five hours, to 6 p.m, and does not carry us through the end of
Shabbat. The additional 1.5 hours would require us to pay for an entire extra
night.

This is not doing business as usual. It can only be categorized as
anti-religious and/or pure greed. You make the call.

DANIEL SASS

Efrat

Sir, - Isn't it obvious that if the Orthodox establishment wanted to put an end
to the outrage of hotels forcing observant Jewish guests to check out during
Shabbat, it could do so in a snap? Any hotel adhering to an
anti-Sabbath-observer policy could promptly be threatened with the loss of its
kashrut certificate - which would mean few observant guests staying there over
Shabbat, or at any time.

So why doesn't the Orthodox establishment act? Purely out of pecuniary reasons.
The patronage involved in the kashrut supervision business provides jobs and
perks for thousands of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox functionaries, and it would
take principle and courage to jeopardize such patronage.

Enough said.

JOSEPH WEISSMAN

Paramus, New Jersey

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September 12, 2008 Friday

When dictatorships end with a whisper

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1855 words

HIGHLIGHT: COLUMN ONE

With its nuclear weapons program, its control of Lebanon, Gaza and Syria, its
massive influence in Iraq and Afghanistan and its messianic, global ambitions,
Iran is rightly viewed as the greatest threat to global security today.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Iranian challenge is that on the
issues of greatest concern to the West, there is no way to divide and conquer
the regime. Anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism and the quest for Islamic dominance
worldwide are sentiments shared by all levels of the regime. The desire for
nuclear weapons that can be used together with terror armies to destroy Israel
and the West is shared by all members of Teheran's decision-making bodies.

Those who preach appeasement towards Iran claim that President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad is not reflective of the regime. They argue that Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei is far more moderate than Ahmadinejad, and it is Khamenei, not
Ahmadinejad who calls the shots.

While it is true that Khamenei calls the shots, it is not true that he is
moderate. Khamenei is just as radical as Ahmadinejad. It was Khamenei's decision
to elect Ahmadinejad president. And Khamenei has approved every move Ahmadinejad
has made in office. Moreover, last week Khamenei announced that he wants
Ahmadinejad to serve a second term.

Then, too, Khamenei's rhetoric is just as vitriolic as Ahmadinejad's. On
Tuesday, he exhorted Iranian judges and members of parliament to patiently await
Islam's defeat of the West and not accept calls to embrace "rationality and
moderation" or agree to peacefully coexist with "the global arrogance," which is
how he refers to the US and Europe.

The Iranian regime came to power in a violent revolution 29 years ago. Led by
the charismatic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the hate-spewing, Koran-thumping
ayatollahs overthrew the pro-Western autocracy of the shah. The Islamic
revolution was a popular revolution. The shah's repressive policies and the
resonance of Khomeini's Islamic dogmas gave the ayatollahs broad support among
the Iranian people.

In the years and months that preceded the fall of the shah, the West failed to
understand either the sources or the dangers of the revolution. The US, Europe
and Israel had such close relations with the shah that they hadn't realized that
while broad, Iran's alliance with the West was skin deep. Indeed, the fact that
the Iranian people identified the West with the shah made it easy for Khomeini
and his followers to convince them that the West was no less their enemy than
the shah was.

THE IRANIAN revolution is frequently recalled as a cautionary tale for the West
as Americans, Israelis and Europeans continue to view unpopular, yet ostensibly
pro- Western Arab autocracies as stable. Such warnings have been uttered with
increasing frequency in recent years in regards to Egypt, whose pro-Western
dictator Hosni Mubarak now enters the twilight of his reign.

Mubarak has been ruling Egypt with an iron fist since 1981. He is 80 years old
and the state of his health is uncertain.

The Egypt Mubarak presides over is an economic basket case. Egypt's population
of 80 million - the highest in the Arab world - has doubled since he took power
after Anwar Sadat's assassination. Forty percent of Egyptians are under 15 years
old.

Mubarak has done little to advance his country's economic prospects. A fifth of
Egyptians subsist on less than a dollar a day. The average per capita income,
which has been declining since 2000, was $1,485 in 2006.

With few job prospects, Egypt's youth increasingly turn to the mosques for
consolation. There they embrace the jihadist doctrines of the Muslim
Brotherhood. Like its spinoffs - al-Qaida and Hamas - the Muslim Brotherhood
upholds jihad in the quest for Islamic world domination as its highest goal. And
due in large part to Mubarak's failure to develop his country, the Muslim
Brotherhood is the strongest social force in Egypt.

Owing to Mubarak's careful cultivation of Egypt's military and intelligence
services and his control of the media, the US and Israel uphold him as a strong
leader of a strong state. Yet Egypt's inherent weakness and Mubarak's own
incompetence is exposed every time something goes wrong in the country. Whether
al-Qaida strikes in Sinai or ferries sink to the bottom of the Red Sea, Egyptian
authorities are incapable of handling disasters.

On Saturday, at least 50 families were buried in rubble as part of a rocky cliff
crashed onto a shantytown in Cairo. According to The New York Times, in the
months leading up to the rock slide, residents had complained to authorities
repeatedly that the cliff was disintegrating. But the authorities ignored them.

On Saturday it took rescue workers several hours to respond to calls for help.
And when they arrived, they occupied themselves not with saving those trapped
beneath the rocks, but with preventing the crowds from demonstrating against the
regime. By Thursday, 64 bodies had been pulled from the rubble and the
excavation was far from complete.

For the past several years, Mubarak has been grooming his son Gamal to replace
him. But it is far from clear, even if he replaces Mubarak, that Gamal will be
able to maintain a grip on power similar to that of his father. Unlike Mubarak,
who commanded the Egyptian Air Force before he became Sadat's vice president,
Gamal has never served in the military. He does not enjoy the strong backing of
the military command, which prefers to see Mubarak's heir emerge from its ranks.

The prospect that a post-Mubarak Egypt will be seized by jihadist fervor capable
of fomenting a jihadist takeover of the country is real. And both Israeli and US
policy- makers should be planning contingencies for such a turn of events. But
recent developments in Pakistan show that while it is possible that the Muslim
Brotherhood could take over Egypt after Mubarak dies, it is also possible that a
less conclusive reality will ensue.

MUBARAK'S RULE of Egypt bears many similarities to recently ousted president
Pervez Musharraf's rule of Pakistan. Like Musharraf before him, Mubarak
understands that his hold on power is based not on his own people's consent but
on the US's continued political and financial support for his regime.
Consequently, like Musharraf, Mubarak views secular democrats - who enjoy
Western support - as greater threats to his regime than the jihadists, whom the
West opposes.

So, too, like Musharraf, Mubarak's owes his ability to remain in power to his
control of Egypt's military and intelligence services. And like Musharraf,
Mubarak has maintained their support both because he himself emerged from their
ranks and because he showers the army and intelligence services with economic
power and social prestige.

It was the US's support for Musharraf's secular opponents and their call for
elections that forced Musharraf from power this summer. The Pakistan the US now
confronts is led by the weak government of newly elected President Asif Ali
Zardari, who was sworn into office on Tuesday. Unlike Musharraf, who commanded
the military as president, Zardawi has little sway over Pakistan's General Staff
and the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence force.

After the September 11 attacks on the US, Washington was so concerned with the
prospect of what would happen if Musharraf were to leave office that it
subordinated its own interest in defeating the Taliban and al-Qaida to its
interest in maintaining him in power. For six years the US refrained from
attacking al-Qaida and Taliban redoubts inside Pakistan for fear that doing so
would weaken Musharraf's credibility within the military and among the Pakistani
population in general. Like their Egyptian counterparts, Pakistanis are better
disposed toward jihadists than they are toward the US. And in the interest of
maintaining Musharraf's support for its operations in Afghanistan, the US
allowed him to host al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan.

In Musharraf's last two years in office, the US's policy of self-restraint
became increasingly untenable. The Taliban and al-Qaida took control over more
and more of Pakistan's border provinces with Afghanistan and used the areas as
launching pads for their stepped-up insurgency in Afghanistan. In recent months,
it became apparent to Washington that if the US wishes to achieve victory in
Afghanistan, it will need to extend its fight to Pakistan's border provinces.

Counterintuitively, it was Musharraf's very exit from power that has enabled the
US in recent weeks to steeply intensify its operations in Pakistan. While
Pakistan's military commander Gen. Ashfaq Kayani is far less supportive of the
US than Musharraf was, he is also far weaker. What's more, the US has little
investment in his longevity in power. The same is the case with Zardawi's
government.

Last month, Kayani met with Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike
Mullen and Gen. David Petraeus, who has now taken command of the US Central
Command, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. There he apparently
rebuffed their request for Pakistani military support for American operations in
Pakistan.

But given the US's lack of investment in Kayani, his refusal did not have the
same effect as Musharraf's opposition to such raids had. Whereas the US
respected Musharraf's refusal to allow American forces to operate in Pakistan,
Washington feels free to ignore Kayani's objections.

The fact that in Pakistan today no one person or faction has the power to
control the country is what rendered the US's stepped up operations inside of
its border provinces with Afghanistan politically feasible. The US's stony
silence in the face of Kayani's condemnation Wednesday of its ground forces'
raid on a Taliban camp in Pakistan this week showed that America is no longer
deterred by Pakistani objections.

There is no doubt that the current state of affairs in Pakistan is inherently
unstable. If the US raises its military profile in Pakistan too much, it is
liable to foment a backlash that could propel its enemies to power in that
nuclear-armed state. But if the US is able to press its advantage with a weak
regime, it may be able to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida before they muster the
strength necessary to take over the country and so secure Pakistani neutrality
for the foreseeable future.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS in Pakistan show that the situation in Iran need not repeat
itself in Egypt after Mubarak exits the scene. Weak interim regimes provide
opportunities that do not exist in strongly authoritarian and deeply unpopular
regimes.

Based on the current situation in post-Musharraf Pakistan, perhaps the US and
Israel should not be fearing that if Gamal Mubarak fails to secure full control
of Egypt after his father dies they will have to contend with an Iranian-style
Muslim Brotherhood regime. Maybe what will emerge is a more amorphous situation
where no one group will have the power to assert absolute power. Such a
situation could free the US and Israel to concentrate on simply defeating their
enemies, without concerning themselves with the fortunes of those who have yet
to join in the fight against the forces of global jihad.

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September 12, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Jack Sklan, Nathan Wirtschafter, Ruth Schueler

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 248 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

MOVING ON

I was interested to read the article headed "Across the board" (August 29)
describing the current efforts to encourage the playing of chess in Jerusalem.
However, I think your readers should also be made aware of the fact that more
than 20 years ago Keren Yaldenu added chess to its extensive list of activities
at their Tikvatenu community centers.

Their first chess club was in their Romema center. Unfortunately, due to a lack
of funds (primarily the cessation of support from the Education Ministry's
Department for Youth and Sport) this activity has ceased. However, during the
years of its existence there was a total of some 550 members from age seven
onwards.

Jack Sklan

Jerusalem

EDUCATION FOR ALL

The August 29 cover story, "Second-class citizens," contains this sanctimonious
quote from Deputy Mayor Yehoshua Pollack: "I'd like to remind everyone that
education is a public service to which even haredi children are entitled."

Exactly. Now when are the haredi schools going to start teaching the core
curriculum?

Nathan Wirtschafter

Hashmonaim

NOT SO FUNNY

I was absolutely shocked when I saw the August 29 Back2Basics comic. What was
Matt Zalen thinking when he produced this cartoon? Medicine cabinets are
extremely dangerous and should not be accessible to children. On August 18 a
young man killed himself by jumping from the sixth floor into an atrium of a
shopping mall in Syracuse, New York, because he could not beat his addiction to
cough syrup!

Ruth Schueler, Jerusalem

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September 12, 2008 Friday

Mailbag

BYLINE: Zelda Harris, Barry Newman, Reida Mishory-Isseroff, Antoinette Hasleton,
Zvi Freedman, Andy Selby

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1312 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Follow the money...

Dear editor,

Re: Just servitude? (September 5)

I found the article about New Profile extremely annoying. As a mother of sons
and a social activist I do not understand the connection to feminism. First, one
has to look at the funders. Do you know that the Quakers in the UK (HQ in Euston
Road) were prominent amongst the very few Christian groups who refused to
support or let the activists for the release of Soviet Jewry use their premises
for meetings? What is Bread for the World? It suggests dealing with poverty, so
what is their motive?

Dr. Dolev is almost paradoxical in her description of the unkept half
soldier-half civilian, in her statements about wars, which we should not have
had with Lebanon, peace with Egypt, leaders speaking only in "a degrading way,"
and leaving Palestinians alone to organize their lives. How does she infer that
they would not have the inclination for hatred?

In my opinion these people are either naive or dangerous and I hope that you
will print a response article or interview, lest too many young people be
dissuaded from defending their/our homeland.

Let us hope one day we will only need a smart, small army to defend us; and that
our neighbours will live in real peace; and the question of obligatory
conscription will no longer be relevant. In the meantime, God bless our
courageous young men and women who put their lives on hold and at risk for the
sake of us all.

Zelda Harris,

Tel Aviv,

... and see where it leads

Dear editor,

Re: Just servitude? (September 5)

Holmes (to Watson): I call your attention, by dear fellow, to the curious
incident of how utterly remarkable Metro's article on New Profile and the
conscientious objector movement in Israel was.

Watson: But Holmes, the responses to Mr. Hoffman's questions were totally banal
and in no way persuasive or even particularly informative on the subject of
demilitarizing Israel. The article, quite frankly, was in no way remarkable.

Holmes: That, my good Watson, is what's curious.

Rarely have I encountered a less thought-provoking discussion on pacifism and
conscientious objection than your article on New Profile. And I say this as
someone who spent his university years as the war in Vietnam was raging. During
this period I encountered and had discussions with more than a few who declared
themselves to be - both legally and illegally - conscientious objectors and read
many intriguing opinion pieces on the subject. Which is why I found Dr. Dolev's
thoughts and arguments both predictable and disappointing.

So what New Profile stands for and hopes to achieve is hardly troubling and not
really worth spending any time on. What is troubling, though, is the fact that
the group receives the major part of its funding from Christian organizations. I
couldn't help but wonder: Why would Bread for the World, a group dedicated to
eradicating global hunger, provide financial backing to an Israeli organization
dedicated to the obsolescence of its defense forces?

A clue, perhaps, lies in the slogan the organization uses - "Neither shall they
learn war anymore." Although this comes from Micha (4:1-3), it is frequently
used by Christian missionary groups to describe the second coming. I claim no
extensive expertise on Christian thinking or missionary propaganda, but I can't
help but be bothered by the subliminally promoted idea that once the Christian
messiah returns and is universally accepted, "they" - that is, we Jews - will no
longer have any need for warfare.

To be fair, there is nothing in Dr. Dolev's background to suggest that she is in
any way connected with messianic activities. Though an unapologetic leftist and
Palestinian sympathizer, she seems to be secular to the core and does not appear
to be openly promoting Christian dogma. Whether or not the Quakers and Bread for
the World are, though, is worth giving consideration to.

Is New Profile, to be blunt, knowingly or unknowingly promoting some hidden
agenda? This is what Mr. Hoffman should have asked, and which would have made
the article much more relevant and intriguing.

Barry Newman,

Ginot Shomron

Our melting pot doesn't smell so bad

Dear editor,

Re: Just servitude? (September 5)

I knew and liked Diana Dolev for the five years that I lived in Arad after
making aliya.ÊHowever, I take issue with her concept that Israel is an "overly
militarized society."

I also take issue with the statement made by her, that the "kids from elite
families go to elite units ... on the other hand, Ethiopians for instance, go to
the checkpoints." Our youngest daughter, who has just finished her service in
the army at a checkpoint near Kalandia, is the product of an 'elite' family from
Ra'anana.Ê She served proudly and happily with a girl from Eilat (3rd generation
Israeli), a girl from Hadera (2nd generation Russian immigrant), and yes, an
Ethiopian girl from Beersheba (who by the way doesn't even speak Amharic as her
parents made it a point to speak Hebrew at home as she was born here!).ÊMany
other backgrounds were represented at her base as well - pointing to the fact
that the IDF truly is Israel's melting pot.

I think that educating our children to refuse service is akin to national
Harakiri.ÊShe should not be proud of this; too much is at stake.

Reida Mishory-Isseroff,

Moshav Olesh

Learn Hebrew before it's too late

Dear editor,

Re: Five months and done (August 29)

When we made aliya 33 years ago, we understood that we would be entitled to five
months' ulpan. Our shaliah told us to come May 29th, but the ulpan was just
ending for the summer. By the time it restarted in September, we could no longer
attend as we were now moshavniks working an 18-hour day trying to plant crops,
build a community and learn how to get around red tape, etc. Our distance from
the moshav made it impossible to travel into Tel Aviv or even Beersheba; and so,
our Hebrew was put on the back burner. My husband was called upon to go into the
army for two months (aged 43) where he did in fact do an ulpan of sorts. I never
did.

As I was an English teacher living on a moshav, that at that time was made up of
mostly Anglo families, my lack of Hebrew wasn't such a major problem. However,
now at age 67-plus it is. I feel as if I'm not part of the nation. I can speak
and understand the language on the level of a four-year-old. This means that
attending a play or joining in activities for "golden oldies" is stressful and
the cost of an ulpan today, plus the cost of getting there, is prohibitive.

So all you folks distressed because of the reduction in the length of your
ulpan, I say, fight for a longer ulpan. Go to the Aliya Department and protest,
because, if you want to be true Israelis, then you have to know the language
inside out! I'm right behind you.

Antoinette Hasleton,

Moshav Sde Nitzan

Let P.T. Barnum keep his business ideas

Re: A sucker is born every minute (Metro Mailbag, September 5)

This sweeping remark - maximum profit, minimum service - that this is what
business is about is an insult and an affront to all the companies and stores
that give excellent and honest service.

If this correspondent is self-employed, it's a case of the pot calling the
kettle black. The same goes for a salary earner whose prime object is to receive
his check at the end of the month regardless of the satisfaction, if any, from
his work.

An apology is required. Let him keep his opinions, however justified, to the two
TV companies in question. Barnum's "business philosophy" should remain in the
circus.

Zvi Freedman,

Tivon

Just put the freeze on HOT already

Dear editor,

Re: Ancient standards, bad material (Metro Mailbag, September 5)

I am getting a bit bored by all these letters complaining about Hot and Yes. I
have the perfect solution for these unhappy people cut off from these companies:
there is no law in this country that you have to be linked to a satellite or
cable television company.

Andy Selby,

Eilat

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September 12, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: J.M. King, Gershon Harris, David Geffen, Batia Macales, E. Minoff,
Harvey Schwartz, Aryeh Hirsch

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1272 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

The real Zionists

Sir, - One can sympathize with Amotz Asa-El's lament about the bad smells, the
wreck of the light rail downtown, the dominance of black hats, etc. in the city
in which I also live ("How the Diaspora can help Jerusalem," September 5). But I
was mystified about his lack of definition of the loss of the "Zionist" nature
of the city. Does he identify Zionism with good city planning, pleasanter odors
and more secularism?"

What about choice of residence? If fewer secularists left the city, perhaps
there would not be a drop in secular schools. Should Asa-El not be suggesting
that Diaspora Jews come and live in Jerusalem instead of giving money for
museums and other non-haredi projects?

Most mystifying was his "keeping Jerusalem Zionist is no less important than
keeping it Jewish." Is the implication that Zionism is possible without Judaism,
and Judaism possible without Zionism?

Which raises these questions: Would a Jerusalem municipality with a secular
mayor, a successful light rail and a nicer aroma be more Zionist? A failed city
full of haredim more Jewish? If keeping Jerusalem Jewish is of value, where lies
the tragedy in less Zionism?

Finally, if haredim come and secularists leave, who are the real Zionists?

J.M. KING

Jerusalem

Sir, - I was confused by Amotz Asa-El's advice on what Diaspora Jewry can do to
put some Zionism back in Jerusalem. His solution: "Invest in Jerusalem's
modernity, tolerance and pluralism. Every penny a Jew from NY, London, Toronto
or Melbourne these days puts in a Jerusalem-based start-up, museum, park,
theater, conservatory, university or modern synagogue will help restore Zion to
Zionism."

First of all, such investments have formed the backbone of the institutions
Asa-El cites ever since Jewish philanthropy for Israel began. And while such
generosity is wonderful, and often critical, it doesn't come with any people to
populate or patronize the museums, universities, parks, etc.

Second, there is one area where foreign Jews are taking Asa-El's advice, almost
beyond all expectation: the buyout of luxury apartments and valuable Jerusalem
real estate for investment or vacation purposes only - making it almost
impossible for committed Zionists already living and working in Jerusalem (or
desiring to do so) to afford decent housing. Ironically, the fact that the
ultra- Orthodox are actually living in Jerusalem could be defined as Zionist,
though obviously far from what Asa-El had in mind.

Without belittling the importance of Diaspora investments in a more pluralistic
Jerusalem, only living and breathing people can bring about demographic, social
and cultural change in any city.

GERSHON HARRIS

Hatzor Haglilit

Neither bricks nor stone

Sir, - In "Barren ground" (September 5) Samuel Freedman appears to have
forgotten the American mentality when it comes to building monuments marking US
historical events. Although World War II was over in 1945, it took almost 60
years for a memorial to be built. Only 40 years after the Korean War did the US
commemorate that conflict in stone. The Vietnam War was so controversial that
only after heavy pressure - eight years later - was the compelling wall of
names, soldiers who gave their lives, constructed.

In Israel, the wounds of war, the intifada and terrorist attacks are very raw.
Immediacy is what counts. Monuments, plaques and galleries are erected as soon
as possible out of a powerful communal force never to forget.

Truthfully, the US has its own special type of monument to the victims of
al-Qaida and 9/11, and it is seen daily in the drawn-out wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq. The real memorial to the tragic events of 9/11 is the sacrifice of the
American soldiers killed in these two countries. The count of the dead, a
monument in the heart of society, needs neither bricks nor stone.

DAVID GEFFEN

Jerusalem

Soul-awakening...

Sir, - Jonathan Rosenblum's "Getting to know you" (September 5) was perfect in
every way. It was perfect timing now we are in the month of Elul and more
introspective, delving into our souls and being more tolerant of others,
regardless of their level of religious observance.

I feel fortunate to be living in the community of Ginot Shomron, where seculars,
national religious and haredim all live very close to one another and respect
each other. We had a funeral not too long ago where about 1,000 people of all
kinds showed up, held hands and comforted each other. There have been weddings
and bar mitzvas where we danced together.

If more cities and communities adopted this type of lifestyle, maybe the world
would be a nicer place to live in. When we have love and respect for our fellow
Jew, then the whole world will respect us.

This op-ed made me stop and think. It was like the shofar blasts that awaken the
soul. Thank you, Mr. Rosenblum.

BATIA MACALES

Ginot Shomron

...on a one-way street

Sir, - Jonathan Rosenblum appears to enjoy living on a one-way street. It's
apparently OK for haredim to move into secular neighborhoods to share their joy
in Torah life with their neighbors. What about the other way around ? Can a
secular Jew move into a haredi neighborhood so its residents can see, learn and
possibly understand the life- style of the secular segment of our society?

Of course not. In all likelihood, such a Jew would find his home and car
torched, and he would be lucky if he and his family were not beaten and lynched.
Heaven help him if he should dare fly the Israeli flag from his balcony.

As long as haredi neighborhoods are off-limits to secular Jews, I see no reason
why we secular Jews should welcome haredim in our neighborhoods. Let them stay
where they are, concentrate on enjoying their life-style as they understand it,
and allow us to do the same.

E. MINOFF

Safed

One percent's undemocratic

Sir, - Sarah Honig laments the unworthiness of the candidates among whom Kadima
members must choose in their upcoming primary to select Ehud Olmert's successor
("A stinky, nasty red herring," September 5).

But there is an even more outrageous, fundamental flaw in this process: the fact
that it is only the Kadima membership - representing less than 1 percent of the
Israeli population - that will be selecting Israel's purported next head of
government.

Last month, the American Israeli Action Coalition (AIAC), representing the voice
of the more than 250,000 Americans now living in Israel, criticized that process
severely, characterizing it as "undemocratic" and "smacking of totalitarianism"
and calling for new elections so that the entire Israeli electorate can choose
its next leader democratically. Coming from a bastion of democracy, the
Americans living in Israel clearly recognize what the democratic process is; and
"this ain't it."

AIAC is a non-political, non-partisan, issue-oriented NGO. Its focus is not on
the individual candidates but on the true, democratic nature of the electoral
process. A faulty process yields faulty leadership.

HARVEY SCHWARTZ, Chairman

American Israeli Action Coalition

Jerusalem

A losing battle

Sir, - Three fathers ask why their children, civilians killed by Arab terrorists
in the Oslo War, get no official government recognition on Remembrance Day, in
the same manner and breadth as do fallen soldiers ("Plea of the fathers," Aryeh
Dean Cohen, August 22).

The answer is simple: This would require Israeli politicians to recognize that
by setting up the Palestinian Authority, they committed the foolishness of
moving the front of Israel's terror war from the battlefield into our cities.
These politicians will never admit the true horror of the Oslo-road map folly,
and so the three fathers are fighting a losing battle.

ARYEH HIRSCH, Beit El

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September 12, 2008 Friday

Palin, Obama and the new American wilderness

BYLINE: AMOTZ ASA-EL

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1033 words

HIGHLIGHT: Middle Israel. The two unique biographies encapsulate America's
extreme choices in the face of a thankless world: sycophancy and escapism

American commentators' immediate responses to Sarah Palin's abrupt arrival in
their midst were, for better or worse, ideological, spotlighting her
conservative views and policies and probing the extent to which her personal
life reflected them.

But I am not American, and my first thoughts upon sight of this strange election
season's latest twist were geographic; how vast, varied, grand and exotic
America sprawls so many light years beyond Washington's budgets, Los Angeles's
banquets, New England's poets and New York's turrets. It is difficult enough to
digest what stretches from Mt. Rainier to Cape Canaveral and from the White
Mountains to the Mojave Desert, but this election has brought the world -
probably also many Americans - to a US that reaches even further, all the way to
the thick of the Pacific Ocean, where Barack Obama was born, and to the
threshold of the Arctic Circle, where Palin was raised.

Of course these two Americans are unique not only cartographically, but also
biographically, and the question therefore, besides which of the two will
survive November's poll, is what their joint emergence says about the state of
the American nation.

THEY SAY of Alaska that it is the last frontier, but that's not true: it is
beyond the last frontier.

The American frontier, as it was studied and romanticized by historian Frederick
Jackson Turner, was about centuries of movement from east to west by settlers,
developers and other agents of civilization. Even the regions that remained
sparsely settled were part of this specter, as they led to the last frontier,
the West Coast, which eventually became heavily settled.

Not Alaska. That place, though more than three times the size of France, is home
to a population smaller than Jerusalem's. Anchorage, what in Alaska passes for
metropolis, shares space with some 250 moose in the winter and a thousand in the
summer, as well as several hundred bears, both black and grizzly. In the winter,
when temperatures sink to minus 20 and 30 centigrade, wolves howl
hearing-distance from the suburbs, sometimes attacking dogs while their owners
walk them. In the spring visitors are warned to avoid the city's coastal strip
lest its tidal mudflats swallow them.

All this is happening in Anchorage, which lurches on Alaska's southern rim and
is the closest anything there comes to a metropolis. Alaska, therefore, is not a
frontier; it is a wilderness, both in the foreboding and the enchanting senses
of the term.

Yes, it has been serving the American civilization well, supplying it with furs,
fish, whales, gold and now oil, but it never was and is not likely to become
substantively populated anytime soon, nor will it become in the foreseeable
future smoothly connected to Mainland US, which Alaskans proverbially call "the
Outside." All this considered, Czar Alexander's sale of Alaska to the US in
1867, for a measly 2 cents per acre, seems a bit more sensible than ordinarily
realized.

All this says nothing good or bad about Gov. Palin's suitability for the job she
is seeking, only that the geography from which she emerged is probably the most
unique in the history of American presidential races. Most, that is, with the
possible exception of Barack Obama.

OBAMA'S BIO-GEOGRAPHY could hardly be more antithetical to Palin's.

Unlike the Alaskan governor, who spent almost each of her 44 years in the
remote, frosty and sparsely settled land to which she was brought from Idaho as
an infant, the Illinois senator's origins span three continents. His childhood,
which ran back and forth between Honolulu, Hawaii and Jakarta, Indonesia, could
hardly be more far- flung, dizzying and rare, even before considering his
biological father's roots in Siaya, Kenya, which add yet another horizon to an
already uniquely cross-cultural biography.

Much has been said about this background embodying the American melting pot and
experience of immigration. It doesn't; just like Alaska is not the historic
American frontier.

On the contrary. Obama's mother, Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas, married
successively one Muslim from Kenya and another from Indonesia, and both
marriages ended in divorce. If anything, this Kansas girl's procession from
Middle America through Hawaii to the outer world ended in a disillusioning
disharmony that is emblematic of America's ongoing misunderstandings with much
of the world in general, the Third World in particular and the Muslim world most
of all.

FACED WITH all this bizarreness, many question both candidates' potential appeal
to the average American, whose background is so different from both Obama's and
Palin's. Now, after Obama's color and its meaning to the voters have been
discussed ad nauseam, discussion is shifting to the meaning of Palin as a
hunter, beauty queen, hockey mom, pro-lifer and mother of a mentally disabled
baby and a pregnant teenager.

All that, like both candidates' admissions that as students they experimented
with drugs, or Obama's Ivy League elitism, or Palin's having attended four
different colleges in Idaho, Hawaii and Alaska before finally graduating are
important, but they miss the point.

The point is America's relationship with the outer world, that sense which most
Americans have come to share in recent years, that much of the world that owes
them the freedom, confidence, prosperity, invention and self- empowerment that
it cherishes not only does not thank America, it resents it.

In casting their votes this fall, Americans will be making many statements -
about abortions, the deficit, the environment, Iraq and whatnot. Yet above all
these issues will hover Obama's and Palin's passive statements about the
non-American world: He, a product of America's magnificent failure to engage the
Third World, will represent the quest to appease America's many detractors
despite their unwarranted obnoxiousness, while she, like the state she governs,
will represent the urge to escape the Old World, all the way to the brink of its
inhospitable edge.

Has it really come down to that? Do 9/11, Iraq and the rise of new
non-democratic superpowers leave America with no choice other than sycophancy or
escapism? For more on that, stay tuned for the next American presidency.

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September 12, 2008 Friday

The failure was our fault, too

BYLINE: DAVID J. FORMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 1105 words

HIGHLIGHT: Counterpoint. The Olso Accords: The 15th anniversary

If peace is ever achieved between Israelis and Palestinians, to be perfectly
candid, it will be because of me. Let me explain this immodest assertion. Six
weeks before the Oslo Accords were initialed in the capital of Norway, whereby
Israelis and Palestinians agreed to mutual recognition, I accompanied prime
minister Yitzhak Rabin on his way to address a convention in Jerusalem of North
American Jewish youth.

As we approached the podium, I remarked to him that I hoped that the vote of
no-confidence in his government to be presented in the Knesset the next day
would not pass. There were a number of no-confidence resolutions scheduled to be
introduced, and it was impossible to know which way the vote would go.
Dejectedly, Rabin said that his sense was that one of them would indeed pass. To
which I exclaimed: "No way!" He thought I said "Norway," and the rest is
history. Therefore, I proudly take full responsibility for the Oslo Accords.

RABIN WAS not the first prime minister who understood the need for a two-state
solution as outlined in the accords. Menachem Begin internalized this reality
when he signed a peace agreement with Egypt's Anwar Sadat, which included a call
for Palestinian autonomy, an antecedent to Oslo. The Likud government's
evacuation of Yamit was an obvious sign that a similar dismantlement of
settlements must follow if Israelis were ever to live peacefully side- by-side
with Palestinians.

Binyamin Netanyahu, for all his excessive and chauvinistic bravado, also
understood the necessity to recognize an independent Palestinian state. Like
Rabin on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, he too shook Yasser
Arafat's hand when he signed the Wye Plantation memorandum. Ehud Barak tried to
follow in Rabin's footsteps when he met with Arafat at Camp David, and although
he failed, it was after the outbreak of the second intifada that his prime
ministerial successor, Ariel Sharon, began talking about parting with the dream
of the "Greater Land of Israel."

Sharon embraced the road map for Middle East peace that was put forward by the
Quartet (the US, Russia, EU and UN). Despite clarifications that he raised, he
began to initiate one of the Oslo principles that was written into the road map
by disengaging from Gaza. In all likelihood, had Sharon not suffered an
incapacitating stroke, he may have finished the work agreed upon 15 years
earlier in Norway, by withdrawing from most of the West Bank.

Three years after my initial encounter with Rabin, I found myself again in his
presence. I was invited to be part of the relatively small Israeli delegation
when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. I was surprised at the
invitation, because when Rabin was the defense minister in the unity government
headed by Yitzhak Shamir, Rabbis for Human Rights, of which I was the chairman
then, was extremely vocal in its criticism of his response to the first
intifada. At the Shabbat dinner before the ceremony, I asked Rabin's
administrative secretary how was it possible that I was asked to be part of the
delegation. Rabin, who was standing next to me, commented: "Because, Rabbi
Forman, you were right."

IN RETROSPECT, it is difficult to judge whether those of us who were so
enthralled at the time would be ultimately justified in our unbridled enthusiasm
for the Oslo Accords, for they have yet to be realized. Were we right in our
call to end the occupation? For certain, we were right in our demand for an end
to the human rights abuses that accompanied the occupation - not only because of
what the abuses did to Palestinians, but also because of what they said about
our ethical values as a nation. I suspect that is what Rabin meant when he told
me I was right. He concluded that Israel could not continue to fight an
interminable war with a determined people without endangering our physical and
moral well-being.

For those who opposed Oslo then, and who today brandish the inflammatory slogan
"the criminals of Oslo," what is their plan? They have none, except continued
occupation, which will eventually lead to a call by the entire international
community for a one-state solution, essentially bringing an end to the Jewish
state. We will be unable to resist all the forces that will be aligned against
us.

To those who berate the Oslo Accords and their subsequent derivative agreements,
by what logic can they blame them for the second intifada or Hamas's takeover of
Gaza? What was the alternative to the evacuation of Gaza - watching our soldiers
die by the day to defend a few thousand settlers living a surreal posh life amid
dire Palestinian poverty? Might not the rocket attacks on Sderot have been more
devastating had there been no withdrawal? Might not suicide bombings have
increased, despite the security barrier (of which only one-third is completed),
had we shown no willingness to reach a compromise.

Yes, the Palestinians violated the Oslo Accords. Much of what they suffer is
self-inflicted - a direct result of the horrific terrorist bombings perpetrated
against us. But, we must also assume a measure of responsibility for sabotaging
the promise of peace that the accords afforded us. Did we freeze the settlement
enterprise? No - we continue to build new settlements and expand existing ones,
all the while refusing to dismantle illegal ones. Have we removed one
checkpoint? No - on any given day Palestinians can encounter 100 roadblocks. Did
we invest in the Palestinian economy? No - we strangled it. Have we stopped the
growth of a "fifth column" of West Bank settlers who wreak havoc in the
territories? No - we protect them. Have the above served Israel's security
needs? No - they have exacerbated them.

Does any sane individual truly believe that the status quo can be maintained
indefinitely, that the world will stand pat while we continue to rule over
another people and occupy its land? Only one who considers megalomania a form of
foreign policy would dare to posit such a self- destructive ideological
worldview.

Whatever criticism one may level against the Oslo Accords, which gave birth to
the internationally recognized Taba understandings, the Clinton plan, the Geneva
Initiative and the road map (all of which are basically equal to each other) and
whatever real or imagined weaknesses exist in them, they still are the only
viable game on the global agenda that has any chance of extricating Israelis and
Palestinians from the present morass. Most important for us Jews, they still
provide the possibility, however slight, of one day realizing the eternal Jewish
hope to fulfill our thrice-daily liturgical longing for and dream of peace.

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September 12, 2008 Friday

The wooden-headedness factor

BYLINE: SARAH HONIG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 1251 words

HIGHLIGHT: Another Tack. The Oslo Accords: The 15th anniversary

Insightful Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman died in February
1989, more than four years before Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin and their
underhanded crew clandestinely negotiated the Oslo Accords and then dropped them
on the heads of all unsuspecting Israelis, including their prime minister.
Yitzhak Rabin proved too weak-willed to resist the fait accompli with which he
had been presented and on September 13, 15 years ago, he formalized it on the
White House lawn.

Thus Tuchman, alas, missed an example of preposterous statecraft on a scale that
would have easily vied with every absurdity she included in her 1984 March of
Folly.

Defining folly as "the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own
interests," Tuchman demanded that to qualify as folly, each policy examined
needs to meet three criteria: "It must have been perceived as counterproductive
in its own time," "a feasible alternative course of action must have been
available" and "the policy in question should be that of a group, not an
individual leader, and should persist beyond any one political lifetime." It
must be adhered to by "collective government or a succession of rulers in the
same office."

Oslo, sadly, meets all of Tuchman's conditions and then some. Rarely in human
affairs is it as possible to point to a single inanity as the trigger which
radically changed the fortunes of a people - in Israel's case of a beleaguered
people, struggling for bare physical survival. Oslo turned this once feisty and
plucky little nation into an apathetic aggregate that has ceased to seethe about
much of anything. It briefly appeared that the Second Lebanon War, Oslo's direct
defective descendant, might ignite the extinguished flicker of common sense yet
again, but that spark quickly died out.

The Oslo-generated apathy allowed Ehud Barak's rash unilateral flight from
Lebanon, the unilateral flight from Gaza and the expulsion of its 10,000 Jews,
the relinquishment of the strategically indispensable Philadelphi corridor, the
establishment of Hamastan, the continued funneling of funds and supplies of
electricity and goods to Hamastan, the failure to react against the rocketing of
Sderot and Ashkelon, the obsequious acquiescence to PA demands for "goodwill
gestures" (such as the unilateral release of convicted terrorists), the
shrinking of areas west of the security fence (such as the 4,000 relinquished
Ma'aleh Adumim dunams), the in-your-face sedition within Israel's own Arab
sector and too much more to mention.

Our tired masses seem to stomach anything. There is somehow an unuttered
expectation that if we ignore palpable danger signs or tolerate them and make
nice, they'll go away.

That is Oslo's incontrovertible legacy to the Israeli psyche. Few dare insist on
the justice of our cause. Fewer yet know our case. The youngest Israelis are
never taught it and remain ignorant to a degree that severely imperils Israel's
self-preservation prospects. Increasingly we see ourselves as our enemies
portray us, and we insert their fraudulent narrative into our school
curriculums, art, theater and film. We brainwash and browbeat ourselves but call
that enlightenment and broadmindedness.

Pre-Oslo we retaliated for every terror onslaught and refused to give in even
when hostages' lives hung in the balance. Today the nation that rescued hijacked
passengers at Entebbe debases itself by freeing barbaric mass murderers, and it
bankrolls the indiscriminate shelling of its own towns. The nation that
liberated Jerusalem contemplates relinquishing it.

OSLO'S RATIONALE was to purchase a modicum of peace by sacrificing strategically
vital territory. Yet our convoluted logic failed the test of simple popular
perception. All our sophisticated argumentation notwithstanding, nothing could
erase the core intuition that a people ready to surrender its patrimony isn't
genuinely attached to it as are native sons to their ancestral soil.

By giving away bits of the Jewish heartland, we imparted the impression here and
abroad that we have no roots, claim or connection to this country - that we're
not here by right. Israeli concessions underscored the slanderous image of
Israelis as interlopers who plead to be allowed to retain a bit of what they
usurped.

Oslo conferred legitimacy on the PLO, an organization whose raison d'etre was to
cleanse this land of our presence. Therein lies the fundamental difference
between what Menachem Begin contracted with Egypt and what Rabin was conned into
championing. Egypt is a neighboring state with whom we fought a number of wars
and with whom we reached accommodation.

By compromising with an organization founded for the explicit purpose of coming
in our stead, the Rabin-Peres government undermined Israel's claim not only to
territories it freed in the 1967 war of self-defense, but it undermined its
claim to the whole shebang - to the entire state Jews established in 1948. It's
no coincidence that more than at any time since 1948 there are escalating
challenges in the international arena to our very right to exist. It's no longer
taboo in polite society to suggest that Israel shouldn't be.

THAT IS the greatest long-term harm inflicted by Oslo. Not all Israelis can
coherently identify the damage and home in on its corollaries but, sensing grand
national failure, they grow dispirited. Disheartenment inures them to repeated
blows. Whereas at Oslo's outset we still counted what Rabin cynically dubbed the
"victims of peace," we no longer do so. The deadly tally now nears 1,600.
Proportionally this is tantamount to 80,000 fatalities in the US. While
Americans remember 9/11's disaster (whose toll is equivalent to 60 deaths in
Israel), most workaday Israelis don't instantly recognize 9/13 for the disaster
it was.

That's how profound is the Oslo-imposed impassivity, exacerbated by journalists
and judges who failed to protect the public which depended on them. Though 15
years on, it's all too abundantly clear that Oslo is a farcical flop, yet
establishment mouthpieces insist on depicting it as an extraordinary
breakthrough. The interminable mind-numbing media mantra is all-pervasive, while
the opposition is stymied by an agenda-guided and politically-interventionist
judiciary, unparalleled anywhere in the free world.

Yet the primary culprits are the politicians who brazenly betrayed our trust -
from Tsomet MKs Gonen Segev and Alex Goldfarb (who enabled Rabin to ratify Oslo
by selling their votes for a ministerial appointment and a Mitsubishi,
respectively) and all the way to Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni who
ditched the platform on which they were elected and cheated their voters to
implement Oslo's disengagement sequel.

Which brings us back to Tuchman's question: "Why do holders of high office so
often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest
suggests?" Her forthright answer is "wooden-headedness," i.e. both "the refusal
to learn from experience" and "the source of self- deception."

Such recurrent wooden-headedness, she argues, is "a factor that plays a
remarkably large role in government. It consists of assessing a situation in
terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary
signs. It is acting according to wish, while not allowing oneself to be
deflected by the facts." Though writing before the event, Tuchman incredibly
seems to have analyzed the Osloite folly with unerring acumen. "The power to
command," she stressed, "frequently causes failure to think."

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GRAPHIC: Photo: THE OSLO Accords meet all three of Tuchman's famous conditions
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September 12, 2008 Friday

Educating Sarah Palin

BYLINE: SAUL SINGER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1150 words

HIGHLIGHT: Interesting Times

Good morning, Governor, ready for today's briefing?

Sure, Randy [Scheunemann, John McCain's top foreign policy adviser], whaddya
got?

We're going to do something a little different this time. As you've seen in the
briefings with John, everyone needs the daily talking points on Russia,
Pakistan, etc. All you have to do is say the sort of things that a State
Department spokesman would.

That's the easy part.

Exactly. The more important part is to give people a sense of your view of the
world. No one can be an expert at everything, but as you know, executives have
to be experts at deciding between experts. For that you need a worldview that
puts all those daily briefings in a coherent context and helps you ask the right
questions.

In the domestic sphere, these centering values are things like empowering
families, encouraging personal responsibility, having "a servant's heart" and so
on. I know that you have such instincts about the world, too, but I want to
start helping you translate them into a policy framework.

That would be very helpful. I've got a lot to learn.

Well, the truth is, we all do. There's actually an advantage to starting from
the basics because, frankly, both the Bush administration and the Democrats are
missing the big picture, so there's an opportunity for something of a fresh
start.

Interesting. How are Bush's people missing the point?

Well, Bush has said it from time to time, but he hasn't succeeded in getting
across the challenge of our age - which is not terrorism, but a new form of
totalitarianism that is no less expansionist than those defeated in the last
century. Terrorism is just a means; it's not an ideology. Yet we tend to dance
around exactly what it is we are up against. So it's hardly surprising that a
lot of people don't get it.

You mean jihad, and the ambition of the radical Islamists to control the world?

Yes, but as you know you can't say it like that because it sounds like some
conspiracy theory. People actually do get it that Islamists are megalomaniacs
who will stop at nothing - September 11 taught us that - but it is precisely
because they seem so crazy that the global threat idea doesn't seem credible.
Combine that with the military types who say that "Iranians aren't Germans," and
you have a tendency of people on the left, center and right to belittle the
threat.

So what are you saying?

I'm not saying that Iranians are Germans in the sense that Iranian tanks are
going to roll across the Middle East. I'm not even saying that if the Iranians
went nuclear they would rocket Israel or hand one to terrorists, though it would
be irresponsible to rule those scenarios out. What I'm saying is that a nuclear
Iran is a complete game changer. It will be the biggest challenge, and in some
ways, opportunity, facing us if - sorry, when - we make it to the White House.

How is that so even though you think the Iranians won't fire or transfer a nuke?

If there is any country that has perfected the method of operating through
proxies, it's Iran. Even without nukes, Iran has worked intensively to
destabilize Iraq, to take over Lebanon and attack Israel through Hizbullah and
Hamas, and is operating in a bunch of other countries that we can brief you on
separately. If it gets nukes, all these activities will be ramped up
significantly. Why? Because it can, and that is what it does. History shows that
the Iranians push the envelope any time they think they can get away with it,
and nukes are all about bringing that to a new level.

What would this look like?

The Iranian regime is actually a lot more risk averse than the image it likes to
project. Why do something with fingerprints, like firing a missile, when you can
be even more effective through proxies without risking retaliation? The Iranians
are not idiots like Saddam, who actually invaded Kuwait. You can see how they
work in Syria, which they've turned into a pawn, in Lebanon, Gaza and so on.
Going nuclear would allow them to work to reverse the progress in Iraq and go
after new targets, like Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Plus something else, which would be a natural thing for you to talk about as the
energy expert in this race: A nuclear Iran would start creating crises in the
Gulf to jack up the price of oil. The Iranian economy is on the skids -
unemployment is about 27 percent - and higher oil prices would be a twofer for
them, helping their economy and hurting ours. Again, they would likely do this
through proxies so they could reap the benefits while minimizing the risk of
Western retaliation.

Throw in a regional nuclear arms race and the complete tanking of the
Arab-Israeli peace process, and you've got the basic picture of the world if
Iran goes nuclear.

So what should I say about this?

First of all, don't say it's about Israel, like Obama sometimes does. It looks
like pandering and projects an embarrassingly narrow, even ignorant, view of the
problem. If Israel didn't exist, a nuclear Iran would still mean the
destabilization of Arab regimes, a regional nuclear arms race, increasing
terrorism in the West and rising oil prices, with all that means for the US and
world economy.

You probably have a better feeling than I do for how you can explain this to
people without sounding aggressive or alarmist, while showing that you
appreciate the stakes and know how to express them.

The press will try to trip you up on trivia, like whether you know the name of
the president of Azerbaijan. Americans don't care about that stuff. But they do
want to see that you have a big picture, so you'll be ready to fill in the
details along the way.

So where's the opportunity you mentioned?

The goal here is for the Iranian regime to fall or to completely capitulate -
like Libya did when it dismantled its nuke program. If that happens the jihad
against the West will have lost its potential nuclear umbrella and most of the
radical forces in the region will be greatly weakened. This will be a boon for
Arab moderates and reformers, for the prospects for Arab-Israeli peace and for
the world economy. It will go far in lifting the cloud of pessimism and
resignation that hangs over the West today. There is the possibility, if we
press our advantage right, of a new era like right after the Soviet collapse,
except that it would be more secure and sustainable because it would be less
na·ve.

Thanks, Randy, you've given me lots to think about, and a vision that John and I
can run with.

Sure. I'm actually optimistic. Iran's very vulnerable. Next time we can get into
how they can be defeated, without necessarily resorting to military force. The
most important thing to understand is that it is much easier to defeat them now,
before they go nuclear, just like it would have been much easier to defeat
Hitler in the 1930s, before the democracies allowed him to build up his war
machine. Our challenge and opportunity lie in not making that mistake again.

saul@jpost.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Passing the torch. Sarah Palin and husband meet Henry Kissinger,
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September 12, 2008 Friday

Wake-up calls

BYLINE: BARBARA SOFER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1092 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Human Spirit

Jerusalem morning. A shofar from a Sephardi synagogue around the corner wakes me
before sunrise in this month of Elul. From a distance the sounds are gentle,
unlike the startling blasts on Rosh Hashana. Likewise, I can feel the cadence
but can't make out the words of the chanted prayers. The scent of eucalyptus is
pungent. I can't go back to sleep. Still, it's still dark and too early to get
out of bed. A perfect time to reflect.

My Jerusalem summer season has been bracketed by the weddings of two young
friends, both critically injured in the intifada, both married in the hills of
Judea. The first, reported in these pages, was the wedding of Kenny Sachs, a
reserve soldier shot at close range near Gaza, to Jerusalem Post graphic artist
Judith Marks.

And then I received an invitation to the wedding of Dvir Mussai and Orly Caro.
Dvir, 20, was just a few months past bar mitzva, an eight grader literally
picking a bowl of cherries on a school trip when his life was blown apart. He'd
been fooling around, not taking the picking seriously, so his teacher ordered
him back to the school bus. A few meters from the bus door, his footstep
triggered a land mine. Three boys were badly injured, but Dvir's injuries were
the worst. The powerful explosion wreaked havoc on his internal organs, savaged
his legs and seared off his skin.

I happened to be in the office of Avi Rivkind, Hadassah-University Medical
Center's chief of surgery and trauma, while he first was reviewing Dvir's chart.
Prof. Rivkind, a seasoned battle surgeon, put his head down on his desk. When he
lifted it, his eyes were teary. "This boy will be our patient for most of his
life." Dvir's mom, Hanna Mussai, a prayerbook or a psalter in her hands, was
always at his bedside. After the first operation, Dvir lay in the recovery room.
An American TV crew covering the intifada asked Hanna to put Dvir's story on the
air.

During the intifada, many parents of terror survivors refused to appear on TV or
to allow their children to illustrate the story of the daily horrors. We don't
like to share our pain. But Hanna had a different idea. She would mark the
stages of Dvir's recovery with these news reports. She would agree to go on air
only if she received a copy of the broadcasts. And as her son underwent the long
process of recovery, she would use the tapes to hearten and motivate him. If
Dvir ever wavered in the recovery process, she would simply show him the old
footage and remind him how far he'd come. She came up with this idea while
Dvir's life hung on a thread.

For weeks, he lived in intensive care with his devastating internal injuries,
shattered bones and burns. He was so badly injured that once visiting
congressmen were reduced to tears.

BUT ONE after another, the medical problems were addressed. Dvir started getting
better. Hanna's plan worked, too. She had it all on tape. He really had come a
long way. Over some 20 operations, the 13-year old with peach fuzz, grew into a
tall, devastatingly handsome young man. Five years after they'd picked baskets
of cherries, Dvir's classmates were drafted into the army. A young man with such
serious medical concerns isn't required to serve his country in uniform; the IDF
offered him a pass. Nothing doing, insisted Dvir. He would volunteer. So Dvir
Mussai, still undergoing medical treatment. became an instructor on a base that
trains soldiers for anti-terrorist warfare. Once he was involved in training a
group of visiting US marines.

The One Family organization that is still sponsoring activities for terror
survivors and their families invited Dvir to join a group of young people on a
hike near the Kinneret. He was reluctant, but Hanna admits she nudged him to go.

Orly Caro, a petite and pretty young woman from Mitzpe Yeriho, spent her
National Service with the One Family organization. For two years, she'd been
helping arrange and facilitate activities for terror survivors and their
families. She understood the pain and trauma that never went away. She escorted
the participants on the outing, and she had a chance to talk to Dvir on the
evening out in Tiberias. When the army phoned him and asked him to come back to
the base because something had come up, she volunteered to wait with him until
the 5 a.m. bus rolled into the station. They had a lot to talk about.

Soon Orly insisted on joining Hanna and her husband Motti on the frequent visits
to the hospitals where Dvir underwent additional surgery. And then they
announced their engagement.

AT THE wedding hall on Kibbutz Tzora, Dvir welcomed us guests in the reception
tent. The men were jacketless on this warm night, dressed in white shirts and
the knitted kippot that characterize the national religious community. The women
wore satin skirts and matching blouses, hats with applique decoration. Among the
guests were medical staff, partners in the miracle, who knew and loved Dvir. On
the lawn, Orly sat on the bride's throne, surrounded by friends and family. A
line of young women serenaded the bride. Their soprano voices are drowned out by
a line of dancing young men, singing the same words to a different tune. They
have come to summon Orly to the huppa.

"I can hardly believe this," Hanna whispers to me. "That's Dvir getting married.
This qualifies as a miracle. God has done hessed with us."

Hessed is usually translated as loving-kindness. It's a faithful goodness of the
heart. The officiating rabbi, Moshe Eliezer Rabinovitch, spoke of hessed, too.
He blessed the young couple that they should build their home with the hessed
they have seen modeled in their homes and in their lives. The ceremony moved
ahead with alacrity - no interruptions insisted the rabbi. He didn't have to say
it: The groom has been standing long enough.

Surgeon Alon Pikarsky who has spent hundreds of hours in the operating room on
reshaping Dvir's innards was called for one of the seven blessings. Pikarsky
took a kippa from his pocket "Blessed are You Lord our God who fashions man." I
smiled and thought of Hanna. The wedding was like a dream, she said. She knew
she wouldn't remember the details. There would be, of course, the video footage.

At my home, the sound of the shofar is replaced by the irritating electronic
beeps of my cellphone alarm, another Israeli invention. Time to get up.
Awakening is, after all, what the month of Elul is about. We reflect on the past
and implore the creator to remember the good-heartedness and faithfulness of our
youth, and to judge us gently with loving-kindness and to write only happy
endings in the Book of Life.

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September 11, 2008 Thursday

Al-Qaida lives, kill it

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 737 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible
for these cowardly acts.

- President George W. Bush, in his first public remarks after the 9/11 attacks,
Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, Sept. 11, 2001

Today marks the seventh anniversary of al-Qaida's sneak attack against the
United States.

Over the years, America has managed to kill or capture many of the
organization's key figures, but Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri "continue
to maintain al-Qaida unity and its focus on their strategic vision and
operational priorities," according to Ted Gistaro, the US government's top
al-Qaida watcher.

How did Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri manage not only to avoid retribution but to
rebuild al-Qaida? Part of the answer: The Bush administration became distracted.

In October 2001, the US struck at al-Qaida training camps and Taliban military
installations. Within a month, the Taliban were in flight and Bin Laden and
al-Zawahiri lost their protectors. US forces cornered them in the battle of Tora
Bora; but somehow they escaped toward the nearby Afghanistan-Pakistan border
where, around December 10, they found sanctuary.

The view in Washington was that the two men were either dead or hiding scared,
and no longer a threat.

The Bush administration, meantime, had become increasingly convinced that Iraq's
Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction and that there was a
relationship between him and al-Qaida. So in March 2003, America invaded Iraq -
hoping, in addition, to spread democracy.

No weapons of mass destruction were unearthed, however; and the 9/11 Commission
Report asserted there was no collaborative relationship between Iraq and
al-Qaida. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi aligned his Iraqi jihadists with al- Qaida only
in July 2005: In other words, the war began before "al-Qaida" arrived on the
scene. Only the future will tell whether Iraq will evolve into the Arab world's
first pro-Western democracy.

As the war dragged on, al-Qaida continued to export terrorism. Authorities
suspect that the July 7, 2005 London bombings - three trains and a bus - in
which at least 52 were killed and 700 injured, was al-Qaida's handiwork and not
that of disaffected British Muslims acting on their own initiative. The same
holds true for other plots, including the August 2006 conspiracy to blow up
airliners en route to North America.

Bush's pledge to hunt down the 9/11 perpetrators thus went partly unfulfilled
because America became sidetracked in Iraq. "Officials with the CIA and the US
military said they began shifting resources out of Afghanistan [to Iraq] in
'early 2002 and still haven't recovered from that mistake,'" the Washington Post
reported yesterday.

AL-QAIDA, along with the Taliban in which it incubates, has been rejuvenated.
What to do?

Let's bear in mind what al-Qaida is, and isn't.

This is a small organization that specializes in terrorist attacks of staggering
scope. It's a sort of venture-capital outfit for anti-civilian warfare; and
perhaps the paramount Islamist think-tank. It's the home of the motivating icons
of the Islamist struggle, Bin-Laden and al-Zawahiri.

Al-Qaida is not a synonym for every Islamist menace. It is not Iran (with which
it has a multitude of theological and political differences); nor is it
Hizbullah or Hamas. Conflating Islamist threats undermines our ability to
confront each unique danger as needed.

The war against Western civilization is real, but the enemy is not a
conveniently homogeneous body. Putting al- Qaida out of commission will not
achieve victory against a metastasized Islamist threat.

Seven years on, the good news, according to the US Department of Homeland
Security, is that America does not face imminent attack. Still, many analysts
are concerned that al-Qaida will strike again on or around Election Day,
November 4.

But the true nightmare scenario prognosticates that al-Qaida's terror-masters
are devoting their efforts to obtaining a nuclear device; one that would be
detonated in New York or Washington, perhaps, with results too ghastly to
contemplate.

On this meaningful day, let us recall that the West is engaged in a war not
against "terror," but against violent, expansionist Muslim extremism. The
prospect of the forces of enlightenment prevailing will be immeasurably enhanced
if the heteromorphic essence of the enemy is understood - and if that enemy is
confronted judiciously, and with perseverance.

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September 11, 2008 Thursday

The 3 most important US Jews

BYLINE: DAVID BENKOF

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 869 words

HIGHLIGHT: Twenty American Jewish historians decide. Fabulously Observant

This month marks the 354th anniversary of the arrival of the first boatload of
Jews to North America. To honor the birthday of the American Jewish community, I
surveyed several dozen leading American Jewish historians about who they think
are the three most important figures in American Jewish history. Twenty scholars
responded, including perhaps the three leading figures in the field - Dr. Hasia
Diner (New York University), Dr. Deborah Dash Moore (University of Michigan) and
Dr. Jonathan Sarna (Brandeis University). Hebrew University's Dr. Eli
Lederhendler and Tel Aviv University's Dr. Robert Rockaway participated, though
the other major historian of American Jewry living in Israel, Kimmy Caplan of
Bar-Ilan University, chose not to.

Interestingly, although 10 names were listed and 10 more were volunteered, it
quickly became clear that American Jewish historians consider three men to be
towering figures in the tales they tell.

Louis Brandeis was the most important American Jew. He was the first Jew
appointed to the Supreme Court, and pioneered a uniquely American form of
Zionism. Rockaway pointed out that Brandeis "made Zionism a respected American
movement, and sold the idea to American Jews and non-Jews."

Prof. Lee Shai Weissbach of the University of Louisville said Brandeis's
elevation to the Supreme Court "symbolized the opening of possibilities for Jews
in American civic and political life." When Brandeis joined the court in 1916,
anti-Semitism was so intense that one of his fellow justices refused to sit next
to him for the official court photo.

For many years after Brandeis's appointment, particularly after Associate
Justice Benjamin Cardozo retired and was replaced by Felix Frankfurter, there
was a de facto "Jewish seat" on the Supreme Court. Frankfurter was replaced by
Arthur Goldberg, who was replaced by Abe Fortas, after whom the tradition
ceased. But both of president Bill Clinton's appointees, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and
Stephen Breyer, are Jewish. In addition, president Ronald Reagan tried to
appoint Judge Douglas Ginsburg, whose nomination was scotched because of
accusations that he had smoked marijuana.

Two scholars offered important final descriptions of Brandeis: Dr. David Kaufman
of the Hebrew Union College called him "the personification of American-Jewish
synthesis," and Dr. Samuel Heilman of the City University of New York Graduate
Center said Brandeis's involvement with the Supreme Court and American Zionism
"put the lie to the dual-loyalty canard."

PERHAPS THE most important American Jew little-known to today's American Jews is
Mordecai Kaplan. Kaufman called Kaplan "the key figure in the Americanization of
Judaism." Jewish scholar and prolific author Jacob Neusner said Kaplan "thought
through the issues of Judaism in a way that matched the American Jewish
situation." University of Washington Prof. Noam Pianko praised Kaplan's
"insights into the sociological basis of Jewish peoplehood."

Several key institutions in American Judaism which Kaplan pioneered endure. For
example, Kaplan brought the bat mitzva to America, with his daughter Judith
being the first to undergo that new rite of passage. He also helped innovate the
Jewish community center movement, the so- called "shul with a pool" (the title
of one of Kaufman's books). He imagined that a synagogue should be more than a
place to pray - that it should be a place for the social, intellectual and
recreational needs of Jews as well. Today's JCC's owe much to his ideas.

In addition, Kaplan's ideas became the keystone of today's Reconstructionist
movement. The only major American Jewish movement in which God is not
necessarily central, Reconstructionism emphasizes Kaplan's idea that Judaism is
an "evolving religious civilization." Reconstructionism also experimented with
the havura movement growing out of Kaplan's values.

Kaplan had an impact on every American Jewish religious movement - including
Orthodoxy, as documented in Jeffrey Gurock and Jacob Schacter's A Modern Heretic
and a Traditional Community. At least two generations of Conservative Judaism's
teachers and rabbis were influenced by Kaplan's instruction at the Jewish
Theological Seminary's rabbinical school and Teacher's Institute. And Reform
Judaism adopted Kaplan's saying that Halacha should have "a vote but not a
veto."

FINALLY, 19TH-century pioneer of Reform Judaism Isaac Mayer Wise came in third
place. According to Rockaway, Wise "put Reform Judaism on the map" in the United
States. Working from Cincinnati, he established Hebrew Union College, the Union
of American Hebrew Congregations (now the Union for Reform Judaism), and the
Central Conference of American Rabbis. He trained hundreds of Reform rabbis, and
in Rockaway's words, "made Reform the strongest Jewish religious movement in
America."

The European-born Wise was one of the earliest American rabbis to push for
family pews in the synagogue, a mixed choir and counting women in a minyan. He
wrote a new prayer book entitled Minhag America (American custom), with the goal
of uniting all American congregations. He was also an American Jewish press
pioneer, publishing his own The Israelite (later The American Israelite)
newspaper.

DavidBenkof@aol.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: LOUIS BRANDEIS. The Supreme Court Justice and Zionists made the
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September 11, 2008 Thursday

Letters

BYLINE: Rebecca Raab, Hannah Bramson, Avigdor Bonchek, Jeremy Graus, Ephraim
Jonah, Yan Sever, Judy Siegel-Itzkovich responds, Yisrael Medad, Stuart
Pilichowski

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1187 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Sauce for the goose

Sir, - If Aryeh Deri's request is granted - "Deri asks special permission to run
for J'lem mayor" (September 10) - based on the fact that when he was convicted
the law did not require a seven-year waiting period before criminals whose crime
involved moral turpitude could run for municipal office - then all immigrants to
Israel should today have the rights Israel gave them the year they made aliya.
This would include all the tax breaks and incentives that were the law when they
arrived in Israel, not subject to change every time the government decides to
cut those benefits.

REBECCA RAAB

Ma'aleh Adumim

Sir, - Anybody who has been convicted of a crime ought never to hold a public
position again.

Our country is trying very hard to improve the situation concerning crime, etc.,
and it would be going contrary to these efforts to allow someone with a criminal
record to run for mayor of Jerusalem.

Those empowered to make the decision, please think about this.

HANNAH BRAMSON

Haifa

Sink or swim

Sir, - Your editorial "Goodbye, goodfellas" (September 10) on having the police
go after the mob families was great. Your last line was a classic: "Let's make
the syndicate an offer it can't refuse: Get out of our lives, or swim with the
fishes."

AVIGDOR BONCHEK

Jerusalem

Sir, - Perhaps newspapers could dig into their archives and publish some of the
old photos showing politicians and other celebrities rubbing shoulders with the
likes of Ze'ev Rosenstein at their bar mitzvas, weddings and parties. It might
in some small way help both the battle against crime and against the corrupt in
our elite.

JEREMY GRAUS

Oranit

Gouge, ouch!

Sir, - I am a senior citizen, and have just completed a comparison of the
charges by my bank for certain services. I am in receipt of a small pension from
Canada, which I transfer to Israel by check from time to time.

The pre-July fee for my current (checking) account was a flat fee of NIS 15 (a
50% discount). My fee for July was NIS 40.75 (a 172% increase) and NIS 47.60 for
August (a 217% increase). The minimum charge for depositing a check in foreign
currency was US$6.75 in July. It is now $8.50 (a 26% increase).

The charge for converting foreign currency was .19%. It is now .49% (a 158%
increase).

The charge for money wired from America was .20%. It is now .4426% (a 121%
increase).

I have not ordered new checkbooks yet, so I am unable to make a comparison.

It costs the same for a bank to convert foreign currency whatever the amount, so
why do the banks take a percentage? My bank's charge recently for a wire
transfer from the US to my account was $26.50, more than double that charged by
the wiring bank ($13). The remitting bank is the one that has to pay the wire
costs. All my bank had to do was credit my account.

My bank uses the Bank of Israel Representative rate (sha'ar hayatzig) to convert
its dollar fee on dollar conversions. In effect, the rate is closer to .50% than
the .49% noted above.

Why are the fees based on dollars, anyway? The governor of the Bank of Israel is
urging Israelis to stop using the US dollar as a basis for transactions. Does
this not include the banks?

As my bank has discontinued the flat fee for operating my current account, and
even though I still receive a discount on certain transaction charges, as a
senior citizen my current fees have increased more on a percentage basis than
those of regular customers, due to the "minimum transaction" requirement.

The only reduction I obtained was the cancellation of NIS 24 a month I was
paying to keep two foreign currency accounts open, whether I used them or not.

On behalf of all bank customers, I demand that the Knesset Finance Committee put
a stop to the bank cartel's gouging fees from us, and refund us the excess
charged over the last two months ("Banks' shame," Letters, September 4).

EPHRAIM JONAH

Jerusalem

Painful experience

Sir, - Re "Clalit strikes back at violent attacks" (September 9): A look at the
other side of the coin may take the steam out of some irresponsible hotheads.

My daughter, a teacher, was taken from her class to Ziv Hospital in Safed with
acute stomach pain. She was put on an IV and painkillers. It took a day and a
half to discuss what tests should be done to find the source of the trouble, and
none was implemented. She was put on antibiotics. Her husband tried to speak to
the medical personnel about what they intended to do. Nobody responded very
seriously.

On the first evening, the infusion ceased dripping. Nobody answered the summons
bell, so my daughter phoned us and we returned to the hospital. Only then did a
nurse arrive to find that there was a blockage in the infusion tube.

I would never even dream of taking the law into my own hands. But isn't there
somewhere to voice complaints, an ombudsman?

YAN SEVER

Kibbutz Moran

Health reporter Judy Siegel-Itzkovich responds:

Every hospital has a complaints department, and you could easily lodge a
complaint at Ziv's about the treatment of your daughter. Your complaint sounds
justified, but the hospital may have an explanation. In any case, the more
information hospital personnel provide to patients and their families, the
better. Sometimes one has to demand it. If you are not satisfied, you can
complain to the Health Ministry in Jerusalem, as Ziv is a government-owned
hospital.

Life of the Palmah

Sir, - I would like to correct a point in "In the underground" (UpFront, August
29) Alexander Zvielli's review of First Tithe, the memoirs of a decade in the
life of Dr. Israel Eldad between 1938-1948, ably translated by Ze'ev Golan.

Zvielli wrote: "Lehi was finally dissolved together with the Irgun and the
Palmah on May 29, 1948, and most of its members joined the IDF and the Herut
political party."

In actuality, units of the Irgun and Lehi maintained an independent existence in
Jerusalem until September 19, 1948, two days after the assassination of Count
Folke Bernadotte, at which time they were dissolved. The Palmah, however,
continued to operate autonomous command groups within the IDF for two more
months, and this throughout the country. It wasn't until November 7, 1948, that
David Ben- Gurion asserted the state's authority over what had become the armed
socialist militia of Mapam-Hashomer Hatza'ir.

It would have been interesting for your writer to explain how, in his opinion,
Eldad "unjustly denigrates other existing Jewish youth movements" in the pre-war
period. Betar members suffered severe discrimination at the hands of the Jewish
Agency's immigration officers regarding their preparatory hachshara period,
receiving certificates and, once in the Mandate, obtaining employment.

YISRAEL MEDAD

Shiloh

Spray 'em

Sir, - Re Nachama Kanner's "More cures for deficient drivers" (Letters,
September 10) suggesting pop-up, illuminated signs in one's rear window alerting
the driver behind you that he's tailgating, I offer the following idea that's
worked for me over the past couple of years and even gets a grin from the
tailgater: I put on my window shpritzers. Usually they're strong enough to reach
the car behind me, and achieve greater distance between us.

STUART PILICHOWSKI

Mevaseret Zion

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September 11, 2008 Thursday

Direct elections begin with the Likud primary

BYLINE: NATHAN D. WIRTSCHAFTER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 614 words

HIGHLIGHT: The party must take the lead in reforming the electoral system. The
writer, a Likud member, lives in Hashmonaim.

Recent news stories concerning the Likud's upcoming primary reveal a split
between party chairman Binyamin Netanyahu's office and Likud MKs.

Netanyahu's office has outlined a plan to reserve every other spot on the Likud
list for distinguished outsiders, while the MKs seek to preserve the status quo
of electing the list nationally. While both plans have a certain merit, neither
will bring the Likud the 40+ seats it seeks in the next Knesset.

The Likud must be the party of change, and should aim to replace Israel's flawed
system of government with a government of the people, by the people and for the
people. Until it acts, the government will continue to be of, by and for the
inept, the inexperienced and the corrupt.

The Likud should organize its primary around several initiatives to implement
reform within the party. With electoral reform as the centerpiece of its
domestic agenda, the Likud will deservedly win a large victory at the polls.

THE LIKUD should elect half its slate of MKs from regional districts so every
Israeli may have a Likud MK in the upcoming Knesset who is accountable to local
constituents.

This would be merely a half step on the way to direct election of 50 percent of
the Knesset members. Nevertheless, in taking this half step, the Likud will
demonstrate its commitment to resolve the most important crisis facing Israel:
bad government.

By placing regional candidates on the list, the Likud will allow local leaders -
among them mayors with executive experience - to serve in the Knesset. The
participation of regional leaders will energize support for the Likud in the
national election. Competition will increase party membership and enthusiasm.
Local leaders will get out the vote.

The Likud should divide the country into 20 regional districts and utilize local
primaries for selecting one candidate on its list from each.

The other half of the Likud's list - some 20 candidates - should be elected
nationally. The national half should be elected by all Likud members, with no
appointments allowed. The Likud has many fine leaders with national credentials,
and party members should each be allowed to vote for five to 15 candidates.

Accordingly, the Likud's list will be assembled with Netanyahu in the top spot,
followed by the regional candidate who received the most votes, followed by the
national candidate who received the most votes, and so on. (The lower part of
the list is primarily ceremonial, and should be treated as such.) The Likud must
make it abundantly clear before its primary that Netanyahu, if elected prime
minister, will select his cabinet based not according to position on the Likud
list but according to the skills, training and experience of the prospective
minister. By giving the prospective prime minister full authority to select his
cabinet (including cabinet members who are not MKs), the Likud will clearly
reinforce its commitment to fix the government.

The Likud should also announce that it intends to make meaningful changes to
Israel's system of government: regional elections with single-member districts,
a professional cabinet and a new judicial selection process, among others.
Ideally, these reforms will be the first items on any Likud coalition agreement,
to be approved within the first 90 days of the new government.

Some in the Likud argue for a type of regional election, with several candidates
selected from an area of the country. While this is not the best choice, it is
certainly preferable to either a completely national list or a national list
diluted with appointees.

The Likud must present Israelis with a choice between business-as-usual and real
change. Now is the time. The Likud must lead.

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September 11, 2008 Thursday

Judicial hypocrisy on judicial review

BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1063 words

HIGHLIGHT: Civil Fights

Addressing a conference of the nation's judges two weeks ago, Supreme Court
President Dorit Beinisch offered two explanations for the recent steep decline
in public faith in the court: attacks on it by politicians, and what she termed
tendentious media reporting. The idea that the court's own behavior, or that of
its leading champions, could be at fault evidently never crossed her mind.

Yet in fact, no verbal assault by ethically challenged ministers like Ehud
Olmert or Haim Ramon could possibly undermine public regard for the court as
much as the hypocritical behavior of the justices and their adherents does. The
uproar over Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann's bill to limit judicial review,
which the cabinet approved on Sunday, is a case in point.

The bill would allow the Knesset to reinstate legislation that the Supreme Court
has ruled unconstitutional, as long as this move was approved by at least 61
MKs, with supporters outnumbering opponents by at least five votes. That is an
idea one could certainly oppose on its merits. While I personally support the
61-MK override, one could legitimately either object to legislative overrides in
general or argue that they should require a larger Knesset majority.

But it is sheer hypocrisy to charge, as former Supreme Court president Aharon
Barak did at the Herzliya Conference in January, that such a move would turn
Israel into a "Third World country." It is also sheer hypocrisy to claim, as
Beinisch repeatedly has, that limiting judicial review would "undermine the
country's democratic character." After all, no one knows better than Barak and
Beinisch that restrictions on judicial review exist in many Western democracies.

Even Canada - which, judging from his many laudatory citations of it, boasts
Barak's favorite Western constitution - explicitly permits legislative overrides
of Supreme Court decisions. And some democracies curb judicial review far more
drastically: Holland, for instance, forbids its Supreme Court to overturn
legislation at all, while Switzerland bars its court from overturning all
federal legislation.

THE LATEST argument raised by the bill's opponents, however, makes their
hypocrisy even more blatant - because while many Israelis may be unaware of how
other Western democracies approach judicial review, they assuredly remember Ehud
Barak's negotiations with the Palestinians at Taba in 2001.

According to this new argument, Sunday's cabinet vote on the bill was
illegitimate because the prime minister has already announced he will resign
following next week's Kadima leadership primary, and a lame-duck government has
no right to make far-reaching changes; it must confine itself to strictly
necessary business. Israel Bar Association chairman Yori Geiron, for instance,
declared that approving this bill would violate Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz's
directive that the government, being on its last legs, must be "cautious" about
exercising its powers.

Haaretz published both an editorial declaring it "verboten for the government to
vote in favor of such a fundamental, constitutional change... during its last
cabinet meeting," and an op-ed by the paper's legal commentator, Ze'ev Segal,
making the same point.

Adherents of this view cite repeated Supreme Court rulings declaring that a
lame-duck government must exercise restraint in making major decisions unless
delay is untenable. The problem, as all the experts making this argument know
perfectly well, is that the seminal ruling on this matter is the one that upheld
Barak's Taba negotiations. At that point, Barak had already resigned, so the
restraint incumbent on lame-duck governments certainly applied. Nevertheless,
the court ruled that offering far- reaching diplomatic concessions in no way
violated this restraint.

Most Israelis undoubtedly remember what Barak offered the Palestinians at Taba:
almost all of the West Bank, plus a "safe passage" slicing through Israel to
connect the West Bank and Gaza; much of east Jerusalem, including the Temple
Mount and most of the Old City; and the absorption of tens of thousands of
Palestinian refugees in Israel. Needless to say, these concessions would have
been completely irreversible had Yasser Arafat actually accepted them, and even
after he refused, they became the starting point for Palestinian demands during
the inevitable next round of talks, thereby constraining future governments'
options.

In contrast, the cabinet's approval of Friedmann's bill has no lasting
consequences at all. For starters, all cabinet approval means is that the
government has decided to submit the bill to the Knesset. Since the Knesset will
not be back in session until the end of October, the new government that will
presumably arise following the Kadima primary could easily change its mind and
not submit the bill.

Moreover, submitting a bill to the Knesset in no way guarantees that it will
pass; the Knesset has rejected bills submitted by the government before. And
even if it did pass, any future Knesset could easily repeal the law, with no
more than the same ordinary coalition majority need to enact it to begin with.

BUT EVEN if approving Friedmann's bill were as irrevocable a step as its
opponents falsely claim, Olmert's government would still have far more
legitimacy to take it than Barak's government did to embark on the Taba
negotiations, because Barak went to Taba after having already lost his Knesset
majority over that very issue - his conduct of the talks with Arafat. Olmert's
government, in contrast, still has a strong and stable Knesset majority.

For anyone who seriously cared about the issue of preventing lame-duck
governments from tying their successors' hands, there would be no possible way
to justify the Taba talks. In contrast, even the very strictest interpretation
of lame-duck restrictions would not justify preventing the cabinet from
approving Friedmann's bill, since that decision does not bind the next
government at all. Yet needless to say, many of the leading opponents of the
cabinet's decision to approve Friedman's bill - from the Supreme Court itself to
Haaretz - are the very same people who vociferously supported Barak's right to
conduct the Taba talks.

That hypocrisy is clear for all to see. And such hypocrisy does more to damage
public faith in the court than even the most vicious attacks by politicians or
the media ever could.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: JUSTICE MINISTER Daniel Friedmann and President of the Supreme
Court Dorit Beinisch. No one knows better than she that restrictions on judicial
review exist in many Western democracies. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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September 11, 2008 Thursday

The medieval roots of Islamic extremism

BYLINE: ELI KAVON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 737 words

HIGHLIGHT: Even if the Zionist movement and the State of Israel had never come
into existence, the heinous attacks of 9/11 would still have been staged

In the days following the man-made tragedy of September 11, 2001, academics,
pundits, and news analysts searched for a reason for the terrorist attacks. The
conventional wisdom held that the Islamic extremists who targeted the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon did so because of America's alliance with Israel.
The reasoning was that the US had alienated elements of the Arab and Islamic
world by supporting the Jewish state and ignoring Israel's suppression of the
Palestinians, thereby inflaming public opinion on "the Islamic street."

The terrorists, according to this thesis, were desperate men avenging American
colonialism in the Middle East, and carried out the murder of almost 3,000
people in the name of a beleaguered Islam. Had America been more supportive of
the Islamic world and not a staunch ally of Israel, the attacks would not have
occurred.

Conventional wisdom is usually wrong, as it was in the case of 9/11. To
understand the motivation of those 19 terrorists, we need to go beyond the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and modern European colonialism. The fact is that
the call for jihad - the military struggle against infidels as well as Islamic
apostates - can be traced to the earliest years of Islam.

WHILE AMERICANS were searching for economic, social and political causes for the
rise of Islamic extremism, they ignored the reality that the attacks were the
result of a religious worldview that dates back many centuries and has always
been a part of Islam. The terrorists of 9/11 were not desperate men without a
future and with their backs against the wall. They were middle-class and
educated. Many of the suicide bombings in Israel, Iraq and Pakistan are carried
out because of Islamic theology and not because of poverty or desperation. I
would argue that even if the Zionist movement and the State of Israel had never
come into existence, the heinous attacks of 9/11 would still have been staged.

The call for armed struggle against nonMuslims and Islamic heretics can be
traced to the life and thought of Ahmed Ibn Taymiyyah, an Arab reformer and
religious thinker who lived in Damascus in the 13th century. His call for holy
war preceded the rise of the State of Israel and European colonialism in the
Middle East by 700 years. Ibn Taymiyyah called for jihad against the ruling
Mongols who dominated the Middle East. The Mongols had converted to Islam, but
did not rule by Shari'a.

The reformer demanded that Arabs stage a war to overthrow the apostate Mongols
and reassert Islamic religious authority through a great Islamic empire. Ibn
Taymiyyah's theology did not directly target infidels, but was directed toward
Muslims whom he considered illegitimate and apostate. His venom was directed not
toward Christians and Jews but toward Mongol converts to Islam.

The theology of jihad was - and is - a reality, whether Israel would be a
reality or not. Therefore to blame Israel, even indirectly, for Osama bin
Laden's terrorism in 2001 is foolish. To blame Israel for the terrorism of seven
years ago is to grossly misunderstand the role of extremism in the Islamic
world.

ALTHOUGH AHMED Ibn Taymiyyah lived many centuries ago, he remains an important
figure in the world of today's Islamic fundamentalism. He affected Muhammad Ibn
Abd-al Wahhab in 18th-century Arabia, and was a major influence on Sayyid Qutb,
the most important Islamic extremist thinker in the 20th century. The Muslim
assassins of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981 carried out their deed in
the name of a fatwa dictated by Ibn Taymiyyah in his attack on Mongol rule.
Sadat's killers considered the Egyptian leader an apostate who did not rule his
country by Islamic law and therefore deserved to be killed.

Again, this was not a terrorist attack carried out against Jews or Christians
but against fellow Muslims. For all of bin Laden's propaganda against the
"Crusaders" of America and Zionism, most Islamic extremists carry out their
attacks against other Muslims. The current civil war in Iraq is the result of a
1,300year old conflict among Arabs, and has little to do with Israel or American
policy toward the Jewish state.

Ahmed Ibn Taymiyyah's extremism lives on - it is at our peril that we ignore his
influence on fundamentalists in the Islamic world today. We must wake up to the
reality that the roots of the attacks of September 11, 2001 are in Muslim
theologies of armed struggle that date back almost 1,000 years.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: NEAR THE World Trade Center shortly after its collapse. The
bombers were not desperate men avenging American colonialism in the Middle East.
(Credit: Bloomberg)

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September 11, 2008 Thursday

Rethinking McCain vs. Obama

BYLINE: LARRY DERFNER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1140 words

HIGHLIGHT: Obama is less likely to stumble into a war America would do better to
avoid. Rattling the Cage

In January I wrote a column in favor of John McCain for US president, and since
then I haven't wavered. Well, now I'm wavering. I haven't gone over decisively
to Barack Obama, but I'm less uncomfortable about him than I was before, while
I've become more uncomfortable about McCain.

As of today, I'm undecided. I'm moving in Obama's direction, but not
irreversibly. For me, it comes down to deciding which of the two candidates
seems less likely to screw up disastrously in the overriding issue facing an
American president - the war on terror, as it's called.

Iraq is part of that war, and I came out for McCain mainly because he
understood, in a way Obama and the Democrats didn't, that abandoning Iraq was
unthinkable - for the Iraqis' sake, America's sake and everyone else's sake.

But now, with security and stability gradually taking hold in that country,
thanks to the change in US military policy that McCain championed before just
about anyone else, there seems to be an Iraqi-American consensus for a measured
withdrawal of US troops, which makes the Iraq war less of an issue in the
presidential race.

Still, Iraq is America's hottest front, the one in which America has the most at
stake, and I trust McCain more than I do Obama to handle it right. If the
withdrawal goes well, then it won't matter much who's president. But there's no
guarantee at all that the withdrawal will go well, which is where the difference
between the two candidates comes into play.

If the withdrawal goes badly - if the radical Shi'ites, Sunnis and al-Qaida
types who've put down their arms decide to take them up again - then the thing
for America to do would be to stop the withdrawal and very possibly send troops
back in. Again, it is unthinkable for America to let Iraq go to hell. If it
turns out that the withdrawal from Iraq should, by rights, be reversed, I think
McCain would be fully prepared to stop on a dime and change course. It's
extremely hard for me to see Obama and the Democrats doing that if it became
necessary. So I think the war in Iraq is a riskier matter with Obama as
commander-in-chief than with McCain.

WHAT I'VE come to learn about Obama, though, is that while he has virtually no
experience in foreign policy - a big minus, of course - he is not the
starry-eyed dove his true-blue liberal "base" imagines him to be. He just
criticized President Bush for not sending enough additional troops into
Afghanistan. "The central front in the war on terror," he said, "is in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the terrorists who hit us on 9/11 are still
plotting attacks seven years later." He's not the guy Moveon.org wants him to
be, for which I'm thankful.

Another thing that struck me favorably about Obama was an interview he gave in
May to conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks. "I have enormous
sympathy for the foreign policy of George H.W. Bush," Obama said. "I don't have
a lot of complaints about the handling of Desert Storm." Neither do I; it was
the finest performance, the wisest and most courageous, by an American president
in my lifetime. H.W. wasn't afraid to use force, but he also knew the limits of
force - something very, very few Republicans or Democrats know. For Obama to
single out the elder Bush's foreign policy and war leadership for praise is a
very encouraging sign.

He spoke in the interview about the necessary "blend of military action to
diplomatic action," about the idiocy of equating diplomacy with appeasement.
"The generals are light-years ahead of the civilians," he said. "They are trying
to get the job done rather than look tough." This is something McCain either
doesn't know or isn't telling anyone - that all this gung-ho hogwash that goes
over so well at GOP conventions makes American military leaders wince. Unlike
Republican audiences, American generals tend to be very sober and cautious about
war, possibly because they actually know something about it.

If there is one message the US military-intelligence establishment has been
trying to get out in the past year, it is this: Don't attack Iran. So I think
that in all, a President Obama might have a closer meeting of the minds with the
Pentagon and CIA than a President McCain.

FURTHER ON the subject of minds, I think Obama's is clearly the superior one.
It's not just that he no doubt has the higher IQ, it's that his decision-making
process is more deliberative than McCain's, he weighs the pros and cons more
thoroughly, he's more curious and open-minded. McCain goes more from the gut,
and with his Cold War instincts and right-wing support, that worries me some.

When the fighting between Georgia and Russia broke out, he distorted it into a
war between the children of light (Georgia) and the children of darkness
(Russia), and sounded like he wanted to send in the marines. Now he's just
picked a running mate who is abysmally unfit to be president - a grossly
irresponsible decision for a 72-year- old presidential candidate with a history
of skin cancer to make.

Obama's lack of experience in foreign policy and crisis management make him a
very risky choice to become the world's most powerful leader. But McCain's
wing-nut, shoot-from-the-hip tendencies, which have emerged more vividly during
the campaign, make him no less a risk.

In McCain's favor, his tendencies would almost certainly be tempered by a
Democratic-controlled Congress (a likely outcome of the November 4 election),
the Pentagon's wariness about starting another war and the American public's
wariness too, regardless of how much they cheer and boo.

In Obama's favor is the entire slate of domestic and economic issues, from taxes
to health care to abortion to the Supreme Court, on which he and the Democrats
are infinitely better than McCain and the Republicans. Also in Obama's favor is
Joe Biden, especially when compared to Sarah Palin.

But America is at war, and it may be more deeply and broadly at war in the
future. In a war of no choice, one that demanded great sacrifice of Americans at
large, there's no question that McCain would be the preferable president. But on
the other hand, Obama is less likely to stumble into a war America would do
better to avoid.

McCain has the experience necessary in the White House, Obama doesn't. But Obama
has the proverbial first- rate intellect and first-rate temperament for the job
- and I'm not sure McCain does.

As for who's better for Israel, I'm sure both would be good for Israel, just
like every other American president, in his own way, has been.

So I'm left undecided. Until recently, my heart was with Obama but my mind was
with McCain; now my heart is still with Obama but my mind is divided. I'd say
the odds are a little better than even, say 55-45, that by Election Day, I'll
have gone over to Obama. But it's still early, and this is such an exciting
election; anything could happen.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: CAMPAIGNING IN Michigan. For Obama to single out the elder
Bush's foreign policy and war leadership for praise is a very encouraging sign.
(Credit: AP)

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September 11, 2008 Thursday

Why are Republicans guilty of tokenism - while Democrats produce historic
breakthroughs?

BYLINE: GIL TROY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1008 words

HIGHLIGHT: As long as Sarah Palin appears more like Al Gore than Dan Quayle, she
should be hailed as an impressive individual and a leading pioneer. FROM THE
CENTER. The writer is professor of history at McGill University and the author
of Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents.

When Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, many
Americans cheered his historic breakthrough. For the first time in American
history, a major political party had nominated a black man for president. Even
many Obama opponents transcended partisanship to celebrate this extraordinary -
and hopefully healing - achievement.

Yet the next day, when John McCain designated Alaska's young governor, Sarah
Palin, as his running mate, Democrats cried: "tokenism." Democrats said McCain's
was manipulating the many American women mourning Hillary Clinton's defeat as a
setback in their quest to break the ultimate "glass ceiling" of the White House.
Even many Republicans squirmed at McCain's crassness.

Yet there seems to be a contradiction. Why are Republicans deemed guilty of
tokenism when they promote women or blacks, while Democratic "diversity"
promotions are hailed as historic breakthroughs? Obamaniacs have a simple
answer. They claim that Barack Obama - and Hillary Clinton - are both qualified
to be president and Sarah Palin is not. Moreover, Democrats say that Obama did
not run on his race, and Clinton did not run on her gender, but that Palin was
picked solely because she is female.

BOTH SIDES of the story are more complicated. The 44- year-old Palin, indeed, is
a first-term governor of a marginal state, but the 47-year-old Obama is a
first-term US senator, so he lacks any serious executive experience. And while
Obama did not run on his race alone, he would not have won the primaries without
African-Americans' nearly- unanimous support.

Similarly, Palin's gender factored into McCain's equation in choosing her, but
so far she has been more useful in solidifying his right-wing evangelical base.
Moreover, the older Democratic women who disdain Palin rejoiced in 1984 when
Walter Mondale nominated the inexperienced Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as
his running mate.

Partisanship and ideology feed this hypocrisy. Just as Democrats charged
tokenism when President George H.W. Bush appointed Clarence Thomas, an
anti-affirmative action African-American to the Supreme Court, Democrats are
furious that Palin is pro-life. She is so pro-life she did not abort her fifth
child, even though she knew he would be born with Down syndrome. Now Palin seems
to be encouraging her pregnant 17-year-old daughter to get married and keep the
love child. These anti-abortion bona fides thrilled the Christian right, and
have already improved the Republican Convention dynamics for McCain.

Obama has campaigned as a leader of all Americans, not the great black hope.
But, inevitably, in multicultural democracies, the lines blur. Whenever an
individual from a distinct, historically oppressed subgroup bursts through a
glass ceiling, it is an individual and group achievement.

Both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of hypocrisy. Republicans are usually
quicker to disdain tokenism, yet they frequently make strategic choices based on
race, religion, ethnicity or gender. Democrats worship "diversity" as a core
ideal, but too frequently that means a rainbow of men and women representing
different races, religions, ethnicities, all marching in ideological lockstep,
never tolerating diversity of thought too. How supporting abortion became so
central to the women's movement is an interesting historical question for
another time, but to many women, a female pro-life vice president is as
unacceptable as an anti-Zionist Jewish president would be to Jews.

AMERICAN JEWS are as inconsistent on this score as any other group. Jews crave
acceptance as "normal" Americans while taking particular naches in every Jewish
political appointee, in every American Jewish success. American Jews want
non-Jews to accept them as Americans, without noticing that American Jews vote
for their own kind disproportionately and often help each other out generously.

A popular if possibly apocryphal story about America's first Jewish cabinet
member, Oscar Straus, recalls that when president Theodore Roosevelt met leaders
of the American Jewish community celebrating the appointment, he told them what
they wanted to hear. TR insisted: "I chose Oscar Straus because he was the best
man for the job." Then, the legendary banker Jacob Schiff, now old and deaf,
thanked the president, saying that when president Roosevelt told him it was time
to have a Jew in the cabinet, Oscar Straus was the obvious choice.

In Israel, too, the politics of ethnicity and gender can get intense - and
inconsistent. Moshe Katsav delighted in his role as a successful Sephardi role
model, then immediately - and falsely - played the racism card when his
despicable behavior created a scandal. And Tzipi Livni's on-again-off-again
flirtation with the legacy of Golda Meir reflects her complicated juggling act
among being treated like "one of the boys," tapping into some "girl power" and
staying true to her Revisionist anti-Golda roots.

Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to win a congressional seat, ran for
president in 1972. She insisted : "I am not the candidate of black America,
although I am black and proud. I am not a candidate of the women's movement of
this country, although I am a woman, and equally proud of that. I am the
candidate of the people of America..." Alas, if anyone remembers Chisholm today,
it is because of her race and gender.

Still, hers is an admirable formula. And so, with Barack Obama having received
the Democratic nomination, Americans and freedom-loving people everywhere honor
his individual achievement, appreciate his impressive abilities independent of
his race, yet also welcome this breakthrough for people of color and oppressed
minorities everywhere. Similarly, as long as Sarah Palin appears more like Al
Gore than Dan Quayle, she should be hailed as an impressive individual and a
leading pioneer.

We need a little constructive hypocrisy on this issue. People should rise and
fall on their merits, but in this imperfect world, if they bring their subgroup
a little more pride and standing, that is an added bonus.

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September 11, 2008 Thursday

Letters

BYLINE: Norman Meskin, Weekend responds, Marci Rapp, Sue Epstein responds,

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 485 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Wrongly done, baby

Unlike Mr. Miller ("Rightly done, baby," September 4), I will make no effort to
be cute, witty or politically correct. I found his "happiness" that the
above-mentioned restaurant was not kosher to be truly offensive. What is his,
and the magazine's, purpose? To review and highlight things to do and places to
go or to espouse a particular religious (or irreligious) lifestyle?

It is one thing to give a rave review to a non-kosher restaurant, and something
totally different to be gleeful that the restaurant is not kosher.

I firmly believe that this remark is not in keeping with the general tone of the
magazine. Still, it is necessary to apologize for this gratuitous slur against
an observant lifestyle.

NORMAN MESKIN

Jerusalem Ê

Weekend responds:

Sorry, indeed it was not our intention to offend anyone or to belittle their
beliefs. We will display more sensitivity in the future.

Floundering for help

In "Food for the man on the street" (August 14), Sue Epstein provides a recipe
for fish and chips - but where is the fish part of the recipe? It goes from
batter instructions to frying the potatoes without saying what to do with the
batter.

MARCI RAPP

Jerusalem

Sue Epstein responds:

Marci, please forgive the error. Below is the corrected recipe. This is a great
meal and I hope you'll enjoy it. Thanks so much for bringing it to our
attention.

FISH AND CHIPS

Makes 4 servings

1 cup flour

1 egg, separated

2 Tbsp. beer

1/2 tsp. salt

3 Tbsp. milk

3 Tbsp. cold water

1 kg. firm fish

(haddock, sole, flounder)

cut into 7-cm. serving

pieces

1 kg. baking potatoes,

sliced lengthwise

into 1-cm. strips

Oil for deep frying

Salt

Malt vinegar

Place the flour in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the center and add the
egg yolk, beer and salt. Stir until well mixed. Combine the milk and the water
and gradually add it to the flour mixture. Mix until smooth. Let the mixture
rest for about half hour. Beat the egg white until it forms still peaks and fold
it into the batter gently and thoroughly.

Preheat oven to 120¼C. Line a cookie sheet with paper towels. Preheat the oil to
190¼C. Dry the potatoes thoroughly and fry them in 3 or 4 batches in the hot oil
until they are crisp and light brown, about 5-6 minutes. Be sure the oil is at
190¼C before adding each batch of potatoes. Drain the potatoes and transfer them
to the cookie sheet and place in the oven to keep them warm.

Wash the fish in cold water and dry thoroughly. Drop 2 or 3 pieces at a time
into the batter. Coat thoroughly; let the excess batter drip off. Be sure the
temperature of the oil has returned to 190¼C. Plunge the batter-coated pieces
into the hot oil. Fry for 4 to 5 minutes, turning with tongs to prevent
sticking. Drain on paper towels and serve immediately with the potatoes. Coarse
salt and malt vinegar are the traditional accompaniments.

If you're a stickler for authenticity, serve the fish and chips in a paper cone
of unprinted newspaper.

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September 10, 2008 Wednesday

Goodbye, goodfellas

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 686 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

In a scene reminiscent of a Hollywood mafia movie, reputed organized crime
kingpin Charlie Abutbul was badly wounded in a hail of bullets inside a Netanya
eatery on Monday. The slugs intended for Abutbul also struck three innocent
bystanders - proving yet again that local tough guys show no compunction about
harming innocent "civilians," dozens of whom have been killed or wounded.

The most recent was Marguerita Lautin, shot down on the Bat Yam beach in a
botched hit allegedly commissioned by crime family boss Itzik Abergil against
his former soldier Rami Amira. Abergil was detained after Lautin's murder, but
no firm connection between him and the attempt on Amira's life could be
established.

PUTTING AN end to this mayhem is a top issue on the domestic agenda. There is
even talk of bringing in the Shin Bet to help the police get the crisis under
control. That's a bad idea - the Israel Security Agency has enough on its hands.
It's the police who should and must protect us from the gangsters.

The police will simply have to pull out all the stops to take on the mob. Only
relatively recently did authorities even acknowledge the existence of six
Jewish, and three Arab, organized crime families. But soon after the police
admitted the mob was real, it said the force was too strapped for cash to
overcome the bad guys. That was the police's line after the Netanya hit as well.

The cops argue that "enormous" financial outlays are needed to yield the kind of
intelligence that would stand up in court without jeopardizing their informants.
But we are not totally convinced that the problem is money.

The good news is that police now have a special unit, Lahav 433, devoted to
fighting organized crime. Law enforcement is also trying to create a witness
protection program. But the fledgling Lahav 433 unit is not yet fully up to
speed or able, apparently, to counter the intimidation of witnesses.

Some of Israel's crime bosses are actually more scared of the FBI's long arm
than of our local authorities. It was American law enforcement that finally got
the goods on Ze'ev Rosenstein - although he was allowed to do his time here, a
convenient location from which to oversee his empire.

Just as Abergil was dodging responsibility for the Lautin slaying, Washington
requested his extradition, and that of his brother Meir, for a host of serious
charges including commissioning murder. Meir wept unabashedly in court on
Monday, saying he was "afraid" of America, where he's already done time.

Israelis are grateful when the American cavalry comes to our rescue; but isn't
it too bad that our own law enforcement people can't seem to get the job done?
And, anyway, American justice can only help with those criminals who operate in
the States.

ISRAEL needs to learn from the American experience - but it also needs to apply
the wisdom, and toughness, we've accumulated in fighting terrorism to the
criminal arena.

* The families of some confirmed terrorists need to worry about whether
authorities are going to demolish their homes. Families of major domestic
criminals who have spread terror in our streets should have, at least, to live
with the fear that their homes could also be confiscated.

* For that, Israel needs a RICO of its own - the Racketeer Influenced and
Corrupt Organizations Act, which allows for the confiscation of a criminal
organization's legitimate business assets. Let's take that one step further and
put the personal assets of organized crime figures at risk.

* The tax laws need to be applied vigorously. Al Capone was sent up the river 80
years ago not for all the murders he commissioned, but for tax evasion. A task
force has been set up - on paper - to investigate Israeli gangsters whose lavish
lifestyles show no visible means of support. This effort needs to be
accelerated, urgently, even if it means hiring certified accountants who can
also shoot straight a la America's IRS.

* Finally, the justice minister needs to consider the appointment of special
prosecutors to fight organized crime.

Let's make the syndicate an offer it can't refuse: Get out of our lives, or swim
with the fishes.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 10, 2008 Wednesday

Letters

BYLINE: Nelson Marans, Sharon Altshul, Meir Abelson, B. Lynn, Yonatan Silver,
Joseph Feld, Naftali Wagschal, Nachama Kanner, Mack

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1154 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Back to the future

Sir, - If there were any questions about Russia's true intentions in the Middle
East, the Russian aid to Iran in its nuclear program should dispel any doubt
("Russia prepares to launch Iran's nuke plant," September 9).

After agreeing to supply both Iran and Syria with advanced weaponry systems and
thwarting UN efforts to impose meaningful sanctions on Iran, the Russians are
now committing the ultimate aggression by assisting an Iranian nuclear program
aimed at the destruction of Israel.

Russia has returned to its pre-1982 Cold War stance. If the US does nothing, the
consequences for Israel may be catastrophic.

NELSON MARANS

Silver Spring, Maryland

Free 'em all

Sir, -The release of 198 Palestinian prisoners "was a smart and courageous
move," Yossi Alpher writes ("In praise of prisoner releases," September 9). Past
governments used "draconian sentences as strong deterrent punishment with a
refusal to use prisoner releases as confidence-building gestures... One negative
result has been the creation of incentives for Palestinians... to kidnap
Israelis."

So tomorrow, let's empty the jails and send all the inmates to Ramallah!

Just think, at once we will have freed up enough trained security personnel to
protect our city streets. And instead of giving murderers university educations,
we will have an influx of much-needed funds for our schools. Thousands of social
welfare cases could be helped by the money that has gone on feeding all those
prisoners.

And Hamas will have to invent a new excuse for not releasing Gilad Schalit.

SHARON ALTSHUL

Jerusalem

Wronged by whom?

Sir, - James Adler is right: "The Palestinians have been wronged" ("Punishing
good deeds," Letters, September 9). But by whom? Here are some answers, from
others than Israelis:

* "The fact that there are these refugees is a direct consequence of the Arab
States in opposing partition and the Jewish State." (Emile Ghoury, Secretary of
the Arab Higher Committee, Sept. 6, 1948)

* "The Arab States do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep
it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against
Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die."
(Ralph Galloway, former head of UNWRA, in Amman, 1958)

* "The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that
they would return within a week. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab
armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly, and that there was no need
for panic or fear of a long exile." (Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic
bishop of Galilee, Sada al Janub, Aug. 16, 1948)

* "It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the
refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem." (Near East
Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949)

* "The Arab governments told us: 'Get out so that we can get in.' So we got out,
but they did not get in." (Arab refugee's letter in the Ad-Difaa Jordanian
daily, Sept. 6, 1954)

* "Arab leaders were responsible for the [Arab] flight, disseminating
exaggerated rumors of Jewish atrocities in order to incite the Arabs, thus
instilling fear in the hearts of the Palestinians. The Jews haven't attacked any
Arab village, unless attacked first." (Ismail Safwat, Commander of Palestinian
Operations, in March, 1948. Al-Urdun Jordanian daily, April 9, 1953)

* "Villages were frequently abandoned even though they were not threatened by
the progress of war." (Glubb Pasha, commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion,
London Daily Mail, Sept. 12, 1948)

* "We brought destruction on the refugees by calling on them to leave their
homes." (Khaled al-Azam, Syrian prime minister in 1949, Memoirs, 1953)

The truth has been concealed for too long.

MEIR ABELSON

Beit Shemesh

Direct access

Sir, - In "Who's in charge here?" (September 9) Amnon Rubinstein noted that in
our country unelected functionaries are more influential than elected
politicians.

But, in fact, we don't elect our politicians - only parties. The solution is not
to tinker with our proportional-party system, as the writer proposes, but to
elect our representatives directly to serve us.

B. LYNN

Efrat

Paid leave

Sir, - Re "Evacuation compensation cabinet debate unrelated to PA talks"
(September 7): Maybe certain MKs would not be adverse to receiving money to
leave the Knesset.

YONATAN SILVER

Jerusalem

When 'kosher'

means profits

Sir, - Further to "TA hotels enforce Shabbat checkout times" (September 8): I
think the confusion is caused by the difference between the Diaspora and Israel.

Outside Israel, kosher hotels serve mainly the Orthodox community, and are
therefore Shabbat-observant. In Israel, even totally secular hotels geared to
non-Jewish holiday makers have kashrut certificates to widen their potential
market - i.e. to make more money.

To us Orthodox Jews, "kosher" = frum; to them, "kosher" = more income.

When people book hotels in advance, the hotels must tell them that the checkout
time applies even on Shabbat. Otherwise they risk negative publicity, and that
equals loss of income!

JOSEPH FELD

London

No mention of

God - how odd!

Sir, - I noted that presidential nominee John McCain's acceptance speech
contained five references to God ("Where Obama was soaring, McCain was
sobering," September 7).

The Jewish people have held fast to faith in God for 3,000 years, and gave
belief in God to the world. It is no less than utterly shameful that the secular
leaders of Israel today fail to display any faith in God and studiously refrain
from ever referring to Him in their speeches and public utterances.

Does this not reflect a serious Israeli identity crisis and call for profound
national soul-searching?

NAFTALI WAGSCHAL

Brooklyn

More cures for

deficient drivers

Sir, - Further to the excellent "Traditional cures for an old dog" (Letters,
September 4): Yael Cohen's suggestion of rehab service for violators of driving
laws reminded me of something I've been thinking about for years

Before receiving their licenses, all applicants should be required to volunteer
in a rehab center for a period of time which would depend on the applicant's
age, with those under 20 doing the maximum. Hopefully, this would sober people
up even before they get on the road.

I've also long dreamed of a system whereby someone who's being tailgated could
press a button that would light up a sign in the back window, reminding the
driver behind to maintain a safer following distance. Just the word Merhak!
(distance) would be sufficient. It could even be connected to the brake pedal.

NACHAMA KANNER

Rehovot

Butting out

Sir, - Chaim Fachler's letter "Smoky stations" (September 7) urging that smoking
in train stations be restricted is a good start. Let's extend it to bus stops.
If smokers got ticketed for each cigarette butt thrown on the ground, we would
have not only less smoking and lower rates of heart disease and cancer as a
result, but also less litter.

MACK

Jerusalem

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September 10, 2008 Wednesday

Jewish pride, and shame

BYLINE: JUDY MONTAGU

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1204 words

HIGHLIGHT: Two ways of dealing with one's heritage - but only one real option.
IN MY OWN WRITE

Figures as diverse as Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Ilan Ramon, Daniel Pearl and Joseph
Cedar have been called "proud Jew." It's what comes to mind when one sees
footage of Menachem Begin addressing the Israeli nation or foreign leaders. I
understand it's how he conducted himself with ordinary citizens he met.

But what does it mean to be a proud Jew? And its opposite, a shamefaced one?

Webster's offers two helpful definitions of "proud": "having proper
self-respect" and "marked by stateliness." You could call it standing tall in
your Jewishness.

A PROUD Jew needn't be a religiously observant one, but it makes this Jew proud
to see Israelis upholding their beliefs abroad, when taking the line of least
resistance is so much easier.

On February 27, the Post's Greer Fay Cashman wrote:

"Although he didn't win the Oscar for foreign film at this week's Academy
Awards, Israeli director Joseph Cedar won points for being a proud Jew. His
black kippa remained in view in Hollywood, and when invited to participate in a
panel discussion on the Saturday... Cedar consulted with his rabbi, who told him
it would be OK provided he did not use a microphone.

"It took Cedar the best part of an hour to walk to the venue, and the moderator
explained that for religious reasons, he would not be using a mike.

"That public display was worth a lot more than an Oscar," Cashman commented.

Ramon, the Israeli astronaut, was not an observant Jew, but he too was a proud
one - "a nation's pride," as a Post reader from Wisconsin wrote in 2003. Ramon,
who that year crashed fatally aboard the Columbia space shuttle, went into outer
space proudly armed with a picture of the Earth as seen from the moon drawn by a
Jewish boy in Theresienstadt, a Torah scroll from Bergen Belsen, a microfiche
copy of the Bible, the national flag and a kiddush cup.

ALSO IN 2003, journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and slaughtered by Islamists
in Pakistan. In I Am Jewish, his father, Judea, wrote:

"A young man... in a moment of extreme crisis, looked straight in the eye of
evil, and said: 'My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish. Back in
the town of Bnei Brak, there is a street named after my great- grandfather,
Chayim Pearl, who was one of the founders of the town.'"

These unequivocal affirmations of identity were the words of a proud Jew. A
contributor to I Am Jewish compares Daniel Pearl to the Ten Jewish Martyrs we
read about on Yom Kippur, who died for their beliefs.

IF ONLY we saw more examples of Jewish "self-respect and stateliness" among our
current leadership, instead of dodgy dealings at home and a kowtowing to foreign
rulers that makes one wince.

Why must our premier act so obsequiously when he visits foreign capitals,
including Arab ones, lavishing over-effusive compliments on their leaders while
they stand on their dignity?

And if only our leaders didn't shy away from all public mention of the deity, so
unlike the US presidential candidates' "God bless you all, and God bless
America." Such an invocation here, a recent Post reader's letter conjectured,
could jeopardize a political career.

THE WAY I see it, Jews today - whether as individuals in the Diaspora or as a
nation in Israel - have two broad choices: They can either claim their
Jewishness without apology, or shrug off this awkward "accident of birth" and
try to act like good gentiles.

Neither course is easy. Those who choose the first must accept that their
position vis-a-vis the world will be marked by the starkness of "being
different" rather than the comfort of "blending in." Those who opt for the
second must, however assimilated, live with a nagging sense of having denied a
part of themselves.

In the 1970s, I worked at the Language Tuition Center in London's Oxford Street,
where foreign students came to improve their English. In between classes, we had
private students, and one of mine was an Italian businessman, friendly,
confident and suave as only Italians can be.

Toward the end of his lessons, our conversation became more personal and I told
him I was moving to Israel. He became still.

"You are Jewish?"

"Yes."

Silence. Many seconds passed.

"Now I will tell you something. I too am Jewish. Yes. My wife, my children think
I am a good Catholic. Sunday, we attend mass. They do not know, nobody knows."

His face darkened. "We are a cursed people - look what the Nazis did to us. I
will never expose my children to the cursed Jewish fate. Never."

His resolve was unmistakeable, yet I sensed his relief at having connected his
core self, for a brief moment, to a fellow Jew he would never meet again.

THAT ITALIAN Jew was ashamed of his Jewishness to the extent of hiding it
completely. Less extremely, his is an attitude echoed by not a few left-lib
Westerners today.

While we aren't in the 1930s or '40s, there's a lot of Jew-hatred around, and a
fair amount of it is directed at the "collective Jew," Israel. So obsessive is
this negative preoccupation with Israel that it's hard to claim it is free of
anti-Semitism.

I see two basic ways of confronting hatred: to repel it or to internalize it;
and one might think that we Jews - especially since acquiring the state our
Zionist founders held was essential to our salvation - would have become adept
at repelling it.

It seems not. People today, including many Jews, find it difficult to believe
that "baseless hatred" can exist. If Israel is so reviled, they say, it must
have done something really wicked to deserve it.

Into this uncritical view the Palestinians have almost effortlessly slotted
their charge of "They stole our land" as the original sin that justifies
unremitting enmity and freeing themselves of all ethical constraints in
"liberating" that land.

Jews who have let this hatred of Israel infiltrate their psyches find it
impossible, "under the circumstances," to be proud Jews. A friend who works for
a large Jewish women's organization in New York told me that the first words to
her audience of an Israeli theater director invited there to lecture were: "I am
ashamed to stand before you considering what Israel is doing to the
Palestinians."

Such Jews' way of tikkun olam, of "mending the world," is to adopt the narrative
of the "other" in the hope that this will bring absolution and Israel will at
last become an ordinary country, and Jews become like everybody else.

BUT - sorry to say - ordinariness is probably out of the Jewish reach,
individually and collectively. History shows quite clearly that the world won't
allow Israel to be "like any other nation." True, the world can't quite make up
its mind where to put us - but it won't be with everybody else.

So if we are fated to be "special," shouldn't we try to gain an understanding of
what sets us apart - a covenant which encapsulates the Jewish civilizational
journey and its promise of continuity - and be proud of it? It seems the logical
thing to do.

Jewish self-respect, however, will be marked by true stateliness only when we
make sure that every Jewish child knows where we've come from as a people, and
why it is worthwhile for us to pursue a common destiny.

As for our attitude to the "other," when it stems not from self-negation but
from genuine Jewish pride, we will be on the right track to achieving what we
most desire.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 10, 2008 Wednesday

Payback time at the UN

BYLINE: MICHAEL FREUND

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 766 words

HIGHLIGHT: Israel reimburse Lebanon and Syria for the damage it inflicted while
defending itself in the last war? Then make those countries pay for their
sponsorship of Hizbullah and the damage it wrought on us. Fundamentally Freund

The war in Lebanon may have ended two years ago, but that hasn't stopped the UN
from exploiting the conflict to besmirch Israel. In a move that harks back to
the bad old days of UN hypocrisy and double standards vis-^-vis the Jewish
state, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is reportedly set to demand that Israel
reimburse Lebanon and Syria for damage caused during the war against Hizbullah.

Yes, you read that correctly. The UN wants Israel to pay for having the gall to
defend itself. According to the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, Ban has prepared a
report that he will present to the upcoming General Assembly in New York. Based
on calculations made by the World Bank, he will insist that Israel cough up
approximately $1 billion in "compensation" for material and environmental harm
to Lebanese society and infrastructure.

In addition, Ban will purportedly highlight the bombing of the Jiyeh power plant
30 kilometers south of Beirut in mid-July 2006. As a result of the attack,
thousands of barrels of oil are said to have spilled into the Mediterranean,
polluting parts of the Lebanese and Syrian coastlines and causing ecological
damage to marine life.

The report is a sequel, of sorts, to one issued last fall by Ban, in which he
called on Israel "to take the necessary actions toward assuming responsibility
for prompt and adequate compensation to the government of Lebanon." Since Israel
rightly ignored that preposterous request, Ban has now apparently decided to
turn up the heat in the hopes of pressing Jerusalem to pay.

Even for a body with such a long and remarkable record of anti-Israel hyperbole,
the UN has outdone itself this time. Ban's insistence that Israel pay the
aggressors for damage done during a war they provoked is both morally obscene
and intellectually obtuse.

Israel's actions in Lebanon did not occur in a vacuum, and it requires a highly
active imagination to overlook this basic fact.

If the Lebanese authorities allow their sovereign territory to be used as a
launching pad for attacks, as they did in the summer of 2006, they bear
responsibility for what ensues, including any damage caused as a result of
Israel's actions taken in self-defense.

You don't need to be a moral philosopher or international legal scholar to
figure that one out.

Ban's error is that he focuses entirely on the consequences of an action while
completely ignoring its context, as though the reason for a particular situation
has no bearing on the nature of the outcome. This is patently absurd, and would
be akin to the UN demanding that the US and its allies who invaded Afghanistan
after the September 11 attacks reimburse Osama bin Laden and the Taliban for
destroying the caves in which they hid.

Make no mistake. The UN's attempt to compel Israel to pay for bombing Lebanon
has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with a political agenda, one
that paints Israel as the unreasonable assailant rather than the innocent
victim. It is nothing less than a shameful attempt to rewrite history, and it
should not be allowed to stand.

BUT IF Ban nonetheless insists on pressing forward with the issue of
compensation, I say: Bring it on. Let's have a real debate over the matter. We
can start by working out compensation for the thousands of rockets, mortar
shells and other projectiles that were fired at Israel from Lebanese territory
during the war.

Let's add to that the loss in income from the drop in tourism, the calling up of
reserve units and the displacement of thousands of families throughout northern
Israel. Then there is the pain and suffering inflicted on soldiers and civilians
who were wounded and killed, as well as the mental and psychological trauma
endured by countless Israelis throughout the 33 days of conflict.

Why shouldn't Syria, Lebanon and Iran be made to pay for their sponsorship of
Hizbullah and the damage it wrought? And while we're on the subject of
liability, the UN might wish to consult its lawyers. After all, UNIFIL troops in
southern Lebanon have lethargically presided over repeated Hizbullah arms
buildups while doing little to stop them, despite the requirements of UN
Security Council resolutions. Their hands aren't entirely clean when it comes to
preventing the outbreak of conflict.

You can't have it both ways, Ban. You can't invoke principles of fairness and
equity and then demand that Israel be made to pay while ignoring the other
side's culpability.

As the late US Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once pointed out, "Everyone is
entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."

Not even the secretary-general of the United Nations.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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The Jerusalem Post

September 10, 2008 Wednesday

Georgia is not our war

BYLINE: ISI LEIBLER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1212 words

HIGHLIGHT: Seeking to avoid a confrontation is neither appeasement nor an
abdication of morality. Speaking Candidly

There are important lessons to be learned from the tragic Georgian imbroglio.
The first should already have been engraved in our minds from our self-inflicted
blunders during the botched Second Lebanon War: not to initiate an armed
conflict in the absence of a clear understanding of the ultimate game plan. Like
our Ehud Olmert, hotheaded Georgian President Mikhail Saaskashvili was utterly
reckless in dispatching his army to regain control of the breakaway pro-Russian
enclaves without considering the possible repercussions of such a brazen act. He
merely provided the Russians with the pretext to bloody their "upstart" neighbor
and demonstrate that they are still in control of the region.

The second lesson, also of considerable relevance to us, is that without the
resources and power to mount a strong independent defense, it was folly of the
Georgians to assume that a geographically distant allied superpower like America
would intervene militarily to defend them.

The third lesson is that in contrast to the standards by which the world judges
us, concepts like morality, proportionality or harming civilians are utterly
irrelevant when great powers are involved. The Russians made no apologies for
their brutal behavior, and were certainly not deterred by "humanitarian"
considerations. On the contrary, they threatened to get even tougher if their
neighbor failed to conform to their demands. One can visualize how they would
have responded had the Georgians behaved like Palestinians and launched even a
single missile at their territory.

FOR ISRAEL, the repercussions from the Georgian conflict could be very grave. If
US-Russian relations continue on a downward spiral and revert to a cold war, our
bitter foes will once again be armed by the Russians with advanced weaponry. It
may also have dire consequences for Jews still living in Russia. This explains
why Israel is maintaining such a low profile in the conflict, even to the point
of cutting off previously contracted arms deliveries to the Georgians.

This is also the context in which to view the recent rush visit to Moscow by
Syria's President Bashar Assad, pledging support for the Russians and seeking to
obtain the latest missile systems. The call initiated by Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev to our prime minister declaring that any Syrian arms deal will
not undermine our security is hardly reassuring, but may signal that the
Russians have not yet decided to totally throw in their lot with our enemies.

Where the present differs from the past is that, in contrast to the Communist
era, the Jewish factor no longer occupies a central role in Russian policy. I
can testify from personal experience, based on extensive negotiations with the
Soviets relating to Soviet Jewry, that crude anti- Semitism and Jewish pressure
to emigrate were the dominant elements affecting the Israel-USSR relationship.

Not any more. Whereas anti-Semitism, ingrained into Russian culture from the
time of the tsars to the end of the Soviet Union, remains a powerful factor
among the people, the era of state-sponsored Jew baiting has ended. True, in
recent years, for reasons of realpolitik, the Russians have tilted further
toward the Arabs, especially their former ally Syria. But however imperfect our
relations with the Russians may be, they are a far cry from the vicious
hostility and the obsession to destroy us which prevailed during the Communist
era. Indeed, one gains the impression that Russia's strongman Vladimir Putin is
entirely indifferent to Jews, and on occasion has even identified himself with
Jewish objectives which he thought enhanced Russia's global interests.

IT IS of course undeniable that the latest trends within Russia have been toward
greater authoritarianism and suppression of human rights. But having said that,
and without detracting from the brutal behavior of the current regime, the
frequently expressed comparisons by pundits of Russian behavior today with
Soviet interventions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia are exaggerated, as are
suggestions that the autocratic Russia of today is comparable to the evil
totalitarian system of the Soviet Union.

The fact is that the Russians are attempting to reclaim their superpower status
and overcome the humiliation associated with their perception that the Americans
are orchestrating a potentially hostile armed alliance within their sphere of
influence. Much of Putin's and Medvedev's popularity over the invasion of
Georgia can be attributed to their aggressive posturing against and resistance
to NATO encroachments and Polish approval for the US to station a missile system
on its territory.

This climaxed when their immediate neighbors, the Georgians, also sought to join
NATO. The Russians not only responded brutally toward the Georgians, but also
signaled a new hard-line approach to the West, especially the Americans, warning
them that any effort to continue to promote NATO or impede their support of
independence for the Georgian secessionist enclaves (a Kosovo in reverse) would
intensify the tensions.

Under these circumstances, whereas Israel is only a minor player in this
confrontation, it would be totally against our interests to take sides. In fact,
to the extent that we have any say at all, our diplomacy should do all it can to
avoid a revival of the Cold War.

DESPITE ITS oil wealth, which may be transitory, Russia remains a poorly
developed state. But if the Russians become divorced from the international
community, the damage they have already caused would be intensified and they
could become spoilers in every area of global activity, effectively heading a
new axis of evil. They could undermine Western interests in relation to Iran,
Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela and the UN. They would also have the capacity to
sabotage our global efforts to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions, and
substantially undermine our security. Ongoing polarization of relations between
Russia and the West will also inevitably lead to a strengthening of the forces
of Islamic fundamentalism and global terror.

This need not be. Russia shares a common interest with Western countries in
containing Islamic terrorism, which poses a threat to us all. It is perhaps
reminiscent of the pragmatic alliance between the Allies and the Soviet Union to
defeat the Nazis during World War II. It will be a diabolical balancing act to
avoid polarizing the situation, and there are no guarantees that we can come to
an accommodation with the Russians. But to discourage further polarization,
instead of indulging in righteous indignation we should consider their real and
perceived national sensitivities as well as their obsession to regain
recognition as a major power.

Seeking to avoid a confrontation is neither appeasement nor an abdication of
morality. For a little country like ours in the volatile neighborhood in which
we live, we are obliged to concentrate on the menace from the barbarians at our
gates, who threaten us and all civilized mankind.

Some may interpret this approach as unprincipled realpolitik. But morality in
diplomacy ceases to be moral when it becomes self sacrificial by ignoring the
overriding threat from Islamic fundamentalism, which would benefit enormously
and become far more potent by a renewal of the Cold War.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: THE INTERNATIONAL Court of Justice in The Hague last Monday.
Diplomacy should do all it can to avoid a revival of the Cold War. (Credit: JP)

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September 10, 2008 Wednesday

The Bomb in the basement

BYLINE: LOUIS RENE BERES

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 998 words

HIGHLIGHT: All deliberations of possible existence with a nuclear Iran assume
rationality. But is rationality certain? What if the Muslim state chooses to
become a nuclear suicide bomber? The writer is the author of many books and
articles on nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including recent publications in
International Security, Nativ, The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs,
Parameters: The Professional Journal of the US Army War College, Case Western
Reserve Journal of International Law and The International Journal of
Intelligence and Counterintelligence.

Political scientists are fond of assuming "rationality." But regarding Iran,
neither the US nor Israel has acted in its own self-interest. Each has already
allowed a threat to reach a point of possibly no return. For Israel, the cost of
inaction could be intolerable harm.

Why? National leaders rely desperately on hope. This misplaced optimism has the
emotionally satisfying but strategically injurious effect of blocking productive
policies. It may even encourage catastrophic war and terrorism.

Iran continues its march toward nuclear weapons, but neither Israel nor the US
has been willing to act preemptively. This will force them to seek safety in the
so-called logic of deterrence, ironically making them entirely dependent on the
assumption of rationality.

Our leaders will vainly attempt to achieve stable deterrence with Teheran,
hoping that a balance of terror can be structured on the US-USSR Cold War model.
They will be bitterly disappointed.

Deterrence will likely rest on very weak psychological foundations. For Israel,
a principal component of strategic policy has always been to keep its Bomb in
the basement, but there will soon be a debate on the wisdom of continued
ambiguity.

Arguably, until now, nuclear opacity has worked. Although such ambiguity has
done little to deter conventional aggressions or multiple acts of terror, it has
succeeded in keeping the country's enemies from mounting existential attacks.
These could have been attempted without nuclear or biological weapons because -
as strategic theorist Clausewitz wrote - there does come a point when "mass
counts."

Israel's enemies have always had an obvious advantage in mass. None of them has
the Bomb, but acting collectively, these states and their assorted proxies, even
without nuclear weapons, could have inflicted huge harm on the Jewish state.

To be deterred, a fully nuclear Iran would need to know that Israel's nuclear
weapons are both invulnerable and capable of penetrating its defenses. Any
Iranian judgment about Israel's willingness to retaliate with nuclear weapons
would depend in part on a foreknowledge of these weapons.

Any Iranian belief that Israel's nuclear weapons are exclusively
mega-destructive must be modified. The enemy must be convinced that the Jewish
state possesses a range of weapons to meet a range of threats, so the
credibility of a deterrent posture could vary inversely with the perceived
destructiveness of Israeli arms. In coexisting with an already-nuclear Iran,
Israel would thus benefit not from any increased nuclear secrecy, but from
expanded nuclear disclosure.

Iran might share some of its nuclear components and materials with Hizbullah or
other kindred terrorist groups. To prevent this, Jerusalem would need to
convince Iran that it possesses a range of usable nuclear options. Once again,
ambiguity might not be sufficiently persuasive.

Ideally, Israel and the US will never allow Iran to become fully nuclear. But
failing such prevention, it will not be enough that Israel's enemies know only
the basic contours of its nuclear capacity. Jerusalem will need to move to some
precise level of disclosure. What will soon need to be calculated is the exact
extent of the subtlety with which Israel should communicate its nuclear
positions, intentions and capabilities.

Any rationale for nuclear disclosure would rely on the understanding that
nuclear weapons can serve Israel's security in a number of ways. Once faced with
a nuclear fait accompli in Teheran, Israel would need to convince its principal
enemy that it possesses both the will and the weapons to make any intended
nuclear aggression more costly than gainful.

But by definition, no move from ambiguity to disclosure would help in the case
of an irrational nuclear enemy, in Iran or anywhere else.

To the extent that an Iranian leadership might subscribe to visions of a Shi'ite
apocalypse, the country could cast aside all rational behavior. Were this to
happen, Iran could effectively become a nuclear suicide- bomber in macrocosm.
Such a destabilizing prospect is improbable, but not inconceivable.

To protect itself against enemy strikes, particularly those that could threaten
its existence, Israel must quickly exploit every aspect and function of its
still opaque nuclear arsenal. The success of its efforts will depend not only on
its selected configuration of "counterforce" and "countervalue" operations, but
also on the extent to which this choice is made known in advance to enemy states
and their non-state surrogates.

Before such enemies can be deterred from launching first strikes, and before
they can be deterred from launching retaliatory attacks following a non-nuclear
preemption, it will not be enough to know only that Israel has the Bomb. These
enemies will also need to recognize that Israel's nuclear weapons are
effectively invulnerable, and that some are pointed at high-value population
targets.

Removing the Bomb from the basement could enhance strategic deterrence. Such a
calculated end to deliberate ambiguity could also underscore Israel's
willingness to use these weapons in reprisal for certain enemy first strikes and
retaliatory attacks.

For now, the Bomb should remain ambiguous. But soon, and certainly no later than
when Iran is discovered to be close to attaining nuclear weapons, the Jewish
state must put an end to ambiguity.

There can never be any reliable peace with a nuclear Iran, barring regime
change. If neither Israel nor the US will undertake preemptive destruction of
Iran's nuclear program, Israel will have to take its Bomb out of the basement.
There are still good reasons to doubt that such a removal would be enough to
maintain its deterrence, but it would clearly be better done than left undone. A
failure to end nuclear ambiguity at the proper time could also affect US
security.

Certain forms of preemption are permissible under international law. These are
known correctly as anticipatory self-defense. International law is never a
suicide pact.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 9, 2008 Tuesday

Incident in Paris

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 707 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Though it boasts a popular science museum, a pleasant park and crisscrossing
canals, relatively few casual tourists make it to the 19th arrondissement in
northeast Paris.

This mostly working-class district of 180,000 has seen an influx of North
African and sub-Saharan Africans who now live alongside a community of roughly
15,000 Jews.

In the past 10 years, petty harassment has become so frequent as to be almost
unremarkable. Jewish schoolchildren have learned which streets - dominated by
Muslim anti-Semites - to avoid.

But when the hooligans go on the prowl, trouble is unavoidable. Toward the end
of this past Shabbat, three kippa-wearing boys 17 or 18 years old, Dan Nebet,
Kevin Bitan and David Boaziz, were attacked by one such group of mostly Muslim
Africans. Four or five assailants threw walnuts at Kevin. When he asked why they
were hassling him, he was knocked down. The Jewish youths were then surrounded
by a larger group of 10 to 12 louts and beaten with fists, chains and brass
knuckles.

One of the boys suffered a broken nose and injured jaw. All were left bruised
and traumatized.

In June, another kippa-wearing 17-year-old was attacked nearby by another mob of
African youths. And recently a neighborhood store drew attention for selling T-
shirts with the slogan "Jews are forbidden to enter the park" in German and
Polish.

The revolting reference was to a prohibition imposed on Jews in Lodz, Poland, in
the early 1940s against visiting a public park. Young Jews in the arrondissement
got the hint: Muslim and African gangs were warning them to stay away from the
neighborhood's Belleville Park.

WHAT ARE those of us outside France to make of this latest incident?

Not that life for the 350,000 Jews of metropolitan Paris - and, indeed, for the
600,000 Jews of France as a whole - is becoming increasingly untenable, says Dr.
Richard Prasquier, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish
Institutions known as CRIF. He and others familiar with the French Jewish
predicament describe a "complicated" situation in which, for example, sections
of the 19th and 10th arrondissements, as well certain suburbs, have become
places where it is unpleasant to be a Jew.

The brutal killing of young Ilan Halimi outside Paris in 2006 comes to mind.

The tough areas, not all of them slums, are where Arab and African gangs are
active, unemployment is high, and social and economic problems are endemic.
Working-class Jews forced to share this turf all too often make convenient
scapegoats for the youthful bigots.

Prasquier does not want Saturday's patently anti- Semitic incident to be swept
under the rug, however. A number of Paris radio stations sought, absurdly, to
portray it as an altercation between Jewish and Muslim gangs.

Prasquier's message is that violent anti-Semitism and ongoing harassment are all
too real, but restricted to specific locales. The scourge, he says, does not
typify Paris as a whole, let alone France.

As soon as the incident hit the news, high-level police and municipal officials
contacted the French Jewish leadership to offer reassurances. Interior Minister
Michle Alliot-Marie called Prasquier to discuss the attack and later issued a
strong condemnation of "the anti-Semitic violence against young Jews going to
the synagogue."

Police saturation of the area, especially during the High Holy Days, would bring
a measure of comfort. But security is already high - a police cruiser was a
block from the scene when the boys were set upon. They were not carrying mobile
phones because of Shabbat; and passerby made no effort to alert police.

AFFLUENT, acculturated French Jews, those not easily marked by their ethnicity
or religion, denizens of more upscale districts, have few personal fears. They
neither want the impression to go out that France is seething with violent
Jew-hatred, nor that they're unmoved by the plight of their co-religionists in
the turbulent neighborhoods.

At a time like this, we in Israel should not be sowing panic. Instead, a fitting
Zionist message to our French Jewish brethren is that they are not alone; that
Israel was founded not only as a haven from anti-Semitism, but as a homeland
where - when we Israelis are at our best - Jewish life can be lived to its
fullest.

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September 9, 2008 Tuesday

Should a new mother run for vice president?

BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 937 words

HIGHLIGHT: Better to balance family and career than postpone the former to
nurture the latter. The writer hosts a daily US national radio show on Oprah and
Friends. His upcoming book is The Eros Effect.

It took the pregnancy of a 17-year-old from Alaska to finally thrust the
American family onto the political stage. Until now, you could be forgiven for
believing that all America's problems could be solved with cash: high gas
prices, a mortgage meltdown, unaffordable health care. You would have been
shocked to discover that, in reality, America is experiencing not a material but
a spiritual crisis: rampant divorce, uninspired teens, and lonely men and women.
It's a land where, for the first time, single women outnumber married women and
where three-quarters of all divorces are initiated by wives giving up on their
husbands. A land where parents raise children with the superficial surrogates of
TVs and iPods.

Last week an appearance of mine on Oprah's TV show brought hundreds of desperate
people writing about their devastated personal lives. There was the woman who
left her husband who drinks himself into a nightly stupor. There was the
divorced man whose ex-wife turned the children against him and won't even return
his phone calls. And there was the desperate teenager writing that her family
has become so dysfunctional - parents at each other's throats, an older sister
who lets her boyfriend feel her up in front of the younger siblings - that she
is thinking of running away.

Meet the new American poor. They have food on their plates but little substance
in their lives. They have a roof over their heads, but the chambers of their
hearts are barren. They have some financial security but little emotional
stability.

BARACK OBAMA's life was changed forever when his father abandoned his family,
leaving his mother to raise him alone. John McCain's first marriage failed after
he returned home from five and a half brutal years as a POW. And now we have the
challenges facing the family of Gov. Sarah Palin, with a young daughter forced
to skip essential stages of childhood and become a mom.

Forty years ago, in a campaign lasting only 82 days, Bobby Kennedy moved the
nation by highlighting its destitute children. History will not soon forget his
visit to the Lakota Sioux Indian reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, where
one-third of the teenagers were committing suicide out of despair, nor the tears
that rolled down his cheeks as he discussed his visit to the Mississippi delta,
where he found a two-year-old black girl whose face was disfigured by rat bites.

Which candidate will today highlight America's new poor? Who will make it his
business to reduce America's divorce rate by half? Who will heal the pandemic of
teen sexuality which is so harmful not only because of the possibility of
sexually transmitted disease or an unexpected pregnancy, but because teenagers
are simply not equipped to work through the deep emotions which sex evokes. Sex
is the most potent human impulse, as overpowering as it is pleasurable. Do we
really think that those in a rickety boat should be exposed to such a storm?

A study by the Heritage Foundation, based on the National Longitudinal Survey of
Adolescent Health, links teen depression and even suicide to teen sexuality.
About 25 percent of sexually active girls say they are depressed all, most or a
lot of the time, while only 8% of girls who are not sexually active feel the
same. And do teenagers really need the drama that comes from sex at a time when
they are still in their formative years and need to focus on study?

IMAGINE THE example for the rest of the nation if our presidential candidates
demonstrated, amid the biggest contest of their lives, that their families are
still their first priority. Sen. Obama and Gov. Palin, both of whom have young
children, should emulate the example set by Joseph Lieberman in the 2000 race,
when he refused to campaign on the Sabbath and instead stayed home with his
family. Parenting is not a responsibility that can be put on hold for months.
Our candidates would lose no votes if they showed the nation that their families
matter at least as much as the White House.

The vast majority of teenage girls who lose their virginity do so out of
pressure from boyfriends. But when daughters are close to their parents -
especially their fathers - they are lent a significant immunity to these
pressures. They are not desperate for a boy's affection, and can say no because
they already have the validation of a man in their life. In this sense, Bristol
Palin's pregnancy is something that should cause her parents to reflect on how
they can better balance professional and parenting obligations, even as they
live in the public eye.

But this does not mean Sarah Palin should drop her professional aspirations, and
it has been particularly unhelpful to see so many vicious attacks against
Alaska's first female governor for accepting the vice presidential nod after
having just had a baby. What would we prefer? Women who postpone having children
to nurse their careers? Women who make the mistake that men have made for
thousands of years, believing that fulfillment is found in money, power and fame
rather than family, commitment and children?

Our daughters need more women like Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton and Katie
Couric, who balance being mothers and succeeding in their careers, to negate the
toxic message that success comes from developing one's body rather than one's
mind - the message promulgated by the likes of Paris Hilton. Sarah Palin has a
crib in the governor's office and often breast-feeds her special-needs baby
while at work. What a powerful challenge to the many misguided men who are
heroes to everyone except the most important constituency of all: their own
children.

www.shmuley.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SARAH PALIN signs autographs at a rally Saturday night in
Albuquerque, as her husband Todd looks on. She often breastfeeds her
special-needs baby at work. (Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 9, 2008 Tuesday

Letters

BYLINE: H. Sondheim, Aharon Goldberg, James Adler, Douglas A. Shields, Lou Scop,
Ruthie Schueler, David Brinn, Jerusalem Post staff

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1191 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

'Shabbat shalom.

Now please vacate'

Sir, - Are we living in Israel or abroad? Reading "TA hotels enforce Shabbat
checkout times" (September 8), one would think the latter.

How can the Tel Aviv rabbinate maintain kashrut supervision in the hotels, yet
expect Orthodox guests to check out before sundown on Shabbat? They should at
least be given the option of paying more to stay a few extra hours.

But this shouldn't be necessary here in Israel, where we thought these kinds of
problems would disappear.

I guess not!

And I can't believe that Eli Ziv, head of the Tel Aviv Hotel Association, "said
that the city's hotels were not anti-religious, they were simply trying to
maximize profits." If that's not anti-religious, what is?

H. SONDHELM

Jerusalem

Political wall?

Sir, - "Olmert: There will be a need to evacuate settlers" (September 8)
mentioned "a proposal that would allow for the voluntary evacuation of settlers
who live outside of the security barrier." Ever since the security barrier was
introduced as an idea and built, the government has been telling us, and world
powers, that it is a security wall and not a political one.

Yet it now seems the wall is a political barrier. If so, the government has
misled its citizens and allies, and the barrier must come down - as did the
Berlin Wall.

AHARON GOLDBERG

Hatzor Haglilit

Punishing good deeds

Sir, - May I respond to Andrew Carew-Morton? ("May I respond?" Letter, September
5).

The Left is correct that there is a cycle of violence, and that Israel can help
end the cycle by stopping settlement-building and withdrawing more or less to
the '67 borders, keeping (only, but still major) its large adjacent settlement
blocs.

But the Right is correct that Israel has already tried most of the Left's
prescriptions - the Oslo Accords, the 2000 Barak peace offer, the Gaza
withdrawal, including the settlements; and now there is Israel's plan to
withdraw from most of the West Bank, again including most settlements.

The Palestinians' response to the Barak offer (including Jerusalem as capital of
both countries) was neither acceptance nor a counter-offer, but the second
intifada. And their response to the Gaza withdrawal and proposed "convergence"
plan involving withdrawal from most of the West Bank was the 2006 Lebanon War
and the Katyushas, and Gaza's Hamastan and Kassams.

The Palestinian response to Israeli actions aimed at ending the cycle of
violence has been, in essence: It will let no Israeli good deed go unpunished.

I agree with Carew-Morton that the Palestinians have been wronged, but they have
got to get past allowing the feeling of having been wronged to guide the
entirety of their political attitudes. They have an understandable human need to
preserve an emotional place for their sense of victimhood, but they need to let
go of its malignant domination of their every thought and action.

As for Israel, it has both a right and nitty-gritty obligation to defend itself
from attacks on its civilians - individuals and families just like you and me
and our families. As does every other nation and people.

Israel has, in short, adopted most of the Left's prescriptions. But the
Palestinians have not made any comparable move. It's now their turn, but I'm
afraid they're too dysfunctional and trapped in their own sterile rage to do
their part in helping to end the cycle of violence.

JAMES ADLER

Cambridge, Massachusetts

The power of one

Sir, - In 1973, I was a young man of 19, footloose and fancy-free, hoboing
through Europe. I went to visit relatives in Ireland and ended up in Israel,
working as a kibbutz volunteer.

One night after the Yom Kippur war, Abie Nathan put out a radio call for cooks
and engineers on his Voice of Peace ship. He was to make a fundraising cruise -
Rome, Marseilles and Amsterdam. I got a job as cook and became a member of the
rag-tag, multinational crew of the Voice of Peace.

Having listened to Abie's broadcasts for months, I was a fan. Now, as his
shipmate, I got to know this complex man.

On the air, Abie would be somber and thoughtful, his soft baritone voice pushing
the arguments for peace. Off the air, he was kind, fun-loving and quite
animated. He was a man who knew that one person could make a difference if they
were willing to sacrifice. He did so happily, and with an optimism that was
infectious.

He was never pious or preachy - just a kind human being, a warrior who deeply
understood the horrors of war, then spent a lifetime teaching us there was a
better way.

I'll never forget my time with him and the rest of the crew on the VOP. I'll
never forget the lessons he taught me: determination, to keep trying in the face
of long odds; to speak truth to power; to forever and always seek peace and
justice ("Visionaries to the fore," Letters, September 3).

DOUGLAS A. SHIELDS

Pittsburgh

Dangerous drivers...

Sir, - Re Yael Cohen's "Traditional cures for an old dog" (Letters, September
4), let me make some points that sorely need attention.

We all believe we are good drivers - until that split second when we decide to
do something crazy and impatient, like overtaking a few vehicles on a dangerous
curve, not slowing down at a pedestrian crossing or speeding on a major highway.
Most crazy and irresponsible is when we use our cell phones while driving,
sometimes with something to eat in the other hand!

These are the infractions on which the police should be concentrating, either
stopping offending drivers or taking photos of them, confiscating their phones
and exacting substantial penalties before they are returned.

The authorities need to send out tickets with these photos, and possibly even
have them put up in post offices or inside major shopping malls. Responsible
volunteers could relieve the police of the photographing, while the authorities
could put the penalty money to good use - including teaching people to be better
drivers.

LOU SCOP

Netanya

...and safe snoozing

Sir, - I would like to add a few lines to Mina Stern's letter ("Signs of the
times," September 7).

I am among those drivers who sometimes become sleepy at the wheel. My problem is
not the power nap itself, but where to stop the car. There are not enough shady
rest- stops where you can park your car and have a sleep.

Don't fool yourself: When you start yawning on the highway, you have very little
time to find a safe place where you can rest.

RUTHIE SCHUELER

Jerusalem

On the right side

of the line

Sir, - "Singing lines and drawing them" implied that the Swedish heavy metal
band Sabaton was, between the lines, praising the Holocaust (Letters, September
8). But the lyrics in question, taken out of context, come from a song called
"Rise of Evil" and were written in irony (or in the voice of the Nazis for the
two lines quoted in the letter).

The song also includes these lyrics: "Burning books to spread, anti-Semite
propaganda / Who will stop the madman's reign? / Night of broken glass, send the
Jews to Dachau death camp / On a path to certain death.

DAVID BRINN

Ma'aleh Adumim

CORRECTION, Due to an editing error, Paralympic basketball player Shai Haim's
last name was written incorrectly in the introduction and caption of "The golden
boy" by Stewart Weiss (September 8).

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The Jerusalem Post

September 9, 2008 Tuesday

Dubai helps Iran dodge sanctions

BYLINE: CLAUDIA SCHWARTZ

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 761 words

HIGHLIGHT: Can the Gulf Cooperation Council country be peeled away from the
Iranian economic sphere? It seems unlikely, although the immediate objective of
the GCC's founding was protection from Iran after the Iran-Iraq War. The author
wrote this piece while working at the Transatlantic Institute as a Legacy
Heritage Fellow.

Since Western countries placed sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program,
Teheran's trade with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has
increased fivefold, which explains Iran's ability to circumvent the sanctions .

The United Arab Emirates is a dedicated trading partner. Dubai in particular is
Iran's largest re-export partner, exporting to Iran what it has imported from
elsewhere. Based on the historical trader-shopper relationship between Dubai and
Iran, this provides a win- win situation, especially in today's environment:
Iran is able to bypass Western sanctions, while Dubai's diversifying economy
profits enormously.

Afshin Molavi, a fellow at the New American Foundation, refers to Dubai as
Iran's "lungs;" without Dubai, Iran cannot breathe. For Dubai, on the other
hand, the relationship only boosts its already flourishing economy.

The UAE imported more US goods in 2006 than any other country in the Middle
East, and in the same year, 60 percent of the trade between Iran and Dubai was
in the form of re-exports. Frank Lavin, US undersecretary of commerce for
international trade, notes that "[US] trade is booming because the UAE is
booming." Since there are no sanctions or trade regulations between Dubai and
the West, and since Dubai does not strictly regulate what it exports to Iran,
Iran can access embargoed European and American products, including sensitive
technology. Earlier this year, American-made computer circuits turned up in the
detonators used for roadside bombs targetting American troops in Iraq. The
circuits had been exported to the UAE, re-exported to Iran, and eventually ended
up in Iraq.

The conflict between Washington and Teheran highlights Dubai's role as a haven
for Iran. Stuart Levey, the US Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and
financial intelligence, traveled to Dubai and warned Arab bankers to stop
dealing with Iran or face US sanctions. As a result, Dubai claims it is
monitoring goods that it re-exports more closely, while blocking items that
might help Iran build weapons. However, it would be wrong to assume that Dubai
can control its trade, since it has no way of knowing what comes in and out of
the emirate.

Much to the West's consternation, Iran refuses to abandon its nuclear program.
Since military intervention appeals to no one, and with diplomacy continuing to
fail, sanctions need to be strengthened. The question is, are Dubai and Iran
permanently bonded to each other, or can the former be peeled away from the
Iranian economic sphere?

The UAE maintains civil relations with Iran, but also with Iran's arch enemy,
the United States. There are several American bases in the UAE, providing access
to its ports and territory, overflight clearances and other critical logistical
assistance. The "strength" of the UAE's neutrality is in fact its weakness - it
can no longer remain a fence sitter, given the tensions of the current political
climate.

IRAN AND Dubai may seem united, but in reality they are bound together only by
economics and fear. In fact, the immediate objective of the GCC's founding was
protection from Iran after the Iran-Iraq War. Recent statements made by Iranian
Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi questioning the legitimacy of the
monarchies and traditional systems in the Gulf region confirm that although
relations between Iran and the GCC countries are deeply rooted, they have always
been at odds.

For the UAE in particular, a major thorn is the issue of three small
strategically located islands that Iran occupies and the UAE claims. Iran has
stationed Islamic Revolutionary Guards on the islands, and it is from here that
it would attack US bases in the region in response to a Western military strike.
It would also use these islands to close the Straits of Hormuz, jeopardizing
global oil supplies. Iran recently opened two administrative offices on Abu Musa
(one of the disputed outposts), thus reawakening the unresolved conflict and
further provoking the UAE.

Dubai is precariously placed across the Persian Gulf from Iran, which means Iran
doesn't actually need to attack the UAE; it just needs to rattle its saber.

According to Dr. Christopher Davidson, author of The United Arab Emirates: A
Study in Survival, no incentive package the US could offer would wean Dubai away
from Iran. This is because such government-backed involvement would be
impossible to disguise. Even if the US could offer such a package, Dubai as well
as the rest of the GCC would be unlikely to renounce their current conciliatory
insurance policy vis-a-vis Iran.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 9, 2008 Tuesday

Who's in charge here?

BYLINE: AMNON RUBINSTEIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 569 words

HIGHLIGHT: Clearly, it's not the nation's politicians. The writer is a professor
of law at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, a former minister of
education and MK and the recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize in law.

Who are Israel's leading personalities? The Marker, an economic supplement of
Haaretz, last Tuesday selected the 10 most influential. The list begins with the
all-powerful attorney-general, continues with a number of officials - the state
comptroller, the state attorney, two senior police officers, the president of
the Supreme Court, the governor of the Bank of Israel - and ends with a number
of bankers and tycoons. It can be summarized as a who's who of "wealth and law
enforcement," as distinct from the much- touted "wealth and government."

What's most interesting about the list is the total absence of elected
politicians. Needless to say, the prime minister is not regarded as an
influential person, in view of Ehud Olmert's intention to leave Kadima's
leadership. But the absence of any other minister is more of a surprise. Indeed,
it is the appointed officials and not the ministers who make the list: the
attorney-general, state attorney and investigative police officers rather than
the minister of justice; the governor of the Bank of Israel rather than the
minister of finance; the tycoons rather than the chairman of the Knesset Finance
Committee.

Such a list can hardly be imagined elsewhere. Is it conceivable that bankers,
real estate billionaires and police officers would oust any politician from a
similar list in other democracies The Marker's choice is a testament to the
downgrading of the democratic process itself in our country.

Indeed, one may ask what is the purpose of elections ? The list's subliminal
message is clear: If you want to be influential, don't run for election - run to
the stock exchange, to the Attorney-General's Office, to the police academy.
Forget the government. Become a detective. Make money. Run a bank.

A more destructive message for democracy cannot be imagined.

UNELECTED FUNCTIONARIES should not be more influential than elected politicians:
Politicians are answerable to the public and can be replaced. Bureaucrats are
answerable to no one, and in Israel can rarely be dismissed. Successful
businessmen don't depend on public support. Enlightened Israelis used to worry
about the danger to our democracy from the fanatical Right. That danger cannot
be dismissed, but it is supplemented by the new practice of denigrating all
politicians, vilifying all Knesset members as corrupt and sanctifying successful
businessmen and crusading law enforcers.

The explanation is obvious: recent allegations of corruption in high places; the
inability of successive governments to govern; the disproportionate power of
small groups under our purely proportional system; the feeling that new
elections will not bring change; the flashy lifestyle of political leaders; the
PR spin which replaces policy; and, on the other hand, the truly amazing success
stories of Israeli entrepreneurs. All these factors explain the gradual
delegitimization of politics.

And yet, despite this explanation, it is necessary to reiterate that there is no
substitute for the democratic process, and that this process must involve
politicians exercising power side by side with lawyers and policemen enforcing
the law fairly.

What should be done? No new elections will remedy this malaise unless
accompanied by a series of structural reforms to mitigate the weaknesses of a
purely proportional system, enable governments to govern and redress the balance
between elected and non-elected functionaries.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: FOREIGN MINISTER Tzipi Livni. Not one elected official could be
found on the list of the country's 10 most influential people. (Credit:
Bloomberg)

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September 9, 2008 Tuesday

In praise of prisoner releases

BYLINE: YOSSI ALPHER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 900 words

HIGHLIGHT: Why last month's freeing of 198 Palestinians was the right move. The
writer is coeditor of the bitterlemons family of Internet publications. He is
former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv
University.

The recent release of 198 Palestinian prisoners, many of them convicted of
serious terrorist offenses - including two who were directly involved in the
murder of Israelis prior to the Oslo Accords of 1993 - was a smart and
courageous move by the otherwise highly problematic Olmert government. If it
introduces some logic into criteria for future prisoner release, it could have a
positive strategic effect beyond its immediate confidence-building impact on
Israeli-Palestinian relations.

A succession of governments has long been caught up in a terrorist-prisoner
syndrome that combines draconian sentences as strong deterrent punishment with a
refusal to use prisoner releases as confidence-building gestures toward the
Palestinian public and government. One negative result has been the creation of
incentives for Palestinian (and Hizbullah) leaders to devote strenuous efforts
to kidnap Israelis - to the extent of catalyzing wars - in the certain knowledge
that prisoner exchanges are the only way Israelis will release terrorists whose
freedom the Arab publics demand. Another has been neglect of an important tool
for improving relations with Palestinians.

While Israeli leaders long ago grasped the negative aspects of their prisoner
policy, they have always seemingly felt constrained both by public opinion and
by the need to hold onto "quality" prisoners as bargaining chips for the current
or next prisoner exchange. In both cases, public opinion has played a major
role: A permanent and strong lobby is mounted by the families of victims of
terrorism against releasing hard-core terrorists, and temporary lobbies are
mounted by the families of kidnapped or captured Israelis to pressure for
prisoner exchanges no matter what the cost.

Yet we now encounter a decision to release hard-core non-Hamas terrorist
prisoners as a confidence-building gesture to the PLO/PA leadership. This took
place in the absence of a seemingly justifiable occasion, such as some sort of
peace agreement, but rather as a gesture designed to improve the likelihood of
such an agreement and strengthen the moderate Palestinian camp against Hamas.
The rationale is the huge importance the Palestinian public attaches to the
freeing and repatriation of its prisoners - an issue no less important to
Palestinians than to Israelis.

TWO FAIRLY obvious arguments were mounted against this move: first, that this
gesture erodes Israel's anti- terrorism deterrent profile and second, that no
peace agreement appears likely or attainable. Both are weighty and worthy of
discussion.

The first objection can be met by ensuring that hard- core terrorists and those
with Israeli "blood on their hands" are released only after serving many years
in prison. This will also ensure that a relatively small proportion of the
released prisoners return to active terrorism. Here we must bear in mind that
Israeli military and civilian courts tend to sentence Arab terrorists and their
accomplices to periods of incarceration that often far exceed the sentences
meted out to Israelis for similar "civilian" offenses, including vicious murders
(there is no death penalty in Israel). Hence "early release" of terrorists can
be justified as long as it ensures that they served a "deterrent" period of time
in jail. Moreover, in terms of public opinion, release of Palestinian terrorists
can and should be balanced by measured steps to release Israelis jailed for many
years for murdering Arabs.

Another desirable approach in this regard would be to recognize that terrorist
prisoners with blood on their hands are no less worthy of eventual release than
their accomplices or the masterminds of terrorist cells who often receive
lighter sentences simply because they themselves didn't pull the trigger, their
weapon jammed, the explosives failed to detonate, etc. In other words, the
criteria for determining who gets released are in bad need of a logical
revision. In this regard, the Olmert government's decision to release
PLO-connected but not Hamas prisoners makes perfect sense. Israel has a peace
process with the PLO - something that is inconceivable with Hamas.

The second objection - why encourage an unattainable peace - refers to
deep-seated public doubts about the mandate and credibility of the current
Israeli and Palestinian Authority governments alike. Here it would be helpful if
both would indicate to their publics where the process currently stands, i.e.
what hoped-for progress the prisoner release is designed to advance. That said,
the obvious goal of weakening Hamas, confirmed by that movement's pathetic
objections to the release of 198 non- Hamas terrorists, may be justification
enough.

It would also be worthwhile for the governments concerned, including the Bush
administration, to consider focusing on less ambitious objectives than
comprehensive peace that nevertheless justify prisoner releases. These might
include interim objectives such as the removal of settlements and outposts in
portions of the northern West Bank as Palestinian security forces demonstrate
their capability to maintain security.

All things considered, and even bearing in mind the validity of these
objections, the release of 198 Palestinian prisoners associated with the PLO and
PA was an important step toward rationalizing Israel's approach to releasing of
terrorist prisoners: as a tool for peace rather than as a feature of warfare.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: RELEASE OF Palestinian prisoners. Israeli military and civilian
courts tend to sentence Arab terrorists and their accomplices to periods of
incarceration that often far exceed the sentences meted out to Israelis for
similar 'civilian' offenses. (Credit: Bloomberg)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 9, 2008 Tuesday

Olmert's malingering legacy

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1716 words

HIGHLIGHT: Israel should apply its law to the areas critical to its defense:
Gush Etzion, Gush Adumim, Gush Ariel and the Jordan Valley. Our World

What a difference a year makes. It was just one year ago this week that the IAF
destroyed the North Korean built, Iranian financed nuclear reactor in Syria. The
raid exposed Syria as a full partner in the Iranian-led jihadist axis. Its
prolonged diplomatic isolation was a foregone conclusion.

But just one year later, Syria is being feted by France. It's signing
billion-dollar oil and gas deals with France's oil giant Total. A triumphant
President Bashar Assad is openly demanding that the US follow France's lead and
start licking his boots.

Syria has Israel to thank for its stunning reversal of fortunes. It opened the
door that Assad gleefully walked through this week as he playacted the role of
responsible international leader while remaining loyal to Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas
and the terror militias in Iraq.

Israel opened the door by participating in Turkish- mediated talks with Syria
regarding a surrender of the Golan Heights. Although both sides referred to the
talks as "peace negotiations," it was obvious that no peace would come from
them.

Since the early 1990s, Syria has recognized that intermittent, fruitless
discussions with Israel about the Golan Heights are the best means of
maintaining or reestablishing its acceptability in the West. After Assad ordered
the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in February
2005, he immediately turned to Israel to pull his fat from the fire by offering
to renew negotiations regarding a surrender of the Golan Heights. Israel held
out for two and a half years and during those years, Assad wasted away in
international isolation. With even the UN breathing down his neck, Assad and his
regime were hanging on for dear life.

But then suddenly, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert came to the rescue. Thanks to
Olmert, Syria is back in the driver's seat and as one could have expected,
Assad's first order of business was to throw Israel under the bus. No longer in
need of its assistance, as he stood next to French President Nicolas Sarkozy,
Assad announced that the "peace talks" are suspended. And both Assad and Sarkozy
blamed their suspension on Israel, whose "political instability" makes it
impossible to proceed.

There is no doubt that the country will pay a price for Olmert's decision. But
it is also fairly clear that the next government - whether led by Kadima or the
Likud - will be unlikely to repeat his mistake. Olmert's political opponents
warned him that his move would endanger Israel by legitimizing Syria and
rewarding it for its strategic alliance with Iran. And his opponents' view that
Olmert was wrong to reach out to Assad is shared by a majority of the public and
a fair amount of the media. Indeed, since Israel began negotiating the surrender
of the Golan Heights in 1992, the consistent view of the majority has been that
the country is better off with the Golan than without it, even if that means no
peace treaty with Syria.

WHEREAS OLMERT's Syrian gambit is unlikely to cause any irreparable damage and
is unlikely to be repeated by his successors, the same cannot be said of his
gambit with the Palestinians. There Olmert acts against little organized or
coherent opposition. And his actions are openly supported by his colleagues in
Kadima, who have to varying degrees all committed themselves to continue his
policies.

Kadima was elected on a platform of unilateral withdrawal from Judea and
Samaria. While it never disclaimed its intention to expel up to 100,000 Israelis
from their homes in the areas and withdraw, after the Hamas takeover of Gaza and
after the war with Hizbullah in 2006, the government claimed that it would only
expel them after it signed a deal setting out the contours of a Palestinian
state with Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas. And in the interest of achieving just
such a deal, the government has been carrying out negotiations for the past
year.

As has been the case with the talks with Syria, the government has precluded
public debate about the wisdom of a potential deal by hiding the details of its
discussions and its intentions from the public. Backed by the Bush
administration, which has championed the negotiations, the Olmert-Livni-Barak
government has kept their content secret. At the same time, it has quieted its
opponents by loudly proclaiming that the chances that a deal will be concluded
before President George W. Bush, Abbas and Olmert leave office are slim.

Moreover, in light of Hamas's control of Gaza and its threat to Fatah in Judea
and Samaria, both the government and the Bush administration have argued that
the agreement being negotiated will not be implemented even if it is concluded.
It will only be implemented after Palestinian society accepts Israel's right to
exist and agrees to live at peace with the Jewish state. The agreement, they
claim, will provide impetus to the Palestinians to accept Israel because it will
commit all future governments to treat Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem as
Palestinian territory and so offset any lingering doubts about Israel's
commitment to peace.

THE CONCERN has lately arisen that although the Palestinians will certainly not
implement their side of the agreement, Israel will implement its pledged
withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. This is the case for two reasons. First,
unlike the situation with Syria, Olmert's support of the deal with Fatah is
shared by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is expected to succeed him, by
Kadima and Labor and by the media. It is quite possible that they will argue
that the existence of the agreement suffices to move ahead with their original
intent to destroy Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and expel their
residents.

The concern that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government or its successor is planning
to withdraw has increased in recent weeks, as military and police authorities
have begun abrogating the legal rights of residents of Judea and Samaria in a
way they haven't done since the expulsions from Gaza.

Two weeks ago, OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Gad Shamni issued orders evicting
three residents of Samaria from the area for four months. No criminal charges
were filed against the three; they are suspected of no crimes; they have been
arrested for no crimes. Yet the IDF has decided to expel them from their homes
and separate them from their families by arguing that they are "provocateurs."
Last Tuesday, the men's supporters and families decided to stage a protest
outside Shamni's house in Re'ut. The police had other ideas. A bus holding 50
protesters was stopped en route to the protest. Its passengers were arrested and
brought to the police stations in Ramle and Modi'in and told they were being
held due to suspicion that they were intending to attend an illegal
demonstration.

There is of course, no crime on the books regarding a person's "intention" to
participate in a demonstration. And yet the would-be demonstrators were held
until the middle of the night. The last time such draconian actions were taken
against law-abiding citizens was in 2005 in the lead- up to the expulsions from
Gaza.

The fear that the government is planning to begin expelling Israelis intensified
on Sunday when, in a surprise move, the government convened a discussion of a
bill setting out the levels of restitution those who are forced to leave their
homes in Judea and Samaria will receive. Why would the government debate such a
bill if it doesn't believe it is about to sign a deal with Abbas? And why would
it debate such a bill if it truly intended to shelve its agreement until after
the Palestinians eschewed their hopes for Israel's destruction?

THE SECOND reason justifying concern that the government is planning to withdraw
from Judea and Samaria is due to the contrast between how the public views a
withdrawal from the Golan and how it views a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria.
Whereas the consistent majority view is that the country is more secure with the
Golan Heights than without it, since 1993 there has been sustained majority
support for the view that it will be better off without large swathes of Judea
and Samaria. This view has been cultivated by leftist activists and their
supporters in the media who claim that the chief strategic challenge is not the
Iranian axis, but the presence of what they consider an unabsorbable Palestinian
population in Judea and Samaria.

The belief that the Palestinians are the greatest strategic danger to the
country is belied by reality. Putting aside the open question of whether they
are truly incapable of integrating into Israel society or whether they challenge
the country's identity as a Jewish state, the fact is that Judea and Samaria
today constitute the least dangerous front Israel faces. And this is so because
the IDF controls the area. Iran, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are Israel's primary
concerns today. And Gaza and Lebanon are dangers precisely because Israel
followed the left's demographic and political arguments and surrendered them to
Iranian proxies.

The fact that a majority has been convinced that the Palestinian population in
Judea and Samaria is a critical threat just because it exists means that the
threat of a withdrawal will remain acute until the Kadima-Labor-Shas triumvirate
is driven from power in a general election and replaced by a Likud-led
government and even then it will not abate. The threat will only abate if a
Likud-led government is able to lead a public discussion about an alternative
strategic assessment of Judea and Samaria.

Such an assessment would necessarily begin with the following assertions: Israel
should not be rewarding the Palestinians for their aggression and has a duty to
secure areas necessary for its national security. Such assertions engender the
conclusion that far from ceding its rights to Judea and Samaria, Israel should
apply its law to the parts of them that are critical to its defense, including
Gush Etzion, Gush Adumim, Gush Ariel and the Jordan Valley.

To a degree that exceeds the dangers of Olmert's ill- advised talks with Assad,
his talks with the Palestinians imperil the country by setting the conditions
for disastrous withdrawals. Unfortunately, this danger will remain in place for
as long as Israelis believe that our only viable option in Judea and Samaria is
retreat.

caroline@carolineglick.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: EFRAT, SOUTH of Jerusalem. Do Judea and Samaria today constitute
Israel's least dangerous front because the IDF controls the area? (Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 8, 2008 Monday

Pakistan's new president

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 725 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

The world's only nuclear-armed Islamic state has a new president. Asif Ali
Zardari, 53, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, was chosen by Pakistan's electoral
college on Saturday to succeed Pervez Musharraf, who was forced to resign August
19.

Zardari spent more than a decade, on and off, in prison on charges of murder,
influence-peddling and money laundering. His moniker is "Mr. 10 Percent" -
though others insist it is 30% - for the kickbacks he reportedly demanded from
those wanting to do business with his wife's government.

In a country where fully two-thirds of the population survives on $2 a day,
Zardari's personal fortune is estimated variously at $30 million to $1 billion.
In a 2006 case involving how he came to own a 355-acre property in the English
countryside, his own psychiatrists attested to the fact that was demented and
thus could not participate in his own defense.

Zardari is an unlikely figure to stabilize the country or give average
Pakistanis a reason not to side with its fanatics.

Under Musharraf, the economy expanded by 5.8 percent. With him gone, inflation
is up, the stock markets and foreign exchange reserves are down and the country
is deemed among the riskiest in the world for investors.

When treasury officials recently challenged pressure from Zardari to bust the
budget so he could subsidize Punjabi farmers, whose support he courts, he told
them: Print more money.

WHAT HAPPENS in Pakistan is of more than passing interest to Israelis given that
Islamabad may have 150 nuclear warheads and has a history of nuclear
proliferation to pariah states, including Iran. So our security establishment is
monitoring Pakistani events from every angle.

The integrity of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is, in fact, the world's number one
concern. An 18-member National Command Authority, led by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez
Kayani, reportedly has control over Pakistan's nuclear bombs. Zardari now sits,
at least nominally, as chair of that authority.

Pakistan is a violently fragmented polity. Suicide bombings - like the one in
its northwest province that claimed 33 lives Saturday - occur with numbing
frequency. The toll so far this year is 2,000 lives lost.

As Dexter Filkins explained in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Pakistan has
long been playing a double game - supporting both the war on terror and the
terrorists. Islamabad wanted to influence events in Afghanistan by championing
the Taliban. In the process, it created an Islamist Frankenstein: Indigenous
Taliban grew strong enough to challenge the central government's authority.

The penny may finally have dropped for the country's shadowy Inter-Services
Intelligence Agency and the military, which explains why they've lately been
cracking down on the fundamentalists. At the same time, because they may not
have the capacity to defeat the monster they created, the authorities have been
quick to reconstitute the old arrangement: So long as the fundamentalists focus
their violence outside Pakistan's border, it's "Live and let live."

American security officials have become increasingly convinced that despite the
$10 billion Washington has transferred to Islamabad since September 11, 2001,
Pakistan is as much part of the problem as it is the solution. Exasperated by
Pakistani duplicity, US forces have begun operating more openly within the
borders of Pakistan - drawing the ire of Pakistani masses and officials.

SEVERAL lessons may be drawn from the Pakistan experience:

* By definition, religious fanatics feel impelled to impose their way of life on
others. If you try to buy them off - in Pakistan, Iran, Gaza or elsewhere - they
will only come after you, with devastating consequences.

* The forces of chaos exploit, yet do not respect, sovereignty. Never grant
terrorists immunity from preemptive attack out of a misguided concern over a
country's boundaries.

* The real al-Qaida has gone undefeated as America's resources and energies are
diverted in Iraq. Liquidating this threat, albeit belatedly, is therefore the
highest priority - before Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri can engineer a
spectacular attack, perhaps to coincide with the US elections.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, fresh from her Friday tete-a-tete with
Muammar Gaddafi, described Zardari's election as a "good way forward."

Her successor may well wonder what she was talking about.

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September 8, 2008 Monday

How can we really mean it?

BYLINE: ALLAN G. REITZES

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 638 words

HIGHLIGHT: A new study offers a plan to better integrate Ethiopian Jewry. The
author is a consultant to Jewish organizations in Israel and North America. This
article is based on the findings of Do We Really Mean It?: Field Observations on
the Ethiopian Israeli Community, a study funded and conducted on behalf of
United Jewish communities (UJC).

Ethiopian Jewry is here but its successful integration remains in doubt.
Successive governments, two national plans and a plethora of public and private
programs have achieved only limited positive results in bringing this community
fully into Israeli society. Where have we failed and what do we need to do to
succeed?

First generation Ethiopian Israelis have a distinct folk culture and community
life which do not fit easily into the general culture. They suffer from
debilitating stresses, such as trying to learn a new language, limited education
and few job skills. Their predicament exacerbates the already significant strain
of adjusting to a new life.

Our failure to account for the immigrant generation's many personal and
collective needs has consequences that weigh heavily on society.

Only a minority of Ethiopian youth have successfully integrated in society. The
numerous, well-intended supplementary programs for Ethiopian children and youth
cannot make much progress when these young people live in a traditional
community that has been shattered.

An unfortunate consequence of the slow progress of the first generation's
integration is that it leads to stereotyping as ignorant, backward and
uncooperative. In turn, this leads to lower expectations for successful
integration among Ethiopians and among those trying to help them.

In addition, the loss of the traditional Ethiopian Jewish social-cultural and
communal frameworks has been traumatic and injurious to the community. It is
disheartening to parents when they cannot be mentors and supporters to their
children. Mothers and fathers strive to understand and parent their children.
Children struggle in school and with their identity. The community has become
dependent.

THE FOUNDATION for helping achieve successful integration rests on the following
pillars:

* It is necessary is to support and understand traditional customs and practices
in ways that will facilitate full participation in Israeli life.

* Leadership and community development must provide the basis for a sense of
confidence and self-esteem for the Ethiopians as well as for the helping
community.

* Collaboration and planning among the governmental and non-governmental
organizations and the integration of their programs will significantly increase
the chances for Ethiopian families and communities to succeed.

Here follow specific recommendations.

Customs and traditions:

* Build the capacity of existing Ethiopian religious and cultural nonprofits or
establish new ones.

* Fund professionals to work with these religious and cultural groups to promote
and create learning and practice frameworks.

* Find the connections for this way of life to be integrated in Israeli society.

Community development, coordination and planning:

* Build on what the community is already doing in what it considers to be its
own interest through local coalitions of Ethiopians, municipality, NGOs,
businessmen, philanthropists and Diaspora communities.

* A national level coalition(s) should be created from the sharing of local
coalition best practices to inform, advocate and influence national policy.

Education and employment:

* Fund intensive and extended literacy programs (invest in multiple models to
identify best practices).

* Identify and overcome barriers to participation.

* Implement market-based employment programs and services using locally-based
resources.

* Fund local and national employment access, rights, and advocacy initiatives
and use legal aid where necessary.

Family and youth:

* Provide young couples/families with programs (mortgage, renovation) that
enable them to stay or leave their neighborhoods, as they choose.

* Aid large families need special assistance (mortgage, renovation).

* Reduce the number of programs but maintain or increase staff at a level which
enables them to do the job.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 8, 2008 Monday

The golden boy

BYLINE: STEWART WEISS

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1071 words

HIGHLIGHT: Shot in a 2002 raid on Hamas headquarters in Nablus, Shai Haim is one
of 43 Israeli athletics competing in Beijng at the Paralympic Games. The writer
is director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra'anana, where the Ohel Ari
Learning Center is being built in memory of the fallen soldiers.

Strength comes in many forms. There are the physically strong - you see them
building up their muscles in the gym, or jogging early mornings along our
streets; there are the spiritually strong, who maintain faith in God despite
hardship and tragedy; there are those who display exceptional emotional
strength, keeping it together during personal crises when lesser mortals would
fall apart.

But, however one measures strength, Shai Haim is a strong, strong man.

Shai is one of the 43 handicapped Israeli athletes who left this week for
Beijing to participate in the Paralympic Games, which run Sunday through
September 16. Among the sports in which they will compete are tennis, swimming,
kayaking, sailing, horseback riding, table tennis, archery, air rifle - and
basketball.

Shai is one of the 12 players on Israel's wheelchair- basketball delegation,
selected from among the more than 200 players who compete at several Beit
Halochem facilities around the country. Shai was named the outstanding player on
his Herzliya squad, earning him a spot on the national team, the first to
qualify for the Paralympics in 16 years. Over the next two weeks, it will face
competing teams from the US, Brazil, England, China, Germany, Russia and Sweden.

Shai's saga begins in the army, where he served in an elite anti-commando unit
in the Nahal Brigade. He was the beefiest, toughest kid in the outfit, with huge
forearms and a barrel-chested physique. His fellow soldiers joked that they
liked to stand behind him during missions, so he would block incoming fire. "It
was a bitter joke," they would later confess. On September 30, 2002, Shai's unit
was part of a raid on Hamas headquarters in Nablus's infamous casbah, where they
uncovered a treasure-trove of information on that group's terrorist activities,
including lists of terrorists and planned attacks.

In the midst of their mission, the unit came under fire from snipers in a nearby
building. Shai was hit first and slumped to the ground. His best friend in the
unit, our son St.-Sgt. Ari Weiss, rushed to his side to help him and was shot in
the process; Ari was killed instantly by a bullet that punctured his lung.

BUT SHAI survived. He was rushed to a field hospital in Shavei Shomron, and then
to Sheba Hospital at Tel Hashomer. The bullet had lodged near his spine, and he
underwent emergency surgery. Just before going into the operating room, before
he lost consciousness, Shai scribbled on a piece of paper, "My friend Ari was
killed; please be sure I get to his funeral."

Surgeons removed Shai's kidney and saved his life, but they could not remove the
bullet or repair the damage to his nervous system. After 48 hours, the doctors
announced that Shai would live, but he would never walk again.

Lesser people might have succumbed to depression, or resignation, but Shai
refused to do so. He had always been an athlete, excelling in handball, and one
of his first questions to his therapist was whether he would have to forego all
sports. "Not if you don't want to," he was told. "You and only you will
determine what you can do from now on."

That was all Shai needed to hear. He spent four months in intensive rehab,
working out strenuously with weights, strengthening his upper body and learning
how to ride and glide in his wheelchair. Most of all, he maintained a hopeful
attitude and positive disposition, impressing his doctors and anyone who came to
see him. One rabbi from Florida, who had read about Shai and came to visit him,
told me afterward, "I entered his room sad, and filled with anxiety over his
situation; I left uplifted, with a renewed belief in the resilience of the human
spirit."

SHAI DECIDED there would be no boundaries in his life. A year after the
shooting, he married his girlfriend Tamar, the equally strong-willed kibbutznik
who had helped nurse him back to health and encouraged his will to excel. At his
wedding - at which I had the great merit to officiate - Shai stunned the crowd
by "walking" down the aisle in specially-constructed, battery-operated leg
braces worn under his pants, which alternately lifted his legs up and down as if
he was walking under his own power. When the last blessings were recited, Tamar
held on to his arm as he "lifted" his right foot and broke the glass.

The glass wasn't the only thing broken that night; every heart melted as Shai
invited all his fellow residents from the handicapped ward to join him in a
special "dance of the wheelchairs," showing them that they, too, could dance at
a wedding and be full participants.

Shai and Tamar then left for three months touring in New Zealand and Australia.
"Every soldier has a post-army tiyul," said Shai, "and I won't be cheated out of
mine!" They hiked the mountains, snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef and even rode
bikes, Shai using a special hand-driven cycle that attracted oohs and aahs
wherever they went.

"That trip proved to Shai beyond a doubt that he could go anywhere and do
anything he set out to do," says Tamar.

SHAI BECAME a regular at the Beit Halochem in Tel Aviv, an amazing facility that
cares for our wounded soldiers and offers workshops in arts and crafts, music,
computers, even dance. Shai played tennis and badminton there, and then decided
to try basketball. For those who have never seen a game, wheelchair basketball
is a no- holds-barred, rough-and-tumble affair, using the basic rules of regular
basketball. Players often crash into each other, chairs flipping over, players
sprawled on the floor. No one helps them - that's the way they want it. They
pick themselves up, get back in the chair and right back in the game.

"That's my motto in life," says a smiling Shai. "No complaints, no whining -
just get back in the game."

Shai will be accompanied to Beijing - he is determined to climb the Great Wall
while he is there! - not only by Tamar, but also by their new daughter Roni
Bracha. Born two months ago, after 12 in-vitro treatments, she is perhaps the
most miraculous achievement in an unending stream of wondrous events in Shai's
life. He wouldn't think of going to China without her - "where I ride, she
rides," he says, cradling his massive arms around her as he holds her in his
lap.

All of us will be cheering for our athletes this week, but I'll be saving the
loudest cheers for Shai Haim. He embodies his name - "the gift of life" - and
win, lose or draw, he wears an eternal gold medal around his neck.

jocmtv@netvision.net.il

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: SHAI HAIM with wife, Tamar, and daughter, Roni Bracha. He and
Tamar did a post-army trek through New Zealand and Australia. ON THE court: Four
months in intensive rehab strengthened Hama's upper body.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 8, 2008 Monday

Letters

BYLINE: Simcha Rudman, Emmy Zitter, Eli Minoff, Moshe Dann, Kenneth Besig, S.
Kroll, Philippa Seligman, Sara Smith, Daniel Ratner

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1143 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Electorate's will

Sir, - In "Mofaz accuses Livni of misusing funds for Holocaust survivors"
(September 7), the transportation minister was reported as saying: "Most people
in Israel and most MKs don't want elections."

Perhaps he is right about MKs, who don't want to lose their jobs, and Kadima
party members who are in the "driver's seat." But surely it is not true about
most Israelis, especially since the diplomacy seems to be all secret now and, of
greater significance, there will soon be a new US president.

I think the majority response to Mofaz's concluding statement about "a wide
coalition that will last until the term ends in November 2010" must be, "Oh,
no!"

SIMCHA RUDMAN

Jerusalem

'Flex aliya'

Sir, - On paper, it sounds interesting ("US Reform Movement hopes Nefesh
B'Nefesh will support 'flex aliya' concept," September 4). In practice, however,
if it succeeds with any numbers at all, it will simply serve to further drive up
Israeli real-estate prices, especially in "Anglo" neighborhoods, making it
harder than ever for Israelis to buy homes, especially olim who are fully
committed to life here. It will also exacerbate the phenomenon of neighborhoods
turning into ghost towns, which we see happening in areas of Jerusalem.

In two words: Bad idea.

EMMY ZITTER

Beit Shemesh

Loyalty begins

at home

Sir, - Re "High Court allows right-wing march through Umm el-Fahm" (September
5): I would like to suggest to Baruch Marzel and his associates that instead of
marching through Umm el-Fahm with flags to "emphasize the obligations of the
residents to be loyal to the State of Israel and its symbolism," they start by
marching through Me'a She'arim and other haredi neighborhoods throughout the
country whose residents are just as opposed to the symbols of the state.

Is there a single Chabad institution in Israel that ever flies the Israeli flag?
They prefer to fly the yellow Mashiach flag instead.

Before we attempt to teach our Arab citizens a lesson in loyalty, I propose that
we begin with our fellow Jews. As the saying goes, "People who live in glass
houses shouldn't throw stones."

ELI MINOFF

Safed

Pocketbook vote...

Sir, - The idea of paying people to leave their homes in Judea and Samaria -
Disengagement II - might be worthwhile if it was widened to include others:
Israelis who don't really want to live here, such as many non-Jews brought over
from the former FSU; leftists who support radical Arab views; and Arab Israelis
who don't identify with the state and hate Jews.

Such an Equal Opportunity Incentive Plan, allowing people to vote with their
feet and their pocketbooks, could reduce our security, education and social
budgets while strengthening the economy ("'Evacuation-compensation cabinet
debate unrelated to PA talks,'" September 7).

MOSHE DANN

Jerusalem

...& gov't 'compensation'

Sir, - Maybe Haim Ramon really believes that there are "tens of thousands" of
Israelis in Judea and Samaria who would move if compensated; but if he does,
then maybe he is just hopelessly misinformed, or perhaps even delusional.

Every Israeli, certainly every so-called settler, has by now learned the painful
lessons of the Sharon disengagement and is aware of what the words "Israeli
government compensation" mean: almost inhuman treatment of the pitiable Israeli
refugees created by the Gaza and Northern Samaria disengagement.

We know that, like those refugees, we can expect chronic unemployment, which,
coupled with delays in paying compensation, will lead to a loss of income,
resulting in a precipitous drop in our standard of living. We will have no
permanent housing or even reasonable access to it, and thus no stable schooling
for our children or a social milieu for ourselves. Finally, we can expect a
callous Israeli media and societal indifference to our miserable situation.

If anything, given these expectations, I expect any plan for a further
disengagement - or expulsion, if you will - of Israelis from Judea and Samaria
to be met with far more violent and destructive opposition than was ever
imagined in Gaza or Northern Samaria.

I suggest Messrs. Olmert and Ramon conduct a serious reality check.

KENNETH BESIG

Kiryat Arba

Love thy neighbor

Sir, - The various agnostics tend to forget that the Bible has been and still is
the greatest civilizing instrument in the world. It is not whether the writing
is true or legend, but commandments like "Love thy neighbor" that count.

S. KROLL

Ma'ayan Baruch

Watch the birdie!

Sir, - Ann Goldberg's "A better way to fly safely" (Sept 4) reminded me of the
experience of my son and his partner on their visit to Israel recently. Whilst
he was briefly questioned, she, as a non-Jew, was asked many more questions.
When she explained that they had been on a bird- watching trip, the security
officer began asking her all sorts of ornithological questions.

"And what," he asked, "was your favourite bird that you saw?" She thought for a
moment, and replied, "The hoopoe." The officer looked puzzled, having obviously
never heard of it, and it took a detailed description before he was convinced
that such a bird exists.

My son's partner was unworried by all this, but was amused when, back in Wales,
we read that the hoopoe had been declared the national bird of Israel!

As the famous Dr. Spooner remarked when asked by a student whether he was a keen
orthinologist: "No sir, I am just a word botcher."

PHILIPPA SELIGMAN

W. Cardiff, Wales

Desecration, this is

Sir, - Further to "Stop the music! Haredi functionaries move to eradicate
'foreign' pop, disco" (September 3): Would the esteemed rabbis of the Guardians
of Sanctity and Education explain whether their ban will also apply to the food
suppliers of those caterers who may feature treif music in their halls, to
supermarkets who use these suppliers, and to housewives who buy there? Will the
kashrut of thousands of households be jeopardized?

Will these proposed edicts apply to Diaspora weddings as well? Might these laws
be retroactive - in which case many of us would have been living in sin for
years? How would this affect the legitimacy of our children, many of whom,
despite growing up in a treif music environment, have become haredi?

Would these esteemed guardians point out any differences between their proposals
and McCarthyism or George Orwell's "Big Brother"? Most importantly, how would
they justify the effect of their blatant mockery of a beautiful religion on an
already fragmented nation?

This is not religious preservation. It is religious desecration.

SARA SMITH

Jerusalem

Singing lines &

drawing them

Sir, - You featured Swedish heavy metal band Sabaton prominently in your
September 5 edition and advertised their show in Tel Aviv because they wrote a
song about the Six Day War. But they also have a song about the Third Reich
which contains the lyrics "Start the Holocaust / The Reich will rise!"

Where does one draw the line?

DANIEL RATNER

Rehovot

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September 8, 2008 Monday

Elsewhere

BYLINE: Excerpts from Sen. John McCain's speech accepting the Republican
presidential nomination, Sept. 4

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 562 words

HIGHLIGHT: Elsewhere

We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the
temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform
government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of
freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and
Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost
their trust, when we valued our power over our principles.

We're going to change that. We're going to recover the people's trust by
standing up again for the values Americans admire. The party of Lincoln,
Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.

We believe everyone has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to
reach their God-given potential from the boy whose descendents arrived on the
Mayflower to the Latina daughter of migrant workers. We're all God's children
and we're all Americans.

My fellow Americans, when I'm President, we're going to embark on the most
ambitious national project in decades. We are going to stop sending $700 billion
a year to countries that don't like us very much. We will attack the problem on
every front. We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells
offshore, and we'll drill them now. We will build more nuclear power plants. We
will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide,
solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel,
hybrid and electric automobiles.

We have dealt a serious blow to al Qaeda in recent years. But they are not
defeated, and they'll strike us again if they can. Iran remains the chief state
sponsor of terrorism and on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons. Russia's
leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic
ideals and the obligations of a responsible power. They invaded a small,
democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply, intimidate
other neighbors, and further their ambitions of reassembling the Russian empire.
And the brave people of Georgia need our solidarity and prayers. As President I
will work to establish good relations with Russia so we need not fear a return
of the Cold War. But we can't turn a blind eye to aggression and international
lawlessness that threatens the peace and stability of the world and the security
of the American people.

I know how to work with leaders who share our dreams of a freer, safer and more
prosperous world, and how to stand up to those who don't. I know how to secure
the peace.

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved
it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for
its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because
it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never
the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's.

I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal
greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need.
My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will
fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.

Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We're
Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We
make history.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 7, 2008 Sunday

Free the mayors

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 731 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

A new bill that would free 60 of the country's most prosperous and well-managed
municipalities from the obligation to submit their budgets to the interior
minister for approval has the Finance Ministry fuming. The object is to cut
through the red tape that interferes with local government and reserve
much-needed scrutiny for some 200 failing, bankrupt or near-bankrupt townships
and development towns.

The bill's initiator, Knesset Interior Committee Chairman MK Ophir Paz-Pines
(Labor), considers it imperative that successful administrations not be
subjected to the bureaucratic hassles that are warranted when dealing with
chronic municipal basket-cases. Not only would this bill allow thriving cities
creative and organizational freedom, it would also allow more attention to be
focused on those localities that cannot so much as pay their employees' wages,
to say nothing of providing minimal services.

BY TRADITION dating back to the time of the British Mandate and carried forward
by the State of Israel, local government is subservient to the central
government, relies on it for budgetary allowances and is subject to its
regulation and supervision. Hence existing laws stipulate how a municipality
must draw up its budget - which must then be ratified by the interior minister,
who is empowered to make whatever changes he deems fit.

The Paz-Pines bill, which passed its first reading in the Knesset, wouldn't
entirely liberate affluent municipalities from all inspection. A compromise
clause obliges them to submit their budgets for rapid review by ministry
regional superintendents, who would rule only on whether these budgets were
balanced and could be implemented.

The Finance Ministry, for its part, continues to insist on the status quo,
demanding that approval by the interior minister remain compulsory in every case
- even if the initial speed screening detects no flaws in a municipality's
budget. The Pines-Paz bill was backed by the government in first reading, but it
must still pass the hurdles of the second and third readings.

It's no less than extraordinary for the Treasury to dig in its heels at this
late stage, after the bill has won government endorsement. Its zeal to keep
controlling the nation's purse-strings even on the local level isn't just
motivated by angst about overspending, but by a knee-jerk reluctance to lose its
quasi-imperialist bureaucratic clout by decentralizing.

The upshot is detrimental to the quality of both life and of municipal services.
Retaining elected local officials as little more than central government
functionaries is not in anyone's interest.

ISRAEL'S LOCAL governments suffer from two contradictory anomalies. At one end
of the spectrum are extremely malfunctioning administrations that are in many
cases responsible for their own breakdown. They frequently and willfully fail to
collect local rates, hampering their effectiveness and triggering vicious cycles
of insolvency.

In this category, concomitantly plagued by nepotism and touched by corruption,
is much of Israel's Arab sector. Here any bailout without close oversight would
be money down the drain.

In these circumstances, wasting time and attention on the other end of the local
government spectrum - localities that are well-managed and solvent - is
counterproductive in the extreme. This meddlesome bureaucracy creates a
disparity between what the populace expects of a directly elected mayor and that
mayor's actual, limited independence. Many mayors are less free to run their
cities as they see fit than their electorate realizes.

Moreover, the cities are like government subcontractors in numerous spheres -
especially education, welfare and some health services. While the Treasury
partially reimburses them, municipalities should be able to disburse their own
budgetary contributions according to what makes local sense.

For most citizens, the local authority - rather than the central government - is
the prime address to which they turn. It mustn't be hobbled in its
responsiveness.

Vastly different municipalities cannot all be treated as if they were identical
and afflicted by the same malaise. It is reasonable and desirable to
decentralize where possible, just as there is an abiding need to tighten the
reins on palpably delinquent local authorities.

Kudos to MK Pines-Paz for his efforts. Thumbs down to the Treasury for being so
obstructionist.

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The Jerusalem Post

September 7, 2008 Sunday

Letters

BYLINE: Samuel Karp, Judy Prager, Leonard Zurakov, Kate Hallgren, Mina Stern,
Judy Goldin, Chaim Fachler

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 907 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Oh, baby!

Sir, - Larry Derfner's "Go home, Mrs. Palin" (September 4) was positively
breathtaking. His message that a woman's place is in the home felt so shockingly
at odds with his past writings. "I have absolutely no doubt that a woman can be
just as good a vice president of the United States as a man, and just as good a
president, too," he writes, and yet he clearly believes that a mother of
children should stay at home and leave the governing to the fathers (who are
"less important" in the process of child- rearing).

One wonders how this writer can have endorsed Tzipi Livni for prime minister
just a week earlier ("Livni's the One," August 27). What is it that makes Livni
suited to leave the confines of the home, but Gov. Palin unsuited?

SAMUEL KARP

Petah Tikva

Sir, - I rarely agree with Larry Derfner's ideas and mind-set. However, "Go home
Mrs. Palin" was absolutely spot-on. Various friends of mine unfortunately have
children with Down syndrome, and I've seen what a hard job it is just to keep
the family ticking over, never mind running for a high governmental position.

Another point: Why didn't Palin's daughter, who knew her mother had a
high-profile career based on family values, etc., use contraception?

I hope all goes well for both these babies, but Derfner is right. Mrs. Palin's
priorities at the moment lie with her family.

JUDY PRAGER

Petah Tikva

Sir, - I wouldn't worry too much about Sarah Palin, since she is not likely to
occupy the V.P. post in any case. We'll let Joe Biden take care of that.

LEONARD ZURAKOV

Netanya

Let us (not) praise

Sir, - The photo accompanying David Forman's "Rabbis for Human Rights - the 20th
anniversary" (UpFront, August 29), which showed Rabbi Forman, a Catholic priest
and a Muslim cleric talking to a victim of the Sbarro terrorist attack in
Jerusalem in 2001, seemed to imply that all three religions are working together
to fight terrorism. The article, however, talked about RHR's work in exposing
Israel's moral injustices and expressed pride that the group "holds accountable
those who commit grievous offenses against the 'other.'"

Who is holding the Palestinians accountable for their wrongdoings against the
"other" and against each other? Where are Imams for Human Rights?

I can't "sing RHR's praises" for showing "the world that there are Israelis...
concerned with safeguarding the country's moral integrity." That's not how the
rest of the world sees it. What it sees are groups like RHR screaming louder
about Palestinian olive orchards being destroyed by Jewish settlers than they do
about Jewish children being mowed down in their high schools by Palestinian
terrorists.

By bringing their cause to the media, groups like RHR make it look like Israel
is to blame for all Palestinian suffering.

Why not talk about the moral and civil injustices being perpetrated in
Palestinian society by Palestinians, or about the fact that the Palestinians
could be living very well now if their leaders hadn't squandered or embezzled
billions of dollars in humanitarian aid over the past few decades? RHR and other
left-wing groups could help the Palestinians much more by giving Palestinian
"moderates" a platform to speak out against the injustices in their own society.

There will be no peace in the Middle East until the world holds the Palestinians
and other Arab groups accountable for their moral, social and political actions.

KATE HALLGREN

Jerusalem

Signs of...

Sir, - Re Yael Cohen's very relevant "Traditional cures for an 'old dog'"
(Letters, September 4): I've just spent a month in my hometown of Melbourne,
Australia, which has reduced road fatalities drastically over the past 20 years,
and noted some preventative measures used there that could have some influence
on aggressive Israeli drivers.

In every school zone, approaching from both directions, one sees a huge, 40-km.
speed-limit sign that lights up and flashes for an hour every morning and
afternoon at school drop and pickup times. One can't miss it. Maybe Israelis
wouldn't adhere to such limits - but, hopefully, seeing such a sign every day as
they ferry their children to and from school, they'd start to think about
driving safely.

Another measure is the very prominent and regular signs on out-of-town roads,
where the most serious accidents occur: "Rest and stay alive," "Yawning? Take a
power nap," "Sore eyes? Power nap now!" and "Yawning - a microsleep can kill."

The Israeli psyche needs such signs, and others pertaining to illegal
overtaking, speeding and other common driving offenses on our roads.

MINA STERN

Ramat Bet Shemesh

...the times

Sir, - Yael Cohen has come up with an excellent idea for policing our roads.
However, just as our teens no longer wish to join the army, so the next
generation do not wish to join the police force. Therefore one has to ask: Where
would these 5,000 additional traffic police come from?

JUDY GOLDIN

Kiryat Ono

Smoky stations

Sir, - The ban on smoking in public places is usually excellently enforced -
with one major exception: the crowded platforms in the country's 56 train
stations.

I am very proud of our young rail system's advances in the last 10 years, but
something needs to be done about this intolerable situation. One practical
solution would be to create one or two closed dedicated smoking areas per
platform.

Maybe some enterprising MKs will rise to the challenge and initiate a private
member's bill to address this very serious public nuisance.

CHAIM FACHLER, Netanya

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The Jerusalem Post

September 7, 2008 Sunday

Do 'Jewish ties' really matter?

BYLINE: JONATHAN S. TOBIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1184 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in
Philadelphia.

For those who thought that the discovery several years ago of the fact that
Hillary Clinton had a step-grandfather who was Jewish (yes, her grandmother's
second husband) was the low point in the history of attempts to influence the
Jewish vote, there is good news. The Republicans have gone their Democratic
rivals one better while introducing vice presidential pick Sarah Palin to the
public.

Palin does not have a long history of stands on Jewish issues. Why should she?
Neither the town of Wasilla, Alaska, nor the 49th state where she has served as
governor for the last two years have large Jewish populations or much of a
foreign policy.

But Gov. Palin does have a little Israeli flag in her office. Or at least did
last winter.

I know that because in an e-mail forwarded around the world, Jewish Republicans
were quick to point to the flag as a sign of her interest in the Jewish state.

For those of you who want to check this out yourself, the evidence can be found
at alaskapodshow.com/index.php/2008/02/20/my-visit-to-juneau- alaska. It is the
Web site of an Alaskan HDTV hiking show, which featured an interview with the
athletic veep hopeful in February. The tiny flag can be seen on the far right of
the picture at the edge of the window.

It isn't much, but in politics you go with what you've got.

PALIN IS obviously a sharp and articulate woman with a thin political resume
that has been offset by a winning style and a record as a reformer that
skyrocketed her into a spot on a national ticket. But her introduction to the
big leagues has illustrated two points - one Jewish and one general - about our
current political culture these days.

First, Sarah Palin's little flag and the subsequent obligatory kind comments
about her from Alaskan rabbis, whose events she has graced with her official
presence, illustrate what should have become obvious a long time ago: The
partisan impulse to pretend that all candidates are longtime bosom buddies with
the Jewish community is getting a little silly.

Unlike 2004, when just about everyone running for president except George W.
Bush was producing a Jewish relative of some sort, the two nominees, John McCain
and Barack Obama, aren't pretending to be members of the tribe.

Not every pol running for office who wants Jewish votes or money grew up in a
Jewish neighborhood like former New York governor Mario Cuomo, who used to like
to boast to Jewish audiences that he served as the shabbes goy for a synagogue
in the South Jamaica section of Queens, where he was raised.

Nor can a politician who is not from the Northeast and has not worked on
foreign-policy issues match a record of stands on Israel such as the one that
Palin's Democratic counterpart, Sen. Joe Biden, can offer.

Like McCain, Biden has a paper trail a mile long on Jewish issues which,
ironically enough, has allowed some critics to mine from it comments criticizing
specific Israeli policies, in trying to tarnish the Democrats' spin.

Like McCain's stands, Biden's history of engagement with Jews and the pro-Israel
community is a reasonable argument to be made by those who advocate his
election. But the fact that the top of the Democratic ticket couldn't match
Biden's record on Israel won't stop Jewish Democrats from voting for Obama.

Instead, they have chosen to judge the candidate on the positions that he has
articulated during the course of the campaign. Since Obama has, more or less,
jumped through every rhetorical hoop the pro-Israel community has asked him to
jump through, they have every right to now claim that their candidate is every
bit as entitled to the label "pro-Israel" as anyone else.

ALL OF which ought to serve as a reminder to those partisans whose job it is to
spin the candidates to the Jewish public that what we need is substance, not
nonsense. Whether or not some of McCain's or Obama's or Biden's or Palin's "best
friends" were or are Jewish isn't really material.

This is not 1948 when, as the story goes, intervention by president Harry
Truman's former business partner and army buddy, Eddie Jacobsen, helped
influence White House policy on the creation of a Jewish state.

Nowadays, the people most likely to effectively lobby wavering presidents to
stand up for Zionism are evangelical Christians. Whether Palin - the evangelical
the Republicans are nominating for vice president - will help further that cause
remains to be seen (though her statements regarding her strong belief in support
for Israel to members of AIPAC attending the Republican convention this week
were every bit as convincing as those of Obama), but the outcome probably won't
depend on whether or not she has attended as many bar mitzvas as Biden.

What really matters is whether these people will adhere to the nonpartisan and
nondenominational tradition of sympathy for Zionism that has deep roots in the
history of American religion, culture and politics dating back to the earliest
years of our republic. What we need from them are credible pledges to avoid
pressuring Israel and to support its right of self defense, as well as tough
action on Iranian nukes, not testimonials from Jewish friends.

In other words, the entire genre of "Jewish ties" in discussions of the
candidates is not all that it is cracked up to be.

SECONDLY, THE reaction to the Palin nomination by the bloggers and the Internet
fruitcakes, much like the Internet whispering campaign against Barack Obama,
demonstrates just how low the political debate in this country is getting.

The same site on the Internet that the Republican Jews were so proud of because
it showed the flag in Palin's office was deluged with postings alleging that the
interview "proved" that Palin had faked her pregnancy, which resulted in the
birth this spring of her fifth child, who suffers from Down syndrome. It was in
reaction to this sort of vile stuff posted - not just on the Alaska HDTV page,
but on influential leftist political sites such as the DailyKos - that Palin was
forced to reveal that her 17- year-old daughter was pregnant.

To his credit, Obama, who has been stung himself by the radical right-wing
Internet onslaught putting forward the fantasy that he is an Islamist
"Manchurian Candidate," asked his followers to back off. But the nature of
political jabbering in our current universe of 24/7 cable news and Internet
postings in which every nitwit can self- publish lies about anyone and anything
means that nothing can stem the ugly flow of slander.

Mudslinging is hardly new in American politics, but the Internet has given it a
place in the mainstream that it has never gotten before.

Some partisan Democrats feel that they can say and do anything in the cause of
halting what they falsely claim is a Republican effort to destroy democracy and
institute fundamentalist tyranny. In turn, some Republicans think anything goes
in the cause of keeping what they worry is a man who will deliberately lose the
war on Islamist terror out of the White House.

In such an atmosphere of hate and screaming talking heads, rational debate seems
to be harder to find than a minyan in Wasilla, Alaska.

jtobin@jewishexponent.com

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The race begins

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 731 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

John McCain accepted the presidential nomination of the Republican Party last
night in St. Paul, Minnesota. But it was Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor who
came out of nowhere to become his vice presidential running mate, whose
galvanizing speech was received on Wednesday with the kind of euphoria once
reserved for Ronald Reagan.

Meticulously crafted, Palin's oration enchanted the delegates and reinvigorated
the campaign. McCain might not be able to outtalk Democratic presidential
nominee Barack Obama, but he now has someone on his team who has that potential.

Without overtly running against the incumbent of his own party, McCain wants
voters to know he's no George W. Bush; that he'll rebrand the GOP and bring
change - the catchphrase of the 2008 campaign - to Washington.

Party conventions were created to broaden political participation, even though
traditionally the nominees were chosen by bosses in smoke-filled rooms. A series
of reforms democratized the way in which delegates, committed to particular
candidates, were selected. These days the nominee is known even before the
convention. Still, to unite the party faithful and promote their candidate
before the rest of America, the spectacle remains essential.

With both conventions over, there are now just eight weeks before Election Day.
Strikingly, only 44 percent of Americans say they have been following news about
the campaign - in what is shaping up to be a close race.

IT WOULD be sensible for Israelis to bear in mind that foreign policy does not
drive American electoral politics. The big issue is the economy and jobs, with
the war in Iraq a distant second. On that, Americans are evenly divided over who
is "winning."

It is a salutary fact that the US-Israel relationship is rock-hard and
bipartisan; that both Barack Obama and John McCain describe themselves as
friends of Israel. Both party platforms are committed to maintaining Israel's
qualitative military edge; both take cognizance of the danger a nuclear-armed
Iran would pose, and both favor stronger diplomatic and financial sanctions
against the Islamic Republic. Democrats and Republicans also agree that
Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel.

But where the rubber hits the road is how these generalities are to be
transformed operationally. It is worth reiterating that every Israeli government
and every US administration have had disagreements. The interests of the Jewish
state and those of the United States are not always in harmony.

Still, by urging Barack Obama and John McCain to move from sweeping statements
to specifics, the pro-Israel community needs to assess which of the candidates
is the better deal.

* Iran: Which man best understands that this is not Israel's problem alone; that
the mullahs threaten regional stability and even have imperial ambitions beyond
the Mideast? Which one can best restore America's standing in the world and
spearhead an accelerated drive to get Europe behind biting sanctions against
Teheran? And which - if push came to shove - would be more likely to lead the
free world against Iran, rather than wait for Israel to do the dirty work?

* Peace: Which man best understands that Israel does not need to be "catalyzed"
into peace-making, that it is Palestinian intransigence that has left the
negotiations stalemated? Which one is likely to stand by Israel as it resists
pressure to withdraw to the 1949 Armistice Lines? Support "1967-plus" - meaning
the inclusion of strategic settlement blocs in any final peace deal? Call on
Palestinian leaders to abandon demands for millions of Arab refugees and their
descendants to "return" Israel proper? Which one will tell Syria to negotiate
directly with Israel, without preconditions?

* Islamism: Which man would defuse, where possible - but face down, where
necessary - the Islamist threat to Western civilization? Which one best
comprehends that Hizbullah, Hamas and al-Qaida are embarked on a winner-
take-all jihad against freedom and tolerance - and that they must be routed?

For America, foremost, but also for all of us whose reality America so
significantly influences, it would be well if, on November 3, Barack Obama and
John McCain echoed the sentiments of Adlai Stevenson on the eve of Election Day,
1952: "Looking back, I am content. Win or lose, I have told you the truth as I
see it. I have said what I meant, and meant what I said."

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September 5, 2008 Friday

John McCain - master strategist

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1938 words

HIGHLIGHT: COLUMN ONE

Both the challenges of war and the challenges of politics are challenges of
leadership. And both military strategists and political strategists agree that
the most basic leadership challenge in both arenas is to know and understand
yourself - your strengths and your weaknesses - and to know your opponents and
their strengths and weaknesses. While this may seem like basic common sense, it
is quite amazing to see how often it is ignored.

The rarity of this sort of strategic wisdom in the public sphere was brought to
the fore this week in the political uproar generated by US Republican
presidential nominee Sena. John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as
his running mate. McCain's selection of Palin was remarkable because in
selecting her from the list of possible choices, he made a decision that
embraced rather than ignored this most basic challenge of leadership.

Given that the universality of the logic that informed McCain's selection of
Palin is followed more in the breach than in practice, it is worth analyzing his
choice, both for what it tells us about his leadership skills, and about the
nature of his domestic opposition. But it is also useful to reflect on his
choice of Palin to draw lessons that can be applied more widely by non-leftist
political and military strategists throughout the free world.

In the months preceding McCain's announcement of Palin as his running mate, his
central challenges as the Republican presidential nominee came into focus. In
Sen. Barack Obama, McCain faces a young, vigorous and charismatic opponent who
has successfully energized his supporters and the powerful US liberal media
establishment. Owing to that excitement, Obama has raised unprecedented amounts
of campaign contributions. He has also rallied tens of thousands of loyal foot
soldiers who have volunteered to serve his campaign. Both the donors and the
volunteers are essential for winning voters and bringing them to the ballot
boxes on November 4.

Obama's velvet tongue is also a formidable asset. His ability to mesmerize
audiences with soaring rhetoric is compared favorably to president John F.
Kennedy's eloquence.

Obama's other massive advantage is the liberal media. Since he first launched
his primary campaign, the liberal media - which include the major US newspapers,
television news networks and two out of three cable news networks - have been
actively advocating on his behalf while downplaying his opponents.

But all of these formidable strengths are matched by countervailing
vulnerabilities. While Obama's supporters are energized, the drawn-out primary
election battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton splintered the Democratic Party base.
Whereas most of Clinton's voters will no doubt vote for Obama in the general
election, their support is more tenuous in swing states where Obama's cultural
cache is less appealing.

And while Obama is a stunning speaker, his record of actual accomplishments is
all but nonexistent. The combination of his extraordinary speeches and his
ordinary empty resume engenders a sense that Obama suffers from extreme
arrogance.

Then, too, while the media has done its best to project a positive and credible
image of Obama, his past political associations with radicals such as Rev.
Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres and corrupt influence peddler Tony Rezko call
both his patriotism and his honesty into question.

McCain's balance of assets and deficits is almost the polar opposite of Obama's.
He has a wealth of leadership experience and demonstrable political
accomplishments. His patriotism is massively recognized and respected.

On the other hand, McCain has been unable to generate excitement in his party.
His reputation as a maverick has often been earned at the expense of his
political base, which is overwhelmingly socially conservative and suspects him
of being a closet liberal. This has made fund-raising a challenge, and raised
concerns that many conservatives will simply not vote on Election Day.

Moreover, McCain has never distinguished himself as a great communicator. His
war wounds, which prevent him from raising his arms above his shoulders, make
him appear even older than his 72 years. When compared to the vigorous, handsome
46-year-old Obama, McCain tends to look and sound like an old man.

This age and rhetorical distinction is only magnified by the disparity of media
coverage of the two candidates' campaigns. The media have a pronounced and
documented tendency to play up McCain's weaknesses and Obama's strengths while
downplaying McCain's strengths and Obama's weaknesses.

IN LIGHT of these realities, McCain's strategic challenge has been on the one
hand, to transform Obama's strengths into weaknesses while bringing Obama's
actual weaknesses to the public's attention in a persuasive way. On the other
hand, McCain needs to unify his own party around his candidacy without
alienating independents and Democrats whose votes can be won.

In recent weeks, largely through the well-conceived, satirical use of television
ads, McCain sought to meet these basic challenges. By comparing Obama's speech
in Berlin to Moses's parting of the Red Sea, he playfully yet effectively drew
attention to Obama's arrogance and called the credibility of his rhetorical
skill into question. Other ads effectively brought Obama's slim record of actual
achievements into view. Still other ads sought to attract disaffected Clinton
voters by using her own primary campaign denunciations of Obama's record and
radical associations.

Most importantly, in the lead-up to Palin's selection as his running mate,
McCain has successfully provoked a public debate about the fairness of the
media's support of Obama.

McCain's selection of Palin as his running mate, then, came after he had set the
conditions for a strategic assault on Obama by successfully weakening him and
discrediting his support base. The surprise entry of a young, accomplished woman
with a compelling personal story who was all but unknown to the national
audience, placed the Obama campaign and particularly his media supporters in a
state of shock. And in their shocked reaction to her selection, the liberal
media destroyed their own credibility - not to mention likability - among the
general public.

The media claimed that McCain's choice of Palin was ill-conceived for three
reasons. First, they argued that the popular Alaska governor has no experience
in foreign policy and with only two years in state-wide office, little
demonstrable experience in governing. Yet their assertions merely highlighted
Obama's own inexperience while amplifying McCain's wealth of experience.

Second, the media insinuated that Palin is unfit for office because she has an
infant child with Down's Syndrome. Either she will be a bad mother, or she will
be a bad vice president, they claimed. Yet in so arguing, the liberal media
merely demonstrated their own hypocrisy. While claiming the mantle of feminism,
the media commentators belittled Palin's right to choose - together with her
macho, blue collar husband - to serve her country as a mother of a child with
special needs. Their harping on her personal family choices angered the vital
demographic of middle class working mothers who felt personally insulted by
their attacks on Palin.

Finally, of course, there was the media circus generated by Palin's belated
announcement that her teenage daughter Bristol is pregnant and engaged to marry
her teenage boyfriend. The news of her daughter's pregnancy evoked the ugliest
media assault on a teenager in recent memory. Here, too, the media's pillorying
of Palin as a lousy mother and her daughter as morally challenged discredited
the media while increasing Palin's sympathy with voters shocked by this
scurrilous assault on her daughter and her family values.

At the same time as McCain's selection of Palin as his running mate pushed the
media over the edge, it profoundly rallied his own Republican base to his side.
Palin's opposition to abortion, her membership in the National Rifle
Association, her remoteness from Washington, her Pentecostal faith, together
with the media attacks on her family gave social conservatives reason to be
enthusiastic about the prospect of a McCain presidency.

IT BEARS noting that that the sight of Palin's pregnant daughter appearing
happily with her clean-cut fiance at the Republican Convention on Wednesday
served to reinforce the fact that women who are "pro-choice" actually have the
choice not to abort unplanned pregnancies. Their presence in the hall
demonstrated that embracing the responsibility of parenthood even at an early
age can be a source of happiness and personal fulfillment for both fathers and
mothers. That image alone no doubt ensured that on Election Day, tens of
thousands of volunteers will work to bring voters to the polls for McCain.

Indeed, the value of the image is so enormous that the possibility arises that
using his understanding of the media as an adversary and his understanding of
his own political base, McCain viewed Bristol Palin's pregnancy as an electoral
asset.

In the midst of the maelstrom swirling around her in the days that preceded her
address to the Republican Convention, it was noted repeatedly that Palin's
performance Wednesday evening would make or break McCain's candidacy. If she
failed to present herself in a compelling fashion, she would destroy McCain's
chances of election because her failure would serve as an indictment of his
judgment. But if she succeeded, she would advance significantly the Republican
ticket's chances of winning on November 4.

Many argued that McCain took an unnecessary gamble by placing such an enormous
burden on her shoulders. Yet the fact is that McCain no doubt knew precisely
what her capabilities are as a speaker. Unlike the media, he claims that he has
been watching her political rise for years. He knew that she was capable of
rising to the challenge. Far from a gamble, his move was a stroke of brilliance
that showed an acute understanding of who Palin is, how he himself is perceived,
and what motivates both the media and his own party base.

McCain's undoing of the elite, leftist media provides a universal lesson for
contending with the Left. At base, the Left's ideology, whether relating to
women's rights, human rights, academic inquiry or war and peace is not universal
but tribal. Moreover, when the Left is challenged on any one of its signature
issues, because it cannot actually make a case for the universal applicability
or even logic of its views, it tends instead to embrace the politics of personal
destruction while ignoring the obvious contradictions between its stated beliefs
and actual behavior.

Although a necessary component of political warfare against the Left is the
ability to expose its hypocrisy, exposing its hypocrisy alone will not bring
victory. Leaders and policies capable of supplanting the Leftist elite and their
failed ideas are also required. In the case at hand, had Palin been perceived as
under-qualified to serve as vice president on Wednesday night, McCain's chances
of winning the presidency would have been vastly diminished despite his
successful unmasking of the Left's hypocrisy.

McCain's strategic grasp of the requirements for a successful presidential race
provide an important lesson for policy-makers and political leaders. To win in
politics and war you must be willing to acknowledge both your strengths and your
weaknesses, and those of your opponent. It is never easy to look reality in the
face. But unless leaders are willing to do so, they will never win. What's more,
they will lose.

caroline@carolineglick.com

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September 5, 2008 Friday

Biden is more than just 'a friend of Israel'

BYLINE: MARTY PERETZ

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1033 words

If one examines the formal records of American politicians - votes in Congress,
speeches to Jewish groups - almost all of them can be called "friends of
Israel." Especially near election day. Still, this shows (and it is confirmed by
exhaustive polling data over the decades) that the United States as a polity and
as a people has little sympathy for the Palestinians whose at once whining and
belligerent politics has worn thin, very thin.

The endemic violence of the Arab world and within various (but, let's make
clear, not all) Muslim states has not only distanced but actually repelled the
American people from the cultural and psychological fantasies of their actual
politics. Blood flows easily among them.

Then, of course, there is the legacy of Old Testament Protestantism that has in
its heart a love for "God's people," out of which love emerged America's
steadfast support over its history for the Jewish return to the ancient land.

All of this is to the good, very much to the good. But it is not exactly
strategic thinking. I've been pondering this in recent days since rumors have
been circulating that Joe Biden once got into a verbal spat with Menachem Begin
(chas v'challileh, a verbal spat about settlement policy, no less. Who ever
heard of that?) and that Biden had pondered whether Israel might actually have
to live with an Iranian bomb.

The first story has a long history and goes back no less than a quarter century,
26 years, to be exact. The exchange was supposed to have occurred at an utterly
undocumented (and therefore most unlikely) Senate hearing but was reported only
in 1992 and now repeated in 2008 by Norman Podhoretz's son, John. The second
urgent report is now widely accepted as being false, a sheer invention.

I go through these tawdry details because if ever there was a true friend of
Israel in the United States Senate it is Joe Biden. Oh yes, there were also Owen
Brewster, Republican from Maine, and Guy Gillette, Democrat from Iowa. But that
goes back to the very founding of the state.

This is not hyperbole about Biden. It is true. And it is so not just on a
philosophical basis but in deeds, too. Biden is a true friend on both a higher
and a deeper level, and he has been that for three and a half decades. It is
reckless for Jews to trifle with such allies. We have, as I've said, many
friends. But what we do not have is many such allies - formidable, expert, truly
passionate.

A basic distinction between an ideological friend and a conscientious ally is in
how the politician in question views the present predicament over negotiations.
The ideological friend believes that with a bit more goodwill, perhaps a lot
more energy and a decent amount of good luck in a tight corner the parties will
all come to agree.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seems to go one step further, maybe two:
She thinks that Israel is simply obstructing the road to peace. Desperate as her
last months and weeks go by, she been pressing Israel ever more to give up vital
territory around Jerusalem and along the Jordan River that is absolutely
necessary to the security of the state and for which Israel has shown that it
will give other land in exchange. I wonder what John McCain and, for that
matter, Joe Lieberman think of the secretary's record on this matter.

Why am I cosseting George W. Bush from the meaning and consequences of what is,
after all, his policy? Perhaps because we need to sustain the sense that he
doesn't know what is really going on. But, then, he surely knows what, in his
name, the secretary did about Lebanon at the United Nations in 2006. She forced
Israel to accept United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, whose slippery
terms allowed the rearmament of Hizbullah and guaranteed that the United Nations
Interim Force in Lebanon (which has been "interim" since 1978) neither does its
job nor know what its job is.

To the Bush administration belongs the calamity that now has Iran on both of
Israel's northern borders and the collapse of Lebanon as even the figment of an
independent state. So what does Bush's aspiring successor say about that? And
why didn't he say it earlier when it might have counted?

JOE BIDEN is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Barack Obama is
a member of that body. In a way their roles have now been reversed. But, sitting
on the committee, Obama actually was a student of Biden's. And so he heard Biden
say on Meet the Press, for example, "I find it fascinating [when] people talk
about has Israel gone too far. No one talks about whether Israel is justified in
the first place."

This is a punch at the solar plexus of Israel's adversaries.

Biden said Thursday in Florida that he would not have agreed to be Barack
Obama's running mate had he not been certain that he and the Democratic
candidate were in the same place on Israel.

Well, I, too, would not be supporting Obama were I not convinced that he
understood the real underside of Israel's conflict with the Arabs or, more to
the point, the Arabs' conflict with Israel. It is mostly about history, and
Obama is a student of history. The Arabs simply would not accept the Jews'
renaissance in their historic homeland, no matter how small their homeland would
be. Recall that Chaim Weizmann once said that he would accept a tablecloth for a
state.

What was the essence of Obama's grasp of Israel's dilemma as people from every
side push it to give up this and give up that and then give up another thing? In
Iowa, where no one pressed him to speak about Israel, in Cleveland and
Philadelphia, where many did, he expressed the crux of the issue. It was not the
particulars that mattered. It was the general principle.

He knew, Biden said, that Israel wanted peace. About the Palestinians it was yet
to be shown.

That is the case for Israel in a nutshell. Everybody knows that there is a
consensus in the Jewish state around giving up much of the nation's historic
heart and heartland. Nobody knows what the Palestinians, the fratricidal
Palestinians, are truly willing to cede to Israel. Maybe from Tel Aviv's Rehov
Ibn Givrol east. Maybe, in truth, not even that. And the Bush administration is
color-coding the back roads of Jerusalem. Folly.

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September 5, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Mina Fenton

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 434 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

CRUSADING AGAINST THE 'MONEY CRUSADE'

The "Holier than thou" August 1 article by Peggy Cidor, upon which two letters
were based on August 8, misrepresented the situation regarding donations from
evangelical Christians.

At present we are in the midst of the "money crusade," otherwise known as
"Christian charity." Tactics have changed. Today's weapons of choice come in the
form of monetary enticement, comfort, blessings and love, political support and
a noxious theological fusion.

Money becomes the tool of penetration in all areas of our lives such as welfare,
aliya, absorption, the army and education - through government, community
centers, non- profit organizations and in private homes - based on Christian
theology.

I wonder whether Emunah's leadership approves cooperation with missionary
organizations and leaders (a number of which were mentioned in the article but
unfortunately not identified), as do Yechiel Eckstein, head of the International
Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), and Dudi Zilbershlag, head of Meir
Panim. (In the past, Eckstein served as president of Meir Panim and Koach
Latet.)

Or does Emunah agree with people like Eckstein who distort the Torah and Jewish
values in favor of Christianity?

People like Eckstein and Zilbershlag who ignore halachic prohibitions of the
greatest rabbis of our generation of all denominations, both in Israel and
abroad, help the missionaries expand and succeed in their destructive
activities.

There are numerous prohibitions against taking money from the IFCJ's Kupat
Yedidut (Friendship Fund). This issue was raised in the Special Seminar of
Emunah Jerusalem on July 27. The subject was: "Things You Never Knew: There Are
Missionaries All Around Us."

I spoke about and analyzed the development of evangelical Christian involvement
in Jewish life through "Christian charity" and its dangers. Pnina Taylor,
director of Jews for Judaism, addressed the deceptive efforts of cults and
missionaries that target Jews for conversion, using their money as keys to "open
doors."

The large audience of Emunah members was amazed at the magnitude of the "money
crusade" and the associated missionary activities, and expressed the desire to
help combat it.

Israeli society at large is becoming more aware of the damage from "Christian
charity" to the Jewish existence in our homeland.

For the record, I was the chairperson of Emunah Jerusalem from 1996-2001 and am
now a member of the boards of Emunah Jerusalem, Emunah Israel and World Emunah.

Mina Fenton

NRP City councillor, Jerusalem Municipality, Foreign Relations, The Jewish
People and Heritage Portfolio

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September 5, 2008 Friday

Mailbag

BYLINE: Janice Segal, Manja Angel, Reuven Goldfarb, bloria Mound, Sarah Goodman,
Barry Newman, Azriel Moses

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1351 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Tears come to my eyes

Dear editor,

Re: Five months and done (August 29)

My husband and I have been here in beautiful Israel for four years. We have not
one member of family here, and not many close friends. Our life here has been
going to Ulpan Gordon, Tel Aviv. We love learning Hebrew, we love the teachers,
the managers, the secretaries and we love being with all the students from
different countries. We work hard but it is also a lot of fun. The most
important times for us are the Holidays celebrated at the Ulpan.

Ulpan Gordon has been like our second home and the only place to go on the the
High Holidays. Now what do we do? At the moment we are not attending Ulpan for
what I hope is just a short set-back, as I am undergoing chemotherapy for
cancer. The thought of going back to Ulpan Gordon after the treatments are
finished is what is keeping me going. Now I see this written in the paper.

Signed with tears,

Janice Segal,

Tel Aviv

Five months isn't enough time

Dear editor,

Re: Five months and done (August 29)

So it really is a fact now; only five months ulpan and that is it. This past
winter I attended ulpan hemshech (Continued Ulpan) here in Rehovot with a mixed
group of people and of all different ages. Some were here longer, some shorter.

Our teachers were not very hopeful about the future of the ulpan and/or their
futures as teachers. We tried to help them by writing letters in favor, but
without a positive result as it turns out now.

It really is a shame, because one cannot learn a language in five months, not
even the brightest students.

There must be a way to better finance new immigrants' integration into society.
On the one hand, the government wants aliya; on the other hand they don't want
to invest in the future of happy and satisfied citizens.

Manja Angel,

Rehovot

Oversimplified but still nice

Dear editor,

Re: A town with an old-world beat (August 22)

I read with interest the article by Ann Goldberg about Safed. The author writes
well, and she largely succeeded in her attempt to evoke the beauty and sanctity
of the city.

However, the statement, "Over 500 years ago, the Ari used to go to the city's
outermost limits..." is incorrect. Over 400 years ago would be more accurate.
The Ari lived in Safed from 1570-72 before dying of cholera at the age of
thirty-eight.

The author also introduces the subject of semicha (rabbinical ordination) -
which was revived by the rabbis of Safed under the leadership of Rabbi Yaakov
Berav. She writes, "Beirav tried to reinstate this in Safed with the Torah
leaders of his generation, but after discussion with the rabbis of Jerusalem
decided against it." This is an oversimplified description of the controversy.
In fact, the transmission of rabbinical ordination was revived, though only a
few rabbis were so ordained. Rabbi Berav received semicha from all the rabbis of
Safed, and he in turn ordained four others: Rabbis Yosef Karo, Moshe Metrani,
Moshe Galante, and Moshe Cordovero. He also offered semicha to the Rabbi of
Jerusalem, Levi ben Chaviv, by letter, but Chaviv rejected the offer and
rejected the reinstatement of the procedure. He disputed the basis of Berav's
decision, which was grounded in a passage from the Rambam, and contended that
only from Jerusalem could such an innovation emanate. Rabbi Berav did not back
down and the controversy spiraled out of control with threats made on Berav's
life. When the Turkish governor heard of the dispute, he issued a warrant for
the rabbi's arrest, whereupon Berav fled to Damascus where he died eight years
later at the age of 72.

Despite this, the article (and the accompanying photos) present an inviting
picture of the Holy City, which I have been privileged to call home for the past
seven and a half years. Should my wife and I be in town next summer, we would be
happy to host Ms. Goldberg during her visit to the Klezmer Festival, or any time
of year she wishes to visit - especially over Shabbat.

Reuven Goldfarb,

Safed

Ancient standards, bad material

Dear editor,

Re: The riot act (August 22)

Whilst fully agreeing with all readers' remarks on the disgraceful standard of
the YES and HOT service and programs, what we really need to know is where is
the so- called Consumer Standards Committees in these matters?

Each day gets worse. Most viewers who have problems with Hebrew only pay to
enable them to receive the news programs. It is time the government stepped in
to review if such companies are worthy of receiving a transmitting license. They
are supposed to show a variety of entertainment. However much anybody may have a
favorite program, there can be no justification for a whole evening of hour
after hour of repeated episodes of the same ancient stuff.

Gloria Mound,

Gan Yavneh

I've joined the club, unfortunately

Dear editor,

Re: The riot act (August 22)

I enjoyed your article about the cable companies because I have a serious gripe
with HOT. They overcharged me some 584 shekels as well.

Sarah Goodman

A sucker is born every minute

Dear editor,

Re: Still HOT and bothered; Thank God for good books (Metro Mailbag, August 29)

Your two initialed correspondents, I will say, gave me a good laugh. First they
parroted the same indignation toward HOT that the "cooterers" from the previous
week expressed, and then they described how forcefully they'll be responding by
keeping the "basic" package of programs rather than purchase any supplemental
ones. A framed photograph of P.T. Barnum - you know, the showman who shrewdly
observed that a sucker is born every minute - must certainly be hanging in HOT's
executive offices.

Look, can HOT really be faulted for attempting to achieve maximum profit while
providing minimum service. That, when you come right down to it, is what
business is all about. And in an industry with very little competition, well,
that the company's customers are provided with nothing more than a paltry
offering of programming and lackluster customer service should come as no
surprise.

As a subscriber neither to HOT nor to its satellite counterpart YES, I'm somehow
managing to survive, even without BBC Prime and Oprah. The two standard channels
provide a reasonable if not overwhelming variety of programming; a virtually
endless world of information and entertainment is readily available on the
Internet; and, yes, the effort of fertile imagination or industrious scholarship
are freely offered in public libraries. Maybe it's because I've not become
addicted to the few crumbs that HOT and YES have been trying to entice me with
that I find it utterly astonishing how willing people are to shell out
two-hundred-plus shekels a month for endlessly repeated movies, tired and
predictable comedies and robotic if not idiotic customer service
representatives.

In 1961, Newton's Law went through something of a revision. The Newton, this
time though, was Newton Minow, a former Chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission. In a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, Mr. Minow
attested that: "When television is good, nothing - not the theater, not the
magazines or newspapers - nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing
is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your
station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper,
profit and loss sheet or rating book to distract you - and keep your eyes glued
to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe
a vast wasteland."

Barry Newman,

Ginot Shomron

More success stories from India

Dear editor,

Re: From India to the Beersheba shuk (August 15)

I read Yocheved Miriam Russo's interesting article in Metro and thought it was
well covered.

I also immigrated in 2002 from India and know this family in the article
personally. Ephraim and his family deserved this coverage. I too, with my family
have had a very successful aliya, both on the professional front and the family
front. I am sure it will be quite inspiring for young, professional, new
immigrants not only from India but from any part of the world.

I have been waiting for a long time for the right platform to address my
experience.

Azriel Moses

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

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PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The Jerusalem Post

September 5, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Barry Newman, Mike Ayl, Lynette Ordman, Joseph David

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 591 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

About pain and gain

Sir, - If Rafi Halaf expects us to swallow his theory that builders will forsake
profit in the interest of national ideology, well, he's been exposed to a bit
too much industrial glue and paint remover ("Something to build on," Cover
Story, Sam Ser, August 29). Until it becomes unavoidably painful to hire foreign
workers, hard-hatted Jewish Israelis navigating scaffolds or straddling ladders
will likely remain a novelty.

Binyamin Netanyahu tried to push through various taxation schemes during his
tenure as finance minister. He managed to define quotas for foreign workers and
introduced different incentive programs. It was impossible, though, to
hermetically seal legislation or regulatory practices from graft, corruption and
workarounds. As a result, the "slave trade" that flows from the Far East and
Eastern Europe has been flourishing.

The NIS 30m. referred to is, I believe, the first installment of a three-year
NIS 100m. investment that the Israel Employment Service promoted a year or so
ago. But how is the money administered? Judging by the shoddy work practices,
financial maneuvering and downright theft of some of our major builders, I can
foresee more than a few fictitious Moshes and Itziks suddenly punching time
cards. Israeli contractors are ingenious at finding ways to butter both sides of
their bread without dirtying up their fingers.

Yes, there is potential for a lucrative and satisfying career in construction
management, but despite Halaf's assertion, it's the rare individual who can go
from mixing cement and riveting in drywall to planning, budgeting and logistics.

BARRY NEWMAN

Ginot Shomron

Aliya to Chelm

Sir, - While appreciating Sarah Honig's criticism of the illogical actions of
our authorities regarding the release of prisoners, as one who was born in the
real Chelm (in Poland), I can only dispute the general perception of its elders'
alleged stupidity. Since my aliya I become daily more and more convinced that I
am only now living in the mythical Chelm ("New Chelm in Jerusalem," August 29).

MIKE AYL

Ashkelon

Rabbis for injustice?

Sir, - David Forman, in "Rabbis for Human Rights - 20th anniversary" (August
29), completely misunderstands the opposition to the RHR organization at this
critical time in our history. In rejecting the argument that these rabbis supply
fodder for Israel's detractors, he fails to grasp the magnitude of the damage
from RHR to both Israel's image abroad and the morale of Israelis.

In common with many other apparently naive individuals, he seems, incredibly, to
disregard the sophisticated anti-Zionist propaganda designed to tell the world
that Israelis are evil. By always highlighting the negative aspects of
Israeli-Arab relationships, organizations such as his do Israel an enormous
injustice.

LYNETTE ORDMAN

Netanya

There won't be animals

Sir, - Re Shlomo Brody's "Making a sacrifice" (Ask the Rabbi, August 29): The
term korban, erroneously translated as sacrifice, has to do with energy states
and transformations in a person who, for example, did something wrong
unintentionally and hence is exonerated by the law and by morality, but who
still feels guilt. It is a technology based on the scientific laws of such
energy states that will constitute the third 'temple'. But a videotape of the
technology of korban in ancient Israel would not be the same as a videotape of
the third 'temple' technology. The laws are the same, but the respective
technologies are different.

It is highly unlikely there will be animals in the picture!

JOSEPH DAVID, Jerusalem

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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The Jerusalem Post

September 5, 2008 Friday

How the Diaspora can help Jerusalem

BYLINE: AMOTZ ASA-EL

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1118 words

HIGHLIGHT: Middle Israel

Jews across the Diaspora are angry, and with good reason. Jerusalem, they hear,
one of the few causes behind which they can rally regardless of their disparate
locations and beliefs, is being negotiated away, and by Ehud Olmert of all
people. Can it really be, they ask, that a man in the last few weeks of a
horrendous premiership will compromise the apple of our eye?

Well first of all, sure it can happen. Ask Shas chairman Eli Yishai, Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni and opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, all of whom were
astonished to learn from the press this week that Olmert had raised with Mahmoud
Abbas and Condoleezza Rice the idea that Jerusalem's fate be negotiated in the
presence of, among others, Russia, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and the Vatican.

Now Olmert's urge to steer the wheel wildly just one last time before being
removed from it is as understandable as the alarm it evoked. If one spends years
serving a succession of prime ministers, it is only to be expected that once
finally at the helm, he would be driven by a quest to match his alter-egos'
historical imprints. You and I might wonder about the gravitas gap between him
and them, but he clearly doesn't.

Equally understandable, if debatable, is the willingness among Israelis across
the political spectrum to draw the Diaspora into the struggle over Jerusalem's
future.

Some, for instance, advocate opening a future referendum on Jerusalem's borders
to the entire Jewish people. Others of course cringe at this thought, fearing
the Right will deploy thousands between Brooklyn's shtiebels and California's
country clubs; then again, the same Left will happily accept Diaspora
contributions to its cause. Others, also understandably, say the only way
Diaspora Jews can take part in a decision on Jerusalem is by moving here and
joining the citizenry that will, for better or worse, face the consequences of a
deal involving the city.

What is less understandable is how the same Diaspora Jews who are obsessed with
the political borders of Jewish Jerusalem rarely care for its Zionist character,
which faces a crisis almost as alarming as the threat to its size. This is all
the more intriguing considering that on this sorry front the Diaspora can
actually interfere with minimum controversy and maximum effect.

WHEN VISITING Jerusalem, Diaspora Jews are usually too euphoric, blinded and
ill-equipped to detect this, but those of us who have been living in the city
long enough to compare, feel that Zionism has already lost the battle for
Jerusalem, not to Arab nationalism but to Jewish ultra- Orthodoxy.

Zionist tourists seldom get there, but should they stray from their usual paths
between the Wall, David's Citadel, the Israel Museum, Yad Vashem and the Rehov
Ben- Yehuda pedestrian mall to unsung neighborhoods like Mattersdorf, Romema,
Tel Arza, Shmuel Hanavi, Ramat Shlomo and Ramot, to mention but a few of them,
they will get a visual impression of the ultra-Orthodox urban sprawl and
demographic explosion that increasingly dominates Jerusalem.

The numbers are staggering.

According to the Jerusalem metro weekly Kol Ha'ir, the combined overall number
of secular and modern Orthodox pupils is declining annually by at least 300, and
this decade alone plunged from nearly 30,000 to just over 25,000. The student
body of the Gymnasia Rehavia high school, once the wellspring of Israel's elite,
has dwindled since 2000 from nearly 1,300 to fewer than 900. In Ramot, three of
four secular elementary schools have shut down, and the sole surviving one may
have to fold as well due to its borderline student body of 200 - a fifth of its
original enrollment. Meanwhile, the ultra-Orthodox schools are brimming with
kids, many of whom are often stuffed into makeshift cabins, basements and
caravans.

In all, ultra-Orthodox schools already serve more than 40 percent of Jerusalem's
students. Add to that the Arabs' 28%, and you get a Zion that is fast losing
touch with Zionism.

One can, of course, attribute all this to social processes that happen "by
themselves." That would be conniving. The municipality is ruled by United Torah
Judaism and Shas, and they manipulate the budgets according to their sectarian
priorities, say secular and modern Orthodox school principals who have recently
resigned in exasperation. This ultra-Orthodox municipal administration has an
aim, to de-modernize Jerusalem, and if the rest of us don't do something soon,
they will achieve their aim.

NOW SOME will find this kind of alarmism reminiscent of the worst anti-Semitism.
Well, ha; let ultra-Orthodoxy thrive and proliferate, provided it sends its boys
to the army, its girls to National Service and its young adults to universities,
so they can make the most of themselves and help build this country and keep it
going. For now, as the ultra-Orthodox generally refrain from doing all this,
they are not only in no moral position to shape a swathe of the public domain,
they have no idea how to do that.

As any accidental tourist can tell, the current management has turned the
capital into a hick town, a dump and a mess. Five years ago ultra-Orthodoxy won
its first- ever chance to do something other than milk the budget for its narrow
interests, a chance to shape a major part of the national arena, to display
vision, administration and magnanimity.

It failed the test. Jerusalem is visibly filthy; many places actually stink; the
city's commercial base is a laughingstock, its historic sites are falling into
disrepair. The light-railway project, with its scandalously missed deadlines,
miscalculated costs and endless paralysis of the downtown area, is a monument to
ultra-Orthodox politicians' cluelessness when expected to rise above the ghetto
walls and act nationally, if even merely in the sense of carrying out other
people's vision and financing, which is what this project has been about.

WHAT, THEN, can the Diaspora do in the face of all this?

Simple: Invest in Jerusalem's modernity, tolerance and pluralism. Every penny a
Jew from New York, London, Toronto or Melbourne these days puts in a
Jerusalem-based start-up, museum, park, theater, conservatory, university,
library or modern synagogue will help restore Zion to Zionism.

True, there would be in such a crusading spirit an element of foreign
interference in Israel's domestic affairs, but ultra-Orthodoxy is itself a
citizenry that is encouraged to take more than it gives; it is therefore in no
position to speak in the name of civic fairness. The fact is it is disgracing
Jerusalem and undermining the Zionist enterprise.

It's time Zionism responded in kind, deploying any Jew for whom keeping
Jerusalem Zionist is no less important than keeping it Jewish.

www.MiddleIsrael.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Tooting the horn. Zionism is losing Zion. (Credit: Ariel
Jerozolimski)

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743 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 5, 2008 Friday

Lame duck legacies

BYLINE: NAOMI CHAZAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 1074 words

HIGHLIGHT: Critical Currents

Ehud Olmert's days in office are numbered. He is now engaged in a last-ditch
effort to rescue his place in the country's annals by mitigating the inheritance
of corruption, violence and despondency he leaves behind. He is fully aware that
the key to his historical redemption lies in paving the way for resolving the
Israeli- Palestinian conflict. This is why the prime minister is devoting all
his remaining energies to concluding an agreement on the principles of a
permanent settlement with his counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas. But if he really wants
to leave a lasting imprint in this most important of tasks, he should direct as
much, if not more, of his attention elsewhere - to creating the conditions that
will make the implementation of any accord possible.

Olmert's last diplomatic surge consists of a series of proposals to contend with
some of the knottiest items on the Israeli-Palestinian agenda. A Palestinian
state, according to the scant reports that have reached the public, will be
created in the bulk of the area occupied in 1967. Any adjustments made for the
incorporation of settlements beyond the Green Line will be compensated by land
swaps on a one-to-one basis. Some Palestinian refugees will be allowed to return
to their homes in Israel on a humanitarian basis. There is nothing much new in
these formulations, which follow the guidelines established in the Clinton
proposals, the Taba talks and the Geneva initiative, except for their official
affirmation.

THE SAME cannot be said for the ideas raised about the future of Jerusalem. Here
Ehud Olmert has gone farther than his predecessors, suggesting that the creation
of two capitals for two states in the city must be accompanied by international
involvement in the governance of the Holy Basin, which incorporates the major
Muslim, Jewish and Christian sites in the heart of the Old City. This proposal
extends beyond the conventional toolbox developed in recent years: It offers a
vision of a universally shared core city enveloped by the capitals of Israel and
Palestine.

This 21st-century version of an internationalized Jerusalem first conceived in
the 1947 partition plan may help to defuse the emotions that have prevented
progress on this question. It may also be a harbinger of more innovative ideas
on other outstanding issues, such as settlements and security, which are
currently being ironed out.

Israeli reactions to these suggestions have focused less on their substance than
on the prime minister's right to even raise them, given his terminal political
status. Those arguing that he has no legitimacy to strike a deal, even if only
in principle, miss the point. Olmert has more leeway now than any of his
predecessors: His situation is not comparable to that of Ehud Barak on the eve
of the 2001 special elections, when he dispatched negotiators to Taba to
conclude a deal that might tip their outcome. Since the prime minister knows
full well that he will not have to follow up on the results of any agreement, he
can let himself take the kind of bold initiatives that other Israeli leaders
have been afraid to even contemplate. The expanded range of possible solutions
he now offers sets a precedent which will then provide the starting point for
future talks.

The operative question, therefore, is whether these proposals go far enough. It
is not clear that the approach to the refugee problem also includes the
assumption of at least some Israeli responsibility for its creation - an
essential precondition for any understanding on this most sensitive of topics.
There is tremendous ambiguity regarding the treatment of the settlements and the
degree to which various possibilities for their evacuation and dismantlement are
being explored. The extent of the commitment to the termination of the
occupation in all its forms is yet to be determined. And the precise placement
of such an Israeli-Palestinian agreement within the framework of the Arab peace
initiative remains unknown.

WHAT IS readily apparent to all is that Olmert has neither the breathing space
nor the authority to reach a full-scale agreement. However much substantive
weight his suggestions might carry, they will result in naught as long as the
climate for negotiations is not substantially improved. If the judgment of
history is still on his mind, Olmert might do well to consider using his waning
days in office to rectify some of the glaring asymmetries that have prevented
any lasting agreement in the past.

As an avowedly lame duck prime minister, he still has the power to announce the
necessity for a full freeze on construction in the settlements. Their continued
expansion is the most immediate obstacle to any accord. He can also call for a
halt to the completion of the separation wall - a concrete indication that the
security barrier cannot serve as a lasting political boundary.

Olmert may yet have the time to take some additional steps. By declaring his
support for lifting the siege on Gaza, he can lay the groundwork not only for
the alleviation of the ongoing humanitarian crisis, but also for the necessary
linkage of the two parts of the future Palestinian state. Such a move, more than
anything else, would seriously undermine the appeal of Hamas extremism and
revive at least some confidence in the diplomatic process.

Above all, Olmert could do something about resurrecting the human foundations
for peace which have been so systematically undermined in recent years. The
relationship between Israelis and Palestinians is in a state of almost total
disrepair. Fear has bred mutual acrimony and despondency. Separation has
exacerbated animosities and increased anxieties. Most Israelis and Palestinians
may want an end to the conflict, but don't believe that it can happen. Except on
the official level, there are virtually no possibilities for any contact, let
alone interchange. Encouraging connections among people and facilitating
movement both within the Palestinian territories and between Israelis and
Palestinians can go a long way toward restoring some hope that an agreement is
possible.

Ehud Olmert might yet leave a positive mark. But if he wants to do so, he should
concentrate less on achieving agreement on substance and more on leveling the
playing fields, so that any future talks would not be stymied once again by the
impossible constraints imposed by the asymmetries of power and control. If he
succeeds, he would, indeed, leave a lasting legacy.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Jaffa Gate. Is Olmert offering a vision of a universally shared
core city enveloped by the capitals of Israel and Palestine? (Credit: Ariel
Jerozolimski)

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Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
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744 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 5, 2008 Friday

Barren ground

BYLINE: Samuel G. Freedman

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 996 words

HIGHLIGHT: In the Diaspora

Twice during the past six months, I've traveled to the Lower Ninth Ward of New
Orleans, the neighborhood infamously ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. As a New
Yorker, I have reason to pass within sight of Ground Zero, site of the former
World Trade Center, at least every few weeks.

These incidental pilgrimages have taken on extra meaning for me lately, during
the two-week period that includes the anniversaries of both Katrina's landfall
on August 29, 2005, and the Al Qaeda terror attacks on September 11, 2001. And
in ruminating on those dates and these places, it is impossible not to feel
disappointed, even disgusted, by my country.

These sensations hit me in an especially heightened way in the aftermath of a
recent visit to Israel, where for whatever else ails the nation and the body
politic, it seems at least to my visitor's eyes to have succeeded in exactly the
ways American has so vividly failed in the Lower Ninth and at Ground Zero - in
memory, in reconstruction.

Any sensate American exhaled with relief earlier this week when Hurricane Gustav
battered at New Orleans without managing to breach the levees as Katrina so
catastrophically did. The near-miss, however, should not become the occasion for
any broader sort of national self- congratulation.

THE SITUATION in the Lower Ninth makes for a continuing indictment of the Bush
Administration as well as the incompetent Democrats in the local and state
governments of New Orleans and Louisiana. Had the levee broken again this week,
the second-biggest scandal would have been how little there was in the Lower
Ninth to destroy.

You can drive block after block through the Lower Ninth, as I did in both March
and July, and find only isolated homes rebuilt. The electric grid covers only a
sliver of the neighborhood. Where there once stood a working-class neighborhood
- despite the conventional portrayal of it as impoverished, the Lower Ninth had
a high rate of home ownership - the marsh grass and saplings rise shoulder-high
and wetlands rats called nutria roam the landscape.

Every one of those reconstructed homes in the Lower Ninth represents both a
triumph and a condemnation - a triumph for the resourceful owners and numerous
volunteers who did the work and a condemnation for all the layers of government
slow or unwilling to make the revival of the neighborhood anything remotely like
a priority. If you want to understand the built-in limits of even the most
noble, idealistic sort of voluntarism, look around New Orleans at all the kids
from colleges, churches, and synagogues in their matching shirts from this or
that disaster-relief group - look at all that sincere compassion - and then
count up the number of houses it has managed to erect.

Wandering the overgrown desolation of the Lower Ninth makes me think of the
development towns - drab yes, but inhabitable - that a young, poor Israel
created for hundreds of thousands of refugees. The mighty, wealthy United States
could have learned from the example. At my most cynical times, I'm tempted to
suggest that we solve two problems in one fell swoop by sending all the hilltop
youth from Samaria to the Lower Ninth and telling them the government has
expressly forbidden any settlements from being built there. In no time at all,
there'd be caravans linked up to power lines.

A DIFFERENT Israeli point of reference comes to mind in considering Ground Zero.
An American friend of mine visited Jerusalem soon after the September 11 attacks
and was walking with an Israeli companion past the Sbarro restaurant that had
been devastated by a suicide bomber. The Israeli pointed out that within weeks
of the bombing, the restaurant had been fixed up and reopened, which of course
is the Israeli norm. As for the World Trade Center, the Israeli told my friend,
"You should build it back up to the sky. You can't let them win."

Well, as the seventh anniversary of September 11 nears, the construction of the
so-called Freedom Tower has made it about 25 feet above ground level. A leading
official of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the public body
responsible for the site, has cast doubt on the proposed completion date of
2011, leading to speculation that 2013 might be more plausible.

There are plenty of logical reasons for the slow pace - the legal struggle
involving the Twin Towers' developer, Larry Silverstein, and insurance
companies; the competition among architects for a Freedom Tower design; the
competing interests of survivors for a memorial to their martyred relatives and
other stakeholders for a viable assemblage of commercial real estate.

Still, only a certain failure of will and a certain psychic exhaustion can round
out the explanation for the tardy, tedious effort at rebuilding. I sometimes
wonder if New York, and more broadly the nation, spent all its emotional and
physical energy in the first months after the attack. Rather than trauma leading
to paralysis, the shock inspired the most exemplary acts of selflessness - the
search for survivors at Ground Zero, particularly by New York's firefighters;
the treacherous "unbuilding" of the ruins, as recounted memorably in magazine
articles and a book by William Langewiesche; the impromptu memorials of candles,
flowers, and homemade "Missing" posters; the wrenching yet consoling art made by
Bruce Springsteen on his album The Rising and Anne Nelson in her play The Guys.

Year after year, the commemoration of September 11 has diminished and turned
more rote. The date itself has been reduced to the cold, impersonal cliche 9/11.
The tragedy has become merely a campaign symbol. The sluggish pace at Ground
Zero, so little to show after seven years, has indeed, as my friend's Israeli
comrade worried, given a kind of victory to Al Qaeda.

There are houses in the Lower Ninth. There are construction crews and equipment
at Ground Zero. But in a deeper way, each of these places, which should be
consecrated ground, remains inexcusably barren.

www.samuelfreedman.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Handmade street signs in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans
photographed a year after Hurricane Katrina. (Credit: Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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745 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 5, 2008 Friday

Getting to know you

BYLINE: JONATHAN ROSENBLUM

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1097 words

HIGHLIGHT: Think Again

The first shofar blasts of Elul have sounded. Those blasts are associated with
fear: "Can the shofar sound in the city and the people not tremble?" (Amos 3:6).
That fear, however, is not the helpless, numbing terror felt by those waiting
for a hurricane to hit or a missile to fall. Rather it is the high tension felt
by soldiers going into battle or athletes before a major competition. The
tension comes from knowing that a great deal is at stake, and that one will
either rise to the challenge or fail.

That is why Maimonides, in his code, associates the shofar blasts of Elul with
awakening from our slumber. If we pay attention to blasts, Elul becomes a time
of exhilaration, of rejoicing in trembling, as we recognize the opportunity that
lies before us, the chance to make a fresh start of our lives.

Our sages identified a number of verses in which the first letters of four
consecutive words spell out E-L-U-L. The best known, of course, is the verse:
"Ani l'dodi v'dodi li - I am to my beloved and my beloved is to me." Repentance
starts with taking careful stock of ourself, our "ani - I." Another acronym for
Elul is formed of the words: "Ish lereieihu umatanot l'evyonim - Each person to
another and gifts to the poor" (Esther 9:22). Our preparation for the new year
must come in the form of a reexamination of our relationship to our fellow Jews
and recognition of our essential interrelationship.

On that note, let's consider what secular and haredi Jews think they know about
one another.

RECENTLY, AN advertisement appeared in the two largest haredi daily newspapers,
seeking men at least 35 years old, with a broad knowledge of Talmud, Halacha and
aggada, who also have experience giving classes to audiences from varying
backgrounds. Applicants were informed that they must be prepared to live in
completely nonreligious urban neighborhoods.

Within a day, over 200 had faxed resumes.

Now, anyone reading the local press over the last year might have concluded that
the most important issue for the haredi community is sexually separate buses.
But then how to explain all those haredim eager to make their homes in
neighborhoods which no separate bus will ever reach and where the women will not
exactly be conforming to the dress codes of Mea She'arim, even if they seek to
dress respectfully?

Maybe those who responded represent some modernizing trend within the haredi
community. Not likely. First, that group would not be reading Yated Ne'eman or
Hamodia. Second, the large majority of those who responded already had positions
within the haredi community, as heads of kollelim or teachers in yeshivot. Many
of them had written religious books. In short, they were from the very elite of
the community.

How, then, do we explain the apparent contradiction between the response to the
ad and the publicity given the issue of separate buses? The answer, I think, is
that there are two opposing trends within the haredi world. On the one hand,
there are those whose entire focus is on protecting the "purity of the camp" and
erecting as many barriers to the outside world as possible.

Then there are those whose primary concern is with sharing their own joy in
Torah life and study with the broader Jewish society. The latter also feel the
need to protect themselves and their children from alien influences. They do not
believe religious observance is a lifestyle choice or imagine that there is no
tension between contemporary secular culture and Torah values.

I ASSUME that nearly all of those who responded to the ad have kosher
cellphones, and that most do not have Internet access in their homes, or if they
do, the computer is always in a public place and guarded by the highest level of
filters available from Internet Rimon.

But the latter group is not content to be purely defensive. Its members also
want to do something positive with their lives, and for them that means
primarily sharing Torah with their fellow Jews. (My own guess is the second
approach is likely to be more successful, even in terms of protecting haredi
youth. If one adopts a purely defensive posture, one is likely to eventually end
up knocked out, like Floyd Patterson against Sonny Liston. But if one is filled
with enthusiasm for sharing Torah, the operative principle is one borrowed from
the laws of kashrut - that which gives off does not absorb.)

The two "camps" are, of course, archetypes. There may be many haredim who do not
fit neatly into either - those who are neither exercised about separate buses
nor eager to do kiruv work. And there are others who have one foot in both. But
my sense is that those who are more concerned with outreach constitute the
silent majority of the haredi community.

Ayelet Hashahar, the organization that published the advertisement, has placed
individual couples on more than 50 secular kibbutzim and moshavim in recent
years. The same organization currently sponsors 7,000 telephone study
partnerships between haredi and secular Jews weekly, and is offering special
partners before the Days of Awe for secular Jews who would like to familiarize
themselves with the mahzor (www.B-2.co.il). Nearly 2,000 kollel students, under
the banner of Lev L'Achim, go out weekly to learn with secular Israelis.

HOPEFULLY, I have succeeded in providing a more nuanced view of the haredi world
for at least some readers. But I don't want to suggest that misconceptions run
only one way.

My family just returned from a short trip to the North. Along the way, due to a
variety of car problems, we had to rely on the kindness of numerous strangers.
As we searched for a garage in Beit She'an, something about my accent or facial
expression must have aroused the pity of the young woman we stopped to ask for
directions, and she told us to follow her for more than a mile. At the garage,
the owner put our car up on a lift and spent 15 minutes rigging up the exhaust
so it would not continue dragging along the ground. He refused to accept
payment, despite all my entreaties and even though he had saved us from a very
costly repair.

On the way back, our car died at a nature reserve. When I asked the shirtless
fellow, with a small tattoo, next to us, if he had jumper cables, he replied
affirmatively and gladly spent the next 20 minutes in a futile attempt to revive
our car.

I cannot say that these encounters with these non- haredim shocked me. Many of
the nicest and most generous people I have known were not religious. But they
did cheer me immensely and put me in the proper frame of mind for the work of
Elul - rediscovering my connection to all my fellow Jews.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Playing ball in Jerusalem's Gan Sacher. Elul is the time to
reconnect to all our fellow Jews. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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September 5, 2008 Friday

A stinky, nasty red herring

BYLINE: SARAH HONIG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 1232 words

HIGHLIGHT: Another Tack

In 18th-century Britain, it was customary to tie a string around a smoked fish -
which in the curing process turned red in color and pungent in odor - and drag
it through the woods to train hunting dogs to follow a trail. At a later stage,
the red herring was used to deliberately confuse the hounds to test their
ability to stick to their prey's scent or to prolong the foxhunt.

Poachers promptly introduced their own adaptation - exploiting the fishy ploy to
send canines in the wrong direction so the outlaws could purloin the game. It
didn't take long before fugitives from justice rubbed red herrings across their
path to throw tracker dogs off. In the 1920s, the red herring became synonymous
in American investment banking with a rosy business prospectus published with
obvious intent to defraud.

In 21st-century Israel, an assemblage of political fugitives from the voters'
verdict uses the same reeking distraction to prolong their stints in office, to
confound the pursuing electorate and to dupe the dupable with a new rosy
promotion called the Kadima leadership primary.

THAT UBER-HYPED primary is nothing but a red herring - of the biggest, ugliest,
foulest variety - even though it's being calculatingly misrepresented as the
harbinger of a new pretty, fragrant, hopeful dawn.

To hear its sponsors, the Kadima primary will bring the country a new premier -
sans bothersome elections. Kadima's alternative pick will offer us all a
blemishless fresh beginning, a bright promise, cleansed of Ehud Olmert's odium.
How appealing and persuasive. Almost like the dodgy prospectus. And just as
dishonest.

Copywriters for Kadima's pro-primary PR proliferate. They include all those
among Olmert's underlings who now seek to sack and succeed him, all the Kadima
flunkies whose reelection chances are nil, Laborite accomplices leery of early
elections and media omniscients, who had wholeheartedly enlisted in the mission
to prevent a Bibi comeback and who have made it their holy crusade. Our
supercilious scribblers and voluble talking heads have, with unswerving
alacrity, consistently boosted any anti- Likud candidate - be he Peres, Barak,
Mitzna, Sharon or Olmert.

In the imagery of the Left's darling commentator Amnon Abramowitz, the
previously vilified Sharon was protected by members of the press "like a
precious etrog" (Succot citron) so long as he promised to implement their agenda
in direct contravention of the platform on which he ran. Journalist-turned-Labor
MK Shelly Yacimovich confessed: "All of us in the media wanted Bibi to lose."

Most media trendsetters still avidly do, regardless of their professed loathing
for Olmert and regardless of what they really think of his Kadima coterie.
That's why they extol Kadima's election-postponing primary. Some things are more
important than the truth.

CONSIDERING THE flagrant penchant for corruption demonstrated by Kadima's
hotshots, along with their administration's colossal failures in every
conceivable sphere - from the Second Lebanon War, the shameful capitulation to
Hizbullah and Hamas, the rescuing of Syria from imposed isolation and all the
way to the looming water shortage and higher education crises - any alternative
to quick new elections is unscrupulous. Any scheme to bypass public opinion and
crown another Kadima luminary in place of Olmert is unconscionable.

Olmert didn't run on his own and he didn't personally charm us out of our minds.
He headed a partisan list, which in the words of his second-fiddle Tzipi Livni,
was "established to decontaminate Israeli politics." No less. Hence, when that
party's tenure goes so disastrously and undeniably awry, the consequences cannot
merely be borne by the headliner. The party which fielded Olmert, supported him
and acquiesced to his most bungling decisions cannot wash itself of him and
expect to avoid the citizenry's judgment by propping one of his sunshine
sidekicks in his stead.

That would be the ultimate red herring, drawn under our noses to keep us from
smelling Kadima's collective repulsiveness and to keep Olmert's understudies
from assuming the penalties of collective responsibility for the faults of a
government in which they served and continue serving. The Winograd Committee
concluded in no uncertain terms that "the entire government failed in conducting
the Second Lebanon War."

Those who carelessly nodded their consent during that fumbled war and throughout
Olmert's term cannot self- righteously and retroactively perfume themselves and
pretend to have been entirely removed from its intense stench. Livni, Shaul
Mofaz and fellow Kadima opportunists cannot protest their innocence after having
blithely cheated those who voted for an unequivocally hawkish Likud in 2003 but
were soon forced to watch helplessly as the proto-Kadima crew adopted the very
defeatist policies which the electorate decisively thrashed at the polls.

Thereafter Livni et al. pooh-poohed (contrary to their own explicit
undertakings) the Likud referendum's unambiguous anti-disengagement result.
Livni & Co. cheered disengagement in obedient unison and now claim to still not
discern any link between what they unethically wrought and the
post-disengagement emergence of Hamastan, with its attendant rocket barrages
from Gaza. The Left applauds them. My colleague Larry Derfner portrays Livni as
"the one great white hope remaining for the Left" as "she would fit comfortably
in the ranks of Peace Now."

Moreover, Livni uttered not a peep of protest when Ariel Sharon's electioneering
scam was exposed by the state comptroller. Sharon's Greek island scandal and
Cyril Kern imbroglio didn't perturb her. It may now belatedly prove expedient to
ditch Olmert, but Kadima ranks also sported other defendants - Haim Ramon,
Avraham Hirchson, Tzahi Hanegbi, Ruhama Avraham-Balila and Eli Aflalo. The
latter two prodigies have just been rewarded for their factional loyalty and
were both upgraded to lucrative cabinet posts with no dissent from Kadima's
would-be new leaders. Yet Olmert's wannabe substitutes claim not to sniff
anything faintly fetid about their own role.

BOTTOM LINE: Political hygiene would hardly improve by the triumph of any of the
much-touted Kadima primary contenders. They may claim to tread virtuously on the
moral high ground but they all - and their Labor enabler Ehud Barak - know full
well that all their primary is meant to secure is a replacement for Olmert
without regard to public opinion. Their unadmitted aim is to shun elections and
preempt a Netanyahu victory. That dishonorable end justifies all dishonorable
means.

The subtext is that elections are bad for democracy and that evading them is the
paramount democratic objective.

Israel's severely desensitized public, of course, isn't supposed to figure that
out. Susceptible Israelis have long been brainwashed to perceive primaries as
the essence of democracy, so who'd guess that a primary would be premeditated
expressly to thwart the fundamental democratic process? Who'd suspect it of
being the proverbial red herring?

But that's the nature of the smelly decoy - to divert attention from what really
matters. In our specific current case it is that the country's most incompetent
government ever mustn't be allowed to survive by sprouting a new head. It must
return its mandate forthwith to the people and let them cast their ballots. Any
other subterfuge is a stinky, nasty red herring.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Contenders Shaul Mofaz and Tzipi Livni. Do Kadima leaders
believe that elections are bad for democracy? (Credit: Bloomberg)

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The Jerusalem Post

September 4, 2008 Thursday

Assad's charm offensive

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 736 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Something is afoot in Syria, though to judge its significance is a matter of no
small complexity. Yesterday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in
Damascus on the first visit by a Western leader to Syria since the murder of
former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. He is joined there
today by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Qatari Emir Hamad bin
Khalifa for a summit meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Sarkozy's visit comes on the heels of Damascus's declared intention to open an
embassy in Beirut for the first time, thereby recognizing Lebanon as something
other than Greater Syria. The summit also comes after news that another round of
indirect talks between Israel and Syria is set to begin on Sunday.

In an interview on Tuesday with France-3 television, meanwhile, Assad declared
that the indirect negotiations with Israel have brought "the possibility of
peace," although the two countries still have quite a way to go toward that
goal. "Today, we can only say that we have opened the door to peace," he said.

IT IS IN Israel's long-term interest to have a peace treaty with Syria - but not
at any price. The extent of any withdrawal must parallel the depth of the peace
offered.

Yet we can't help but ponder why Assad's rhetoric veers so unsteadily between
belligerence and conciliation.

Israel must be clear-eyed, first of all, on the nature of the Syrian regime,
which happens to be engaged in brisk military build-up and procurement.
According to Military Intelligence's head of research, Brig.- Gen. Yossi
Baidatz, as of June 2007, Syria was "accelerating military acquisition." In late
2006, the US State Department's assistant secretary for International Security
and Nonproliferation, John C. Rood, testified that Syria was engaged in research
and development for an offensive biological warfare program.

Damascus is also a long-standing state sponsor of terrorism, hosting Hamas and
other extremist Palestinian organizations. It has not only shipped Iranian
weapons to Hizbullah but also supplied it with Russian-made military equipment
such as the Kornet anti-tank missile and its own 220mm anti-personnel rockets.
Syria has also played a key role as the source of foreign fighters and
insurgents infiltrating Iraq.

Although a Kuwaiti newspaper reported this week that Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal
had left Damascus for Sudan because of Syria's interest in moving along the
diplomatic talks with Israel, Jerusalem officials have challenged the claim.

If Assad is making conciliatory sounds now, therefore, perhaps it's not because
he has abandoned a belligerent posture, but because it serves his interests and
deflects pressure. This, indeed, is a long-established pattern.

In 2004, after the UN passed Security Council Resolution 1559 calling for Syrian
departure from Lebanon, the Damascus leadership mentioned the possibility of
negotiations with Israel. The next year, just after the Hariri assassination, as
the US and France, among others, severed diplomatic ties with Damascus, Assad
once again brought up peace with Israel.

Now Assad is once more under intense pressure. Some of it is economic, stemming
from a growing fiscal deficit, rising food prices and the ongoing depletion of
oil reserves. In April, budgetary problems forced the country to end its
traditional gasoline subsidies.

Some of the pressure on Assad comes from human rights groups appalled by the
increased repression in Syria. Twelve activists, including Riad Seif, a former
member of parliament, are currently on trial for attending a meeting of
opposition groups last December. An independent press remains nonexistent.

Most significant of all, however, are the increased political pressures on
Syria's Alawite ruling clique. After suffering the great embarrassments of
Israel's bombing of an alleged North Korean-supplied nuclear facility in
September 2007 and the assassination - five months later, and still unexplained
- in Damascus of Hizbullah operations chief Imad Mughniyeh, Assad's regime now
fears the international tribunal tasked with prosecuting Hariri's murderers.

Could it be that Assad is once again dangling the possibility of peace with
Israel as a way to renew contacts with Washington and Paris and end his
international isolation?

Then again, he may be sincere. If so, he should come to Jerusalem, or invite our
premier to Damascus, and lay out his peace vision.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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September 4, 2008 Thursday

Iran may be bombastic, but Pakistan has the Bomb

BYLINE: DOUGLAS M. BLOOMFIELD

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 834 words

HIGHLIGHT: Washington Watch

If you think Iran is scary, just consider what would happen if Islamic
extremists took over Pakistan. It's a very real possibility in that increasing
worrisome country that helped spawn to the Taliban, and which Foreign Policy
magazine has called "the country most likely to transfer nuclear technology to
terrorists." That is the conclusion of 69 of 100 national security experts
surveyed for the publication's "Terrorism Index 2008." More than half responded
that Pakistan is "most likely to serve as al- Qaida's next home base."

"We're all really worried that a radical theocracy like Iran will get the bomb,
but what if the bomb gets a radical theocracy?" asked a Washington defense
analyst speaking on background.

Iran may be getting all the attention from Israel and the United States, but
shaky Pakistan is the only Islamic nuclear power.

Iran may boast of great strides in its pursuit of nuclear, missile and satellite
technology, but analysts say its progress is no match for its overblown
rhetoric.

BUT PAKISTAN doesn't need to boast. It already has a stockpile estimated at 60
or more nuclear warheads and North Korean ballistic missiles and US-made F-16s
to deliver them; target one is India, but in the hands of an extremist Islamist
regime that could easily shift to Israel.

Washington has reportedly spent more than $100 million to help secure Pakistan's
nuclear arsenal, although it does not even know its size or location.

Pakistan is a failed nation state. It has an unstable government on the verge of
collapse, a tenuous flirtation with democracy, a coup-inclined military with
ties to the Taliban, and an upcoming presidential election in which the
front-runner's lawyers contend he suffers from dementia and depression. It also
has sold nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Growing Islamization of state institutions and policies, notably the schools, is
legitimizing religious extremism. Many Taliban trace their roots to Pakistani
madrassas.

MOST IMPORTANT, Pakistan's porous border with Afghanistan is a sanctuary and
training ground for the Taliban resurgence and al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden is
believed to be holed up in those areas which are more hospitable to the Islamic
extremists than the Pakistani government and army, which has been unable or
unwilling to do much about it.

In fact, Western experts believe elements of Pakistan's military and its
powerful intelligence service, ISI, are working with the Taliban. The new army
leader, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, recently stepped down as head of the agency.

Pakistan, said the defense analyst, is "the scariest place on Earth." It could
splinter if powerful ethnic groups like the Pashtun and the Baluch seek to break
away and form their own states. Or there could be yet another military coup,
this time led by the ISI elements close to the Taliban.

Hamid Karzai, the pro-US president of Afghanistan, has accused Pakistan of
giving the Taliban sanctuary and bases to attack his country, and ISI has been
accused of being behind attempts on his life.

A recent Council on Foreign Relations report said ISI is believed to have links
to terrorist groups in several countries, including England, India, Afghanistan
and Iraq.

ISI-Taliban cooperation goes back nearly 30 years, and many of its agents "have
ethnic and cultural ties to Afghan insurgents and naturally sympathize with
them," according to Frederic Grare of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace.

Author Steve Coll, an expert on the Taliban, has called it "an asset of the ISI"
and "a proxy force, a client of the Pakistan army." The Pentagon sees the
deteriorating situation in Pakistan as increasingly dangerous. The chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, flew out to the Indian Ocean last
week to convene a highly unusual secret meeting of senior American and Pakistani
commanders aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.

His message: You've got to do more to combat the militants who have found
sanctuary in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan and are responsible
for the rising number of US and NATO casualties. He wants Pakistan to allow US
Special Operations forces to operate more freely in those areas.

THERE ARE serious questions as to which side the Pakistani military and ISI are
really on. US President George W. Bush has reportedly complained that some ISI
elements are leaking US intelligence information to the Taliban and aiding
militants' attacks on US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

A coup led by pro-Taliban elements would put that country's nuclear arsenal in
the hands of some of the world's most dangerous Islamic extremists.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid writes that "Islamic extremism is gaining
strength" in his country, and warns that the army may insist that a pro-Taliban
Islamic party, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, be part of any future government.

Pakistan may be the greatest challenge awaiting the next president of the United
States, but so far it has been getting scant attention in either campaign.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: PAKISTANI SHI'ITE students demonstrate in Islambad against the
killing of Shi'ites in sectarian violence. The growing Islamization of state
institutions is legitimizing religious extremism. (Credit: AP)

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September 4, 2008 Thursday

Letters

BYLINE: Mottle Goodbaum. Yael Cohen, Miriam L. Gavarin, Tom Walters, Gershon
Harris, Trudy Gefen, Yisrael Guttman

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1185 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Banks' shame

Sir, - Today I downloaded the August statement from my bank. Imagine my surprise
to find that instead of the five bank charges normally on my account, there was
only one. Surprise turned to shock, however, when I saw that the one charge had
increased more than 100 percent over the total of the five.

Is this what Bank Supervisor Rony Hizkiyahu had in mind when he asked for bank
fee reform? Does anyone in government care that we seniors, and the rest of the
public, are getting ripped off?

I'm afraid it's just another example of our sick government's inability to
protect its citizens from exploitation by a powerful cartel ("Banks took
advantage of the reform" September 1, and "Greed you can bank on," Editorial,
August 21).

MOTTLE GOODBAUM

Jerusalem

Traditional cures

for an 'old dog'

Sir, - A few weeks ago my daughter lost a fellow soldier from the Golani
Brigade. No, not in battle - unless it was the drivers' war on Israel's streets,
the weapon of choice being the car.

A country gone wild on its roads needs the reins pulled in on it. How? It could
be done quite simply, immediately and even cost-effectively.

A minimum of 5,000 additional traffic police need to be hired from all across
the country. High penalties set for driving infractions would both offset the
expense of their salaries and serve as punishment. When people's pockets are
touched, they feel it.

Those who perpetrate the most severe infractions need two additional
punishments: confiscation of their driver's license - an ankle-bracelet would
ensure they don't sneak back behind the wheel - and a six-month volunteer stint
at a rehab facility.

The adage says you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Nonsense. Israelis'
old-dog behavior on the roads will respond to the old technique of stimulus and
response. Each time they step on the pedal in an irresponsible and murderous
way, they will receive a response that hurts.

What Israel needs are real leaders willing to push forward an agenda for healthy
driving in a presently very sick environment ("Three die in road accidents,"
September 3).

YAEL COHEN

Ra'anana/Pepper Pike, Ohio

What Jewish

normalcy is

Sir, - A reading of the Al Het prayer in the Day of Atonement prayerbook will
reacquaint Hillel Halkin with the fact that we Jews - on a communal basis, so as
not to shame any one person - traditionally admit to any and every negative
human impulse ("If it can happen anywhere, it can happen here," September 3).

Reciting Al Het ( "For the sin of...") is not a means for establishing normalcy,
God forbid, but to express profound regret over any failure to curb such
impulses from translatinginto action.

In the midst of demoralizing poverty and exile, the Jews of Europe, and later
America, had a Yiddish saying: "May the Abishter (the Good Lord) protect us from
ever finding out what we can become used to" - for example, not keeping Shabbat
or kashrut, intermarriage, incest, etc. This is what exemplifies Jewish normalcy
- the resistance to becoming accustomed to ever-lowered standards, especially in
our own behavior, needing greater and greater "shocks" to show us that something
has gone very, very wrong.

The shock paradigm belongs on death row, not in an enduring community.

MIRIAM L. GAVARIN

Jerusalem

Praying for you

Sir, - My heart and prayers go out to the people in your beautiful country. The
bravery with which you awake to face each day is inspirational. We all hope to
live in peace one day, but until then our countries must stand together against
those who would deny us that peace.

I wish I could tell you of the respect many Americans feel for Israel, but the
examples would fill more space than you can give me. May God give you the
strength and resolve to win the day.

TOM WALTERS

Cocoa, Florida

'Rock, rap - gevalt!'

Sir, - Once again, self-appointed haredi crusaders are trying to "protect" their
youth from corruption ("Stop the music! Haredi functionaries move to eradicate
'foreign' pop, disco," September 3).

And again, instead of trying to deal with the fact that no community is immune
to the outside world, they are using threats and scare tactics while hiding
behind condemnations by prominent haredi rabbis.

It doesn't matter that the livelihoods of reception halls that allow a "treif"
band to perform on their premises or of budding singers who appeal to a wide
cross- section of the haredi public might be harmed. The end justifies the
means, no matter how radical or perhaps even halachically questionable.

The problem is that these tactics don't usually work in the longer term. While
TV is still effectively banned in the haredi world, other attempts to forbid
technology (computers, Internet, cell phones) have been met with "civil
disobedience" by many haredim, who simply ignore the bans, or seek "kosher"
technologies.

This haredi attempt to stifle rock and rap music in the community will also
backfire. Sooner or later, the "moral majority" will discover that all it has
accomplished is to foster more internal controversy and hate among its own
constituents.

GERSHON HARRIS

Hatzor Haglilit

Talking rot

Sir, - The "rot" Jeff Barak described was already embedded in political circles
which later became the Labor party in the 1930s, not to speak of what went on
after 1948 ("When did the rot set in?" September 1). Mr. Barak did a disservice
by firing arrows of righteous wrath primarily at the left-wing elites' bugbear,
outsider Binyamin Netanyahu.

Further research into Netanyahu's financial "success" story would have revealed
that he, unlike others mentioned in the article, did not acquire "the better
things of life" at "somebody else's expense," but on his own initiative and out
of his proclivity for hard work.

From the start, the well-educated Netanyahu rolled up his sleeves and went out
to work for his living. Netanyahu's Labor Party opponents publicly mocked him
for working for a furniture firm in Tel Aviv, on his return from the US,
implying this made him unfit to lead the country.

Netanyahu's best-seller A Place Among the Nations sold like hotcakes and surely
brought in some healthy earnings. After his defeat in 1999, he left politics to
become a popular lecturer worldwide. The lengthy police investigations into
allegations of impropriety in the "official gifts" case during his term as
premier came to naught.

Your writer might have enlightened us regarding how Ehud Barak made his
millions, and on how wealthy Shimon Peres is. Peres heads a foreign-funded peace
center whose turnover runs into the millions.

TRUDY GEFEN

Kiryat Ono

Water crisis?

Sir, - I am happy to announce that the water crisis, if it ever existed, is now
officially over - if you judge by whoever administers Jerusalem's parks.

The lawns of the promenade that overlooks the Peace Forest and the nearby park
of East Talpiot are watered every day for over an hour, except on Shabbat. Our
lawn makes do with a 45-minute watering once a week, and is still thriving.

So there you are. I really have no idea what the water people are crabbing
about. We obviously have lots of the stuff! ("Tel Aviv makes list of
water-wasting cities," August 28.)

YISRAEL GUTTMAN

Jerusalem

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September 4, 2008 Thursday

What the truce has done for Gilad Schalit

BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1052 words

HIGHLIGHT: Hamas has already received everything it most needed from Israel, so
it can afford to delay the Schalit deal to extort a higher price. Civil Fights

When Israel concluded a truce with Hamas in June, Defense Minister Ehud Barak
declared that it was primarily "for Gilad Schalit's sake." The truce, he said,
would facilitate negotiations with Hamas for the kidnapped soldier's return.
Last week, Barak continued reciting that mantra even as it collapsed around his
ears. According to media reports, Hamas has tripled its price for Schalit since
the truce began.

The London-based Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat quoted a Hamas spokesman last
weekend as saying his organization would demand "more than 1,000" prisoners in
exchange for Schalit, up from 450 previously. Last Friday's Haaretz offered a
more specific figure: It reported that when Barak visited Egypt earlier that
week, Egyptian mediators told him that Hamas is now demanding 1,500 prisoners
for Schalit.

Why have Hamas's demands suddenly ballooned? According to both Shin Bet (Israel
Security Agency) chief Yuval Diskin and the government's point man for the
negotiations, Ofer Dekel, the truce itself is the main culprit. With a
cease-fire in place, they argued at a meeting with senior cabinet ministers last
Wednesday, Hamas is no longer under any pressure to conclude an agreement: The
IDF no longer threatens its personnel, and Israel has eased its economic
blockade of Gaza, thereby alleviating a major source of discontent with Hamas
among ordinary Gazans. In short, Hamas has already received everything it most
needed from Israel, so it can afford to delay the Schalit deal to extort a
higher price.

That, of course, was eminently predictable. The rationale for the truce,
essentially, was that if we were nice to Hamas, Hamas would be nice to us - a
highly unlikely response from an organization committed to our destruction,
which therefore always has an interest in tightening the screws if it can.
Indeed, experience shows that Hamas has never made concessions voluntarily; it
has done so only in response to intense pressure. For instance, Masab Yousef,
whose father Hassan is considered Hamas's leader in the West Bank, declared in a
published interview last month that the assassinations of Hamas leaders during
the intifada are what ultimately caused it to curtail its attacks.

Despite this, no cabinet minister voted against the truce initially. And even
the new and conclusive evidence of its negative impact on the Schalit talks -
coupled with the fact that the new demands explicitly violate the truce, under
which Hamas pledged to expedite the negotiations - has not changed any minds. At
last Wednesday's meeting, Dekel and Diskin begged for renewed pressure on Hamas:
Dekel, for instance, suggested either halting fuel supplies to Gaza or closing
the border crossings. But not only did the ministers refuse, they insisted that
what was needed was more flexibility. As Barak put it: "If we demonstrate more
willingness [to make concessions], perhaps Hamas will demonstrate more
willingness."

Defense officials also fingered a secondary culprit: July's deal with Hizbullah,
in which the government exchanged child-killer Samir Kuntar and nine other
prisoners (in two stages) for two slain soldiers. When one of the most vicious
terrorists in our custody was traded for two dead bodies, they explained, that
convinced Hamas it could obtain hundreds of such killers for a living soldier.
This, too, was predictable. Yet only three ministers opposed the Hizbullah deal.

There is, admittedly, a third factor that is partly beyond the government's
control: the public and media campaign to free Schalit regardless of the price,
which has largely drowned out opposing views. As Haaretz's Sunday editorial
(falsely) put it, virtually no issue "elicits such a broad consensus as the
demand for Schalit's release at almost any price." Hamas thus believes that
whatever price it sets, Israel's media and public will force the government to
pay.

Yet even here, the government is hardly helpless. It could be using its powerful
bully pulpit to mobilize those who already realize the dangers of Hamas's
demands and to explain these dangers to the rest.

Many people do understand that trading hundreds of terrorists for Schalit would
result in dozens or even hundreds of Israeli deaths. This is not mere
speculation, but a certainty. In every previous prisoner release, according to
defense establishment estimates, roughly 50 percent of the freed prisoners have
resumed terrorist activity, with deadly consequences. Consider, for example, the
400 prisoners traded for drug dealer Elhanan Tannenbaum on January 29, 2004. The
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, citing Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee chairman Tzahi Hanegbi, says that between then and April 17, 2007,
those freed terrorists killed 35 Israelis.

If the Schalit deal were framed in that stark fashion - his freedom on Hamas's
(original) terms would cost 35 lives - most people would reject it. Yet that is
the only correct way to frame it. To do otherwise is to blur its actual cost,
and thereby prevent people from making an informed decision.

Yet no minister has even tried to make this case. Instead, they proclaim to a
man that we must accept Hamas's demands and release dozens of killers. And since
previously approved criteria forbid doing so, the cabinet even established a
special ministerial committee to revise these criteria.

The Kadima-led government has been remarkably consistent in making bad decisions
the first time around. Even more remarkable, however, is its failure to learn
from its mistakes - and this includes all four of the candidates to succeed Ehud
Olmert as premier. After air power failed to stop Hizbullah's rocket attacks
from Lebanon, our ministers relied on air power again to stop Hamas's rocket
attacks from Gaza (with equal lack of success). As the European-led force in
Lebanon openly sided with Hizbullah against Israel, our ministers continued
floating the idea of stationing international troops in the West Bank and/or
Gaza. And now that the truce has made Hamas less rather than more flexible over
Gilad Schalit, our ministers still refuse to reverse course and resume exerting
pressure on Hamas. Instead, they assert that further "gestures" to Hamas are
needed.

True, everybody makes mistakes. But people who keep repeating the same mistakes
over and over have no business running a country.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: FRIDAY'S RALLY for Gilad Schalit. Roughly 50 percent of freed
Palestinian prisoners resume terrorist activity. (Credit: Bloomberg)

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September 4, 2008 Thursday

A better way to fly safely

BYLINE: ANN GOLDBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 807 words

HIGHLIGHT: If only security personnel in airports outside Israel were as
thorough about what's really important and less nitpicky about irrelevant
things. The writer is a freelance journalist in Jerusalem.

Climbing over me, the 30-something non-Jewish looking guy settled into the seat
next to me, one of the last to board the flight out of Tel Aviv.

"Phew, those Israeli security guys sure gave me a hard time. I guess they really
know what they're doing. Shame most of the ones in other countries don't."

Not wanting to appear unfriendly, I asked him what prompted them to give him
such a rough time. It appeared that he was the Middle East representative for
his company and consequently had recently been to many Arab countries. Seeing
all those stamps in his passport had set off warning bells. They asked him the
reason for all those visits and when he replied that he was on business, the
guard looked him up and down, taking in his T-shirt, jeans and well-worn hiking
shoes and said: "You don't look like a businessman. You're not dressed like one.
Why should I believe you traveled to all the places on business?"

The man delved into his bag and produced various documents attesting to his
work. This still wasn't enough.

"So why are you dressed like this then?"

"Because I enjoy hiking and mountain climbing while I'm away and my casual gear
is more comfortable for traveling."

"Oh you like mountain climbing do you? Which mountain did you last climb? What
equipment did you use? How do you prepare for each climb?"

The detailed questions came at him thick and fast, and he had to answer each one
to the security guard's satisfaction before eventually being allowed on the
plane.

But he didn't feel picked-on just because he wasn't Jewish. He also described
how one kippa-wearing passenger had also aroused suspicion and had been asked
questions, as my traveling companion put it, regarding Jewish religious practice
- questions that only a practicing Jew would be able to answer, just to check
that the kippa was really being worn because he was Jewish and religious and
wasn't a disguise. As we all know, terrorists in the past have dressed as
religious Jews.

I JUST wish that security personnel in other airports were as thorough about
what's really important and less nitpicky about irrelevant things.

Deodorants and perfumes are now routinely removed from hand luggage; so is
toothpaste, and I watched in amazement at London's Heathrow airport when a
baby's bottles was taken out of the infant's mouth and had to be tasted by the
father (to prove that it wasn't poisonous explosives I presume) before the
parents were allowed to return it to their yelling child.

But in all these airports, no security guard seemed to really think about the
actual person standing in front of them. It wasn't suspicious people they were
looking out for but compliance with security rules and regulations. One guard I
spoke to said he wasn't allowed to single out and search or question a passenger
because he was a Muslim, even if he did feel that he looked suspicious, because
this wasn't politically correct and was offensive to all Muslims. Everyone was
subjected to equal scrutiny.

The opposite is true in Tel Aviv. Here when we lined up to be checked by
security, each one of us was looked at carefully, eye to eye. Here, unlike in
almost all other countries, it wasn't the Coca-Cola, deodorant, toothpaste, etc.
we might be carrying with us that were considered important. It was us as
individuals. There was no political correctness in the scrutiny we all received.

These guys knew what they were looking for and what bothered them. We all had to
answer questions about where we had stayed, what we had done. Even those
carrying Israeli passports aren't totally absolved. Passports can always be
forged. X-ray machines did the main luggage searching; the security personnel
had more important considerations.

Even though I'm pretty sure I look like a harmless little lady, I didn't escape
the third degree when I left recently. The security guard looked at my Israeli
passport and said, "Do you have children?"

"Yes," I replied.

"What are their names?"

I reeled them off, but of course in retrospect I realized that I could have said
anything I wanted to, as they don't appear on my passport. He just wanted to
check that I didn't hesitate or appear in any other way to be lying.

WHEN MY sister from Teaneck came to visit, looking just like your average
American Jewish mother, the El Al security officer asked her, "Are you
religious?"

"Yes"

"What shul do you belong to?"

She told him.

"What was last week's parasha?"

My sister turned red and felt very embarrassed.

"Um, I don't know. I got to shul late," she almost whispered.

But her answer was enough to satisfy him - he let her go without any more
questions.

As we taxied along the runway, I knew that despite the disgruntled remarks by
some of the passengers at the barrage of questions they were subjected to, the
more difficult it was for us all to get on the plane, the safer we all were once
we were airborne.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Ben-Gurion Airport. There was no political correctness in the
scrutiny passengers received. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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September 4, 2008 Thursday

'Prayer isn't boring, you are'

BYLINE: DAVID BENKOF

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 586 words

HIGHLIGHT: Musical pieces renew their meaningfulness as a person's life and even
his or her day develops. The siddur works the same way. Fabulously Observant.
The writer is studying for his doctorate in American Jewish history at New York
University. DavidBenkof@aol.com 'Fabulously Observant' will be a weekly column
exploring life from the perspective of an Orthodox, conservative, openly gay
American Jew in the process of making aliya.

Jews often complain that prayer is boring. Young people resist going to
synagogue - and older people drift away from prayer altogether - because they
find it to be a chore. In response to this claim, Rabbi Harold Schulweis,
perhaps the longest-tenured pulpit rabbi in California, once offered from the
pulpit an admittedly obnoxious but nonetheless brilliant retort: "Prayer isn't
boring, you are."

Of course, this aphorism by Schulweis, who has served the Conservative synagogue
Valley Beth Shalom in Encino since 1970, was not meant to insult people, nor to
turn them away from prayer. Quite the opposite. He posed a challenge for every
Jew to find himself or herself inside the siddur, which is filled with beautiful
poetry, meaningful philosophy and provocative theology.

At its best, prayer is an ongoing three-way conversation among the siddur, the
person using it and God. In Schulweis's words, "Instead of looking outside and
criticizing the relevance of a prayer - or perhaps even the process of prayer -
look inside yourself to see where you may be lacking."

INTERESTINGLY, MANY of the Jews who complain that the siddur bores them can
listen to a rock song like "American Pie" or "Hey Jude" or sing the national
anthem at the stadium dozens or even hundreds of times without ever complaining
that they're bored. Great musical compositions perpetually renew their
meaningfulness as a person's life and even his or her day develops. The siddur
works the same way. Many of us who pray on a regular basis cannot say "Baruch
she'amar v'haya ha'olam" (Blessed be He who spoke and the world came into being)
or "L'cha dodi likrat kala" (Go, my beloved, to greet the Sabbath bride) without
being a little moved each time.

I know some people in 12-step programs, and they tell me the meetings often
start with the same readings week after week. But they're rarely boring to
alcoholics and other addicts, because everyone in the room is working on his or
her own recovery. The guidelines and steps that are recited remind people of
their own addictions and compulsions, or at least those of their loved ones.

In a way, prayer is like another pillar of observant Jewish life: Shabbat. Just
as tefila involves letting one's creativity conquer one's boredom, Shabbat is
about finding creative enjoyment on a day when cellphones, iPods and DVD players
are treated as hardly more useful than paperweights.

Some people think the real problem with tefila is Hebrew, which alienates
English-speaking Jews. I disagree completely. Many if not most Israelis find
tefila to be boring, and Hebrew is their first language. In addition, services
at Reform temples in the US involve a lot of English, and many Reform teens and
adults still find prayer boring.

Yet Hebrew prayers can be moving to English speakers even if they only know the
barest details of the meaning. Often, but not always, the key is the tune. Even
so, don't let anyone tell you you must pray in Hebrew. The siddur isn't even all
in Hebrew. Important prayers like the Kaddish are in Aramaic, and in Eastern
Europe, Jewish women used to recite Yiddish prayers. So vernacular prayers have
a long history.

The answer to Schulweis's challenge is education. The more Jews learn about the
pronunciation, order and meaning of services, the more likely they are to find
significance in them. But Schulweis's point still stands - a Jew who is boring
is likely to find prayer boring. Luckily, most Jews, deep down, are not boring -
they just need to find a path to access the siddur.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: THE WRITER at prayer. An ongoing three-way conversation among
the siddur, the person using it and God?

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September 4, 2008 Thursday

Go home, Mrs. Palin

BYLINE: LARRY DERFNER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 988 words

HIGHLIGHT: Let's stop being so blindly obedient to the creed of women's
equality. Rattling the Cage

Whatever else can be said about Sarah Palin's candidacy for vice president -
which, of course, is a whole lot - it's turning out to be one hell of a lesson
on the limits of women's equality.

Don't misunderstand: I have absolutely no doubt that a woman can be just as good
a vice president of the United States as a man, and just as good a president,
too. But that's not the issue.

The issue is child-rearing. And the question is: Who is more important in that
process, the mother or the father? I say that as a rule, it's the mother. Why?
Biology. Evolution. (Or even intelligent design.) Pregnancy and childbirth just
naturally make motherhood a bigger deal than fatherhood. And after childbirth,
the maternal instinct takes care of the kid better than the paternal instinct.

I recognize these as basic facts of life. And I think just about all men and
women, whatever they might say, recognize them too.

Second question: If children, or any of a family's children, need more than the
usual amount of parental care - if they need so much that both parents really
shouldn't be working full-time - who should be the first to take time off work
or quit the job altogether, the mother or the father? As a rule, I'd say it's
the mother. By rights, she is more important to the kids than the father.

TRUE, THERE are variables to consider - whose job brings in more money, whose
job gives more personal satisfaction, whose job is more important to society.
These and other matters being equal, though, the mother should make the career
sacrifice before the father - for the sake of the kids. Also, I think, for the
sake of the natural order, which favors the man as the breadwinner and the woman
as the parent.

If you don't believe me, watch National Geographic.

Don't misunderstand: I'm not saying fathers have no responsibilities, or
negligible ones, in raising kids. I think we have huge responsibilities, and I
think we have to be fully ready to take time off work - if it's at all
financially possible - should our kids need a lot more care than usual.

And if I were Todd Palin, Sarah's husband, and I were a fishing boat operator
and she were governor of Alaska and a candidate for vice president, and one of
us had to take off some time from work because, after all, we have five kids - I
would offer to be the one (or at least I should) because her job is so much more
important and time- consuming than mine.

But it would be understood that she still has to make time to be with the
children. Governor, vice presidential candidate, she is a mother first. (And the
role of wife even ought to fit in somewhere.) Could the Palins juggle it? Could
they do justice to their five kids when the mother has such a colossal job? With
five ordinary kids, I think that in principle, it's possible.

But when the fifth child, who was born in April, has Down syndrome? Then I think
it's very, very iffy. No, actually, I think the answer is no - I don't think a
woman who's already got four kids can be governor of Alaska and be a good enough
mother to a newborn baby with Down syndrome. Either the job or the baby is going
to be suffer, and Sarah Palin, whatever her approval rating in Alaska, is
replaceable as the governor; she is not replaceable as the mother of Trig Paxson
Van Palin.

When this boy was born, she should have given up her job because it's way too
demanding. I'm not judging her as a political figure, I'm judging her decision
as a mother, and staying on as governor was the wrong decision.

Accepting John McCain's offer to run for vice president, of course, only
compounded it. She has no business running for vice president, or serving as
vice president, with an infant who has Down syndrome, plus four other kids.

AND I must admit, this never occurred to me when she surfaced as McCain's choice
and made such a splash. Hey, she's a wonder woman, she hunts, she fishes, she's
Miss Congeniality, she gives birth to a baby when she's 44 and knows he has Down
syndrome. You gotta admire her.

But now it comes out that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is five months
pregnant, and Bristol is going to marry the father of the child. No matter!
Nothing stops Sarah Palin! On to the White House! I am woman hear me roar! Oh,
please, please, enough of this farce. Let's stop being polite, stop being
politically correct, stop being so blindly obedient to the creed of women's
equality. Let's come out of this trance and say: Wait. There are limits to
women's equality.

Who's going to be with this 17-year-old girl as the baby comes due, who's going
to be with her after the baby's born? Who's going to be with the infant boy
who's got Down syndrome? Not mom. Mom's going to be flying around America
running for vice president, and then she's either going to be the vice president
or go back to being the governor of Alaska.

And while she's doing that, who the hell is supposed to play mother to those two
extraordinarily needy kids? Mr. Palin? Even if he were the best father in the
world, he'd be completely out of his depth. Even if he were married to a woman
who didn't work and could be with the kids full- time, he would still, by
rights, be thinking about whether he could take time off his job to be at home
with the family more.

But I wouldn't expect him to quit his job when he's got a wife who can quit
hers, as huge and important a job as hers may be. That's where women's equality
ends. Children need a mother and a father, but they need a mother more. (You
don't have to be an evangelical Christian, Republican, "pro-life" mother of five
to know that, but I would have thought it helps.) Sarah Palin sets an extremely
high-profile example, especially to women, and as such she should turn down the
vice presidential nomination, resign as governor of Alaska, go home and take
care of her kids. As for McCain, now would be a perfect time for him to erase
"Country First" as his campaign slogan, and make it "Family First" instead.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: GOV. SARAH Palin and family in Juneau, Alaska one year ago.
(Credit: Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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September 4, 2008 Thursday

Sarah Palin and the Jewish community

BYLINE: MARC R. STANLEY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 775 words

HIGHLIGHT: She is an exceedingly odd choice for a party which has been loudly
exclaiming that it is reaching out to Jewish voters. The writer is chairman of
the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Upon returning from the Democratic Convention in Denver we find a political
landscape that has drastically changed. In the course of just one week Sen.
Barack Obama picked Sen. Joseph Biden as his vice presidential nominee while
Sen. John McCain picked Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate. These
two picks say a great deal about the judgment of each presidential candidate and
about their understanding of the American Jewish community.

Biden, of course, was the more conventional pick - especially for the Jewish
community. The senior senator from Delaware is one of the most well-known and
respected politicians among American Jewish leadership. He may be unique for a
non-Jewish senator in that he loudly exclaims that he is a Zionist. Even his
adversaries admit that there is no more knowledgeable senator when it comes to
Middle East policy. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency describes his record on Israel
as "sterling." On domestic issues he is totally in sync with Jewish public
opinion - supporting the separation of church and state, reproductive freedom
and energy independence.

Palin is another story. She is an exceedingly odd choice for a party which has
spent the better part of the past year loudly exclaiming that it was reaching
out to Jewish voters and made much to do about considering two Jewish
legislators - Joe Lieberman and Eric Cantor - as vice presidential
possibilities.

First, Palin has absolutely no foreign policy experience - it is ironic that
McCain has spend his spring and summer telling Americans that the most important
characteristic he is looking for in a vice president is an individual who is
ready on day one to assume the presidency. Moreover, Palin has never visited
Israel and besides signing a pro-Israel resolution passed by the state
legislature, she has apparently never spoken out or focused on the Jewish state.

ON DOMESTIC issues she is totally out of step with public opinion in the Jewish
community. Palin is against reproductive freedom - even in the cases of rape and
incest - and as a result one of the first organizations to support her
nomination was the Christian Coalition.

She speaks about the effects of climate change in the Arctic, but she also is
clear that she does not believe that climate change is man-made. Another
position which American Jews will find strange is one she shares with McCain -
she believes that creationism should be taught in public schools.

The reform narrative that GOP operatives like to site when speaking of Palin
could be appealing to Jewish voters. However, Palin has a few problems here, as
well. She eventually came out against the "Bridge to Nowhere" but only after the
issue became a public embarrassment to the Republican Party and it was apparent
that federal funds would not cover the whole cost of the project. When she ran
for governor in October of 2006, she was all for spending taxpayer dollars on
this very dubious "pork." It took her another 11 months to see the light.
Moreover when she was first elected mayor of Wasilla (population 6,000) she was
severely criticized by the local paper for firing city employees because they
had supported her opponent.

Then there is the Palin troopergate scandal. On July 11, she fired the state's
top cop, Walt Monegan. Monegan says Palin fired him because he refused to fire a
state trooper who went through a messy divorce with the governor's sister. Palin
initially denied the charge but later admitted that some of her officials spoke
to Monegan about firing the trooper. Monegan claims that she herself put on the
pressure and the state legislature has begun an investigation into the charges
that the governor used the power of her office for her personal/family agenda.

FINALLY, THERE is the matter of two anti-Israel politicians - Ron Paul and Pat
Buchanan. In February Palin in an interview lavished praise on Ron Paul. There
is also a controversy over whether Palin has supported former presidential
aspirant Pat Buchanan. To be fair there is no evidence that Palin shares either
of these Republicans' anti-Israel creed. However, since the beginning of the GOP
narrative within the Jewish community is that Obama can not be trusted because
of a handful of people who have endorsed him. If this guilt by association
standard is one the McCain stands by, then they also need to deal with Palin's
past support for anti-Israel politicians.

The Jewish vote in 2008 has been a hot topic of conversation in the media. John
McCain's fist major decision of this campaign - picking Palin for his running
mate - leads us to believe that the Jewish community's concerns are not so high
on his priority list.

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September 3, 2008 Wednesday

Safe at home

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 745 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Unlike apartment buildings in New York, London or Melbourne, most homes in
Israel come equipped with bomb shelters. Newer dwellings have reinforced
concrete "safe rooms," while older buildings rely on communal shelters.

Though they are ubiquitous, Israelis seldom give shelters much thought. Maybe we
ought to - given recent statements by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that in any
future war, life will not go on as usual. The next conflagration could well
"reach the cities and homes of Israeli citizens."

Some, including former defense minister Moshe Arens, argue that such talk moves
Israel perilously close to accepting the proposition that nothing can be done to
protect the home front. In an interview with the Post, he decried what he sees
as the abandonment of Israel's long- standing determination to make the
protection of its civilian population the highest imperative.

THE HOME front first came under assault in the 1948 War of Independence, when
the Egyptian air force bombed Tel Aviv. Once the IAF came into its own, the
skies above were secured and the main threat facing civilians stemmed from
terrorism.

Israeli strategists emphasized engaging the enemy on its territory. But,
unfortunately, as the instruments of war available to our foes became more
varied, shielding the home front wasn't always possible.

In the 1991 Gulf War, 39 crude (in terms of accuracy) SCUD missiles launched by
Saddam Hussein's Iraq exploded in metropolitan Tel Aviv, causing damage but
relatively little loss of life.

In May 1982 Palestinian terrorists, who then reigned supreme in south Lebanon,
unleashed a barrage of 100 Katyushas on northern Galilee. Then, on June 3,
Israel's ambassador in Britain, Shlomo Argov, was gravely wounded in an
assassination attempt. Israel responded to these Palestinian provocations by
launching Operation Peace for Galilee, whose immediate goal was to remove the
rocket threat.

On average, two IDF soldiers lost their lives each month in the buffer zone
Israel subsequently established in south Lebanon to protect the home front. Yet
Israel's new enemy, Hizbullah, nevertheless managed - in April 1996 for example
- to send rockets our way. While Israel's tough retaliation helped deliver a
period of relative quiet to the civilian population, its stationing of troops on
Lebanese soil proved unpopular. It was also a militarily dubious approach, prime
minister Ehud Barak claimed.

Barak's abrupt pullout from Lebanon in 2000 allowed Hizbullah to set up shop
flush against the border with Israel.

During the Second Lebanon War in summer 2006, Hizbullah's onslaught of 4,000
rockets and mortars reached practically as far south as Netanya, forcing a third
of the population into shelters. Forty-three citizens were killed, including
seven children. Hundreds were wounded.

In the south, meanwhile, following Israel's 1994 post- Oslo withdrawal from
Gaza's Palestinian population centers, terrorists launched thousands of rockets
and mortars against Israeli civilians. The situation deteriorated further after
disengagement in 2005, when all Israeli citizens and soldiers pulled out of Gaza
entirely.

The temporary cease-fire now in place, episodically violated by the
Palestinians, is likely to end in grief.

The threats facing Israel's population from enemy projectiles - short- and
long-range - are daunting: Iran has recently provided Hizbullah with missiles
capable of hitting just about every part of Israel, reports say.

The strategic threats emanating from the arsenals of Iran and Syria, and the
more tactical menace posed by Hizbullah and Hamas, demand individual assessment
and appropriate counter-measures.

AS RECENTLY enunciated by Olmert, Israel's war strategy is "to bring about a
quick victory at minimum cost" without conquering enemy territory yet without
showing the kind of restraint the IDF manifested in Lebanon.

For Arens, the failure to conquer and hold enemy territory to put the guns out
of range is anathema. He would employ ground action to promptly "eliminate" the
"insufferable" threat of rockets in Gaza. He'd do the same with regard to
short-range Hizbullah rockets, employing the IAF to handle their longer-range
weaponry.

Jews did not return to Zion to sit in shelters, he says.

We urge current policymakers - whatever their chosen strategy - to discard any
approach that embraces the irresponsible proposition that Israel's population
cannot be protected. The mistakes of the Second Lebanon War must not be
repeated, on any front.

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September 3, 2008 Wednesday

How to demand fair play for Israel on campus

BYLINE: GIL TROY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1024 words

HIGHLIGHT: Center Field. The writer is professor of history at McGill University
and the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges
of Today and Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents.

Recently, a student alerted me about her instructor's biased behavior in a
course on the Middle East. She offered a subtle, detailed report demonstrating
the systemic bias students endure in so many Middle East courses. As another
school year begins, those of us concerned with combating educational malpractice
should learn about abuses occurring on so many campuses, especially - but not
solely - when teaching about Israel.

This student was no radical; she did not exaggerate. She acknowledged some
balance in the reading list, and recalled the instructor's invitation to
consider "a variety of views." Still, the student perceived the readings on
contemporary issues as biased. Not surprisingly, the course sanitized
Palestinian violence. For example, the only article regarding terrorism
dismissed "terrorism" as a politicized label to delegitimize a strategy the
powerless feel compelled to use as a last resort. The article ignored the moral
issues involved in targeting civilians. I replied that with limited student
attention spans, a professor can justify assigning one article that challenges
the conventional wisdom as long as the discussion is balanced.

In class, the student tried broadening the conversation, acknowledging that
"terrorism can be seen as a warfare technique, sometimes the only one available
to non-state actors such as the Palestinians [this is what was taught in the
lesson]." She nevertheless identified "a huge moral difference between
kidnapping Israeli soldiers and blowing up a school bus full of children." The
instructor responded with "a joke," saying "it wasn't like Palestinians were
going to target a hospital full of disabled people." The student felt her
teacher had mocked her comments, squelching a valuable line of inquiry.

During the final lecture, a playwright whose work supposedly lamented the
dehumanization of both Palestinians and Israelis concentrated only on the
Palestinians' "plight." A different student asked how terrorism affected
Israelis' quality of life. My student source reports: "When the guest speaker
was about to reply, the instructor cut him off and declared that perhaps it
would be better to move on to someone's else's question." Sadly, predictably,
the student added in an e-mail: "My fear is that my final grade will be affected
by my criticisms."

HUMANISTS ARE not mathematicians: We cannot balance every interaction. But when
students question, professors should respond with particular deference. We need
to foster a supportive, freewheeling, open classroom environment. Most young
egos are fragile. In most schools, I regret to say, it takes courage to stand up
and risk standing out. The instructor committed educational malpractice by
mocking serious attempts to broaden the discussion. The instructor failed by
leaving at least two students feeling that their perspectives were disrespected.

Unfortunately, this kind of intimidation occurs far too frequently when
discussing academic sacred cows such as the Palestinians. Most students do not
even try to buck the trend, fearing humiliation in class and penalties on their
transcripts. They end up feeling squelched while other students end up deprived
of a valuable corrective, in this case to the amoral conventional wisdom that
Third Worlders calling themselves "freedom fighters" are free of ethical
constraints.

Students in these situations should remember my 4 Cs: confront, complain,
catalog and corroborate, protesting educational malpractice in the classroom
rather than perceived bias in the content. Questions of bias invite scholarly
defenses of academic freedom. Allegations of teachers failing to do their jobs,
of ignoring students, of mocking dissenters, are more powerful, non-partisan and
serious.

If such abuses occur, students first should confront the instructor, gently,
substantively, respectfully but firmly, publicly and privately. Raising issues
in class and during office hours is a student's right and responsibility.
Sitting silently acquiesces in the abuse, making education a one-way transfer
rather than a two-way dialogue. Besides, standing up encourages other students
while challenging the professor. Even if a professor seems unmoved, academics'
egos are as fragile as those of their students. Without acknowledging the
criticism, they may adjust during the semester or in the future.

STUDENTS WHO remain unhappy should complain. As a professor, I believe that the
first complaint should go directly to the professor involved. I always tell my
students: "If you have a problem with me, please come to me first." Our
blogosphere culture has encouraged anonymous character assassination. Too many
academic institutions go straight to formal grievances before first insisting on
direct, respectful, substantive face-to-face discussion. You can always go
formal and go public in the complaints; it is unfair to rush ahead without
giving the professor a right of response and an opportunity to improve.

Students should catalog the abuses, giving detailed, specific, substantive
examples, as the student who approached me did. Vague complaints appear lazy,
spoiled and political. Specific protests are mature and more easily addressed.

Finally, students should remember to corroborate their complaints. I am sorry to
say that Jewish students have more credibility on this issue if non-Jewish
students support them. One student complaining can be dismissed as a crank, or a
partisan. A few students, or one student backed by other, seemingly less
partisan colleagues, can get results.

I cannot believe how powerless so many students feel. They forget that
professors prefer arguing about content to quibbling about grades. I, for one,
have frequently rewarded my most skeptical, questioning students with higher
grades. Moreover, students forget that academics and universities fear conflict.
Professors in Middle East studies should not feel they are being scrutinized by
McCarthyite hacks ready to pounce. But all teachers benefit from students who
are active, thoughtful and sometimes critical partners in the educational
process, rather than passive receptacles or silent, hostile monitors.

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September 3, 2008 Wednesday

Letters

BYLINE: Natan Golan, Hilary Gatoff, Rebecca Bermeister, David Teich, Shubert
Spero, Zev Chamudot, M.U. Milunsky

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1179 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Visionaries...

Sir, - It's no coincidence that two articles highlighting former ambassador
Danny Ayalon ("JAFI cedes N. American Aliya to Nefesh B'Nefesh" and "Galilee
Arabs could declare state") were featured back-to-back in your September 1
issue.

Visionaries are those individuals who have the ability to predict future trends
and the courage to speak out on them.

The connection here is clear: In his leadership role at Nefesh B'Nefesh, it is
now down to ambassador Ayalon to actively encourage the olim coming through his
organization to consider relocating to Galilee as a viable alternative to Beit
Shemesh and Ra'anana.

Ayalon is right. The Jewish future in Galilee is at stake. It's now time for
visionaries to apply determined action behind their words of truth.

NATAN GOLAN

Kfar Veradim

...to the fore

Sir, - The passing of our hero Abie Nathan made those of us who were in Israel
in the early '60s feel nostalgic. The signature tune of "Twilight Time" brought
back memories of our young family who worshipped him for his principles of peace
and his courage and determination to bring it about for the sake of all peoples
in this region.

His dream was not in vain, as we have agreements with Egypt and Jordan -
something we could not imagine when we first came in 1962.

If only our politicians would put the country first and their ambitions second,
as he did, we could return to a more idealistic existence and Zionism would
prevail ("Maverick peace pioneer Abie Nathan dead at 81," August 28).

HILARY GATOFF

Herzliya Pituah

Nefesh B'Nefesh

for Australians...

Sir, - As an Australian who recently made aliya with my husband and five
children, I would like to propose that Australia claim its right as a member of
the English Commonwealth to be included in the Nefesh B'Nefesh family. I believe
many more Australians would make aliya if they had the support networks in place
that Nefesh B'Nefesh provides.

I also believe a new generation of Australia's Jewish leaders and benefactors
would get behind such a move as they follow in the generous footsteps of their
predecessors, for whom Israel always played a central role ("Jewish Agency cedes
N. American aliya to Nefesh B'Nefesh," September 1).

REBECCA BERMEISTER

Zichron Ya'acov

...and seculars?

Sir, - When I wanted to make aliya, I contacted Nefesh B'Nefesh and mentioned
that I was a secular Jew in hi-tech wanting to move here. The organization never
helped and repeatedly refused to respond to contact requests. I later heard from
other secular Jews who felt Nefesh B'Nefesh intentionally ignored them because
they weren't Orthodox.

As much as I had problems dealing with lazy and incompetent emissaries, at least
they did move the paperwork and helped me with my decision to come here.

The power of the Orthodox stranglehold on our country will help alienate many in
the Diaspora from Israel.

DAVID TEICH

Rehovot

'God's plan'

Sir, - Eli Kavon's Elul call for religious introspection was quite timely
("Religious Zionism: The future of a lost movement," August 31). However, the
"messianic theology" Kavon sees as a "daunting and urgent problem" is not that
of Rav Kook, but of Judaism itself.

Quite correctly, Rav Kook's "genius" was to see in the idealism and success of
Jewish settlement in then Palestine "part of God's plan to redeem the Jewish
people and humanity." His enduring legacy is to search historical developments
for opportunities for Jewish "activism" in the direction of what many believe to
be the general outline of "God's plan"; and to do so with an openness which does
not rule out a priori the novel, the unexpected or the unorthodox. At the same
time, the "activism" must be non- violent and "lawful" by recognized
international standards.

There is little doubt that the situation following the Six Day War, with the
unanimous Arab refusal to sit down and talk, constituted precisely such an
opportunity to settle vacant areas of Judea, Samaria and Gaza which were always
"disputed territories." There was nothing illegal or immoral about it, and
everything was historically and theologically Jewish. But whether it ultimately
furthers or hinders "God's plan" remains to be seen.

To suggest that the pathologies of an Amir or Goldstein stemmed from their
religion or politics is like doing the same for the Pizems and Borisons.
Political assassinations and domestic murder have a long history and don't need
"messianic theology" to explain them. Furthermore, settlement in Eretz Yisrael
was never a "supreme value" in Judaism.

Today, educated religious Jews must cease being uncritical "followers" of any
"personality," be he Rav Kook or Rav Soloveitchik or some hasidic rebbe, dead or
alive. We should learn from all and form our own judgment, for which we accept
moral and intellectual responsibility. That may well serve as a basis for
individual soul-searching as we enter Elul.

SHUBERT SPERO

Jerusalem

Sir, - I was totally unable to discern Eli Kavon's genuine concerns. He seems to
be placing the blame for all the current ills of the Jewish people and the State
of Israel on the collective shoulders of the religious Zionists. He indicts them
by innuendo and then demands that they answer to his subjective accusations.

I challenge him to supply any bit of evidence even remotely connecting the
assassination of Yitzhak Rabin to the teachings of Rabbi Kook. Kavon appears
incapable of distinguishing between authentic and false messianism. The first
has, throughout history, been the motivating force behind all human advancement,
the latter responsible for much death and horror.

Religious Zionists continue to make profound contributions to all aspects of
Israeli life. When Eli Kavon leaves Florida, shedding his Diaspora lenses, and
makes aliya, his vision will doubtless greatly improve.

ZEV CHAMUDOT

Petah Tikva

Sir, - Watching and listening to the major speeches made by aspiring presidents
and VPs during the American election conventions, one could not help but be
impressed by their eloquence and articulateness. What struck me forcibly was the
manner in which each candidate concluded with a vehement "God bless you all, and
God bless America."

In Israel, no political leader would dare thus antagonize the country's
non-believers, and possibly jeopardize his career.

M.U. MILUNSKY

Netanya

Ritalin's effect

Sir, - I was glad to see Judy Siegel-Itzkovich's "Ritalin overprescribed for
children, says psychologist" (August 31).

Each of my three boys was diagnosed as ADHD in about 20 seconds - that's how
long it took the highly-rated Jerusalem neurologist. Next thing I knew, I had a
prescription for Ritalin in my hands. When I asked about side-effects, he
assured me they were "extremely rare."

Although one child did learn better on the drug, he suffered from tics, while
the others lost their appetites and were still bouncing off the walls at
midnight. The doctor angrily told me that if the Ritalin was given at 7 a.m.,
the effects would wear off by 11 a.m.

I had to discontinue its use and help my kids get through a brutal school system
not prepared to deal with "problem children."

NAME WITHHELD, Jerusalem

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September 3, 2008 Wednesday

The Palin shocker

BYLINE: ELLIOT JAGER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1481 words

HIGHLIGHT: Power and Politics

Wasn't it impressive how Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain
was able to keep the selection of his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin,
44, a secret until an hour before the official announcement last Friday?

Sen. Barack Obama had earlier done a good job of keeping the Democratic
vice-presidential choice, Sen. Joseph Biden, a surprise.

It's reassuring that there are still some politicians who can keep a secret.

Less classy, however, was how Palin diverted attention - when she was introduced
to the media - from the out-of- wedlock pregnancy of her 17-year-old daughter,
Bristol, by having the girl hold the governor's new baby. More on this later.

OBAMA'S CHOICE of Biden left me unmoved. Obama should have swallowed his pride
and begged Hillary to be his running mate. She would have jumped at the chance -
and old Bill could have been shut up with an appointment to the Supreme Court.
An Obama-Clinton ticket would have been pretty unbeatable.

Biden first captured my attention in the 1970s because of the publicity he got
over a series of partially successful hair transplants - let's just say it's an
issue I track.

Since 1988, Biden's been a perennial presidential candidate. He roots for Israel
when we're under attack, but probably won't support Israel's quest for safer
boundaries. He's long opposed the presence of Jews in Judea and Samaria. And
it's unlikely he'll be leading the charge against keeping Iran from obtaining
nuclear weapons.

Still, in picking another liberal senator, one with a strong Washington and
foreign policy resume, Obama has done himself no harm.

WHEN YOU apply the "above all, do not harm" yardstick to McCain's selection, the
results are far less straightforward. Sarah Palin's trajectory runs from her PTA
to the Wasilla city council and mayoralty - Wasilla is 50 km. north of Anchorage
- to, in December 2006, the governor's mansion.

John McCain reportedly met Palin just once, six months ago, before summoning her
last week and offering her the job. She must have made a good first impression.

There's little question that in selecting Palin, McCain was focusing more on his
electoral strategy than on what might happen after inauguration day. In that
sense he reminds me of Ariel Sharon, who assumed he'd be around to manage
politico-security affairs for years to come.

Politically, the choice of Palin seemed smart - at least until the story about
Bristol's pregnancy broke.

McCain is distrusted by social conservatives. Palin's credentials as a
reform-minded, pro-life, pro-gun, family values, frum Christian - someone who
didn't hesitate to tax big oil or challenge the country-club wing of the
Republican Party - certainly help shore up this important Republican
constituency, which might otherwise have stayed home on election day.

Selecting what everyone assumed was a super-mom with charm - a mother of five,
the youngest a Down syndrome child - has its appeal. Her main concerns, like
those of most Americans, are domestic. If Biden tries to embarrass her in a
debate by asking about the capital of Tajikistan (Dushanbe), he'll only make
himself look smug. Most regular Americans don't know it, either.

At first the only controversy surrounding Palin involved her attempt to get her
former brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper. She's said her
sister's ex threatened to kill their father.

But Bristol's pregnancy generates lots of questions: How can we believe that
McCain knew about the 17-year-old's condition yet still selected Palin? My bet
is he didn't know. And if he didn't, what does that tell you about the people
McCain turns to for advice?

On the other hand, more than a third of births in America are to unmarried
mothers. In places like New York City, a majority are out of wedlock. It's not
the pregnancy that's such a big deal, it's the sense that Palin is a hypocrite.
But maybe that's not the way Christians will see it. After all, didn't Jesus
teach: "He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone..."

PALIN'S LACK of experience outside Alaska is very troubling. But I'm hoping that
if he wins, McCain, 72, is going to be around long enough to mentor her.

In truth, as the Democrats correctly pointed out when Obama was being criticized
for lack of experience, the Bush II administration was top-heavy with seasoned
national security types: Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick
Cheney - and they managed to lead America into a pointless war in Iraq.

Speaking of Iraq, let's pray that McCain will do an about-face, decide that the
government of Iraq is "capable of governing itself" and honor Baghdad's request
for a troop withdrawal by 2011. He'd also be wise to rethink his commitment to
keep US troops on the ground until the first Jeffersonian democracy in the Arab
world takes shape.

But what if Palin does have to become the commander- in-chief sooner rather than
later?

The Obama campaign is dismissive: "John McCain put the former mayor of a town of
9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency."
I'm not going to make believe they don't have a point. But for me, the even
bigger question is whether Palin has the temperament, judgment and wisdom to be
president. She doesn't have much executive experience - Alaska has only 700,000
people. Obama, of course, has no executive experience at all.

It's OK with me if she believes God created the world, and that maybe the threat
of global warming is not quite as dire as Al Gore would have us believe. I'm
more concerned about her character. Can she keep an open mind, can she analyze
situations on a case-by-case basis - or will theology and ideology predetermine
her decisions? Can she - for example - accept that abortion is a personal choice
and should not be criminalized?

As for the Jewish angle, I'm relieved that McCain passed over two Jewish
politicians - Congressman Eric Cantor and Senator Joe Lieberman. He also passed
over a Mormon, and you don't see them getting their knickers in a twist. I live
in a country where practically the entire government is Jewish - and, let me
tell you, I sometimes long for a sympathetic Alaskan or Mormon to set matters
right.

Something also tells me that Palin will be a powerful voice for making the US
less dependent on Arab oil.

Am I bothered that Palin - like a majority of US Jews - has never been to
Israel?

If only visiting here inoculated politicians from leaning on Israel to make
dangerous concessions. Sometimes it does work out that way. But while Jimmy
Carter could draw a topographical map of Israel blindfold, he's become an
apologist for Arab intransigence. Bill Clinton was no stranger here, and yet he
helped bring about Oslo.

Still, it's too bad that Palin was not on the radar of any major pro-Israel
group, and that we know little about her attitude toward Israel, except that she
has a tiny Israeli flag in her office.

OF COURSE, Israel isn't at the top of the agenda for most US Jews either. If it
were, they'd be pressing Obama- Biden and McCain-Palin to oppose an Israeli
withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines; to support the inclusion of strategic
settlement blocs in any final peace deal. US Jews would be demanding that the
candidates denounce Mahmoud Abbas every time he openly demands the "right of
return" for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel
proper; and they'd want the candidates to say whether they consider the
Jerusalem neighborhoods of East Talpiot, Pisgat Ze'ev and Har Homa to be part of
Israel's capital or not.

PALIN reportedly wore a "Pat Buchanan in 2000" button. She claims she really
didn't endorse the affable anti- Semite. Whatever. I doubt she has a clue about
Buchanan's attitude toward Jews. No one has suggested that her brief encounter
with Buchanan is akin to Obama's long-term relationship with Rev. Jeremiah
Wright.

Like I said, most Jews won't be voting on the basis of what's best for Israel.
And the last time I checked, Moses hadn't returned to say that Judaism and the
liberalism of West Side Manhattan were one and the same. So it's outrageous to
discount Palin because, in the words of one Jewish political operative quoted in
the Post, "There is no Jew outside of Alaska who has had a relationship with
her."

Excuse me? We're going to demonize Palin because she doesn't know from knishes?

Palin's husband, Todd, is part-Eskimo. I'd venture to say that, outside Michael
Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, few liberal Jews have met many Eskimos.
That's probably because for all these folks' cosmopolitan pretenses, if you
don't shop at Zabar's, you don't count. Talk about being parochial.

THE PALIN pregnancy business erupted as I was writing this column - the latest
twist in an extraordinary campaign. It's shaping up to be the most fascinating
presidential race since I moved to Israel - and stopped voting in US elections.

jager@jpost.com

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The Jerusalem Post

September 3, 2008 Wednesday

Peace: From concepts to realities

BYLINE: GERSHON BASKIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1083 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and
Information.

It has been reported that the Israeli-Palestinian permanent status negotiations
being conducted in parallel by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and PA
negotiator Ahmed Qurei are moving toward the final stages. To reach agreement
there are issues which are unavoidable and must be addressed. There are also
steps on the ground which are necessary to build public support for the
potential agreement, which could be implemented immediately, even before a full
agreement is reached.

Apparently Livni will not agree to any kind of treaty that does not fully
recognize Israel as a Jewish state. In the preparation for the Annapolis summit
in November 2007, we recall that this was one of the major Israeli demands that
made it impossible to reach a joint statement of principles for permanent
status. The Palestinians rejected the demand. Negotiator Saeb Erekat stated: "We
recognize Israel, don't force us to determine your identity."

Behind that statement was the Palestinian understanding that if they recognize
Israel as a Jewish state, they underwrite the transfer of more than 1 million
Palestinian citizens of Israel. They also claimed that acknowledging Israel as a
Jewish state would predetermine the outcome of the negotiations on the "right of
return" before that subject is even put on the table.

The Israeli claim is that the two states for two peoples solution is
fundamentally based on the principle of partition of the land according to UN
Resolution 181 from November 29, 1947 which clearly states: "Independent Arab
and Jewish states... shall come into existence in Palestine." Both the State of
Israel and the PLO have based their international legitimacy for statehood on
this resolution. The resolution itself, as well as the laws of the State of
Israel, protect the rights of non-Jewish minorities in Israel, and when there is
a Palestinian state, the rights of non-Palestinian minorities should also be
guaranteed under law.

PALESTINIANS HAVE never fully understood that the notion of a Jewish state is
not solely a religious designation. They have never fully conceptualized Jews as
a "people" and still relate to Zionism as an illegitimate imperialist concoction
aimed at usurping their national rights.

The negotiators are going to have to find the appropriate acceptable formula to
address this issue. It might be possible to quote the same UN resolution and to
add to it that the rights of the Palestinian minority in Israel and the Jewish
minority in Palestine would be guaranteed and protected under law. The
Palestinians say, however; that if we are going back to UN Resolution 181 let's
also use the map that was devised for partition at that time as well. That, of
course is a non-starter for Israel.

The Ayalon-Nussiebeh formulation adopted two principles to assert the legitimacy
of the two-states for two people solution: "Both sides will declare that
Palestine is the only state of the Palestinian people and Israel is the only
state of the Jewish people" and "Palestinian refugees will return only to the
State of Palestine; Jews will return only to the State of Israel." This
formulation was possible because it also included clear positions regarding
borders and Jerusalem that enabled a "package deal" to be agreed upon.

Regarding those issues, Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh agreed that in Jerusalem
sovereignty would be divided between the two states, except for the holy places
where neither would hold sovereignty, but Israel would serve as guardian over
the Wester Wall and Palestine would serve as guardian over the Haram
al-Sharif/Temple Mount. On borders, they agreed to the principle of using the
June 4, 1967 as the basis with acceptable 1:1 territorial exchanges.

The Geneva Initiative addressed this issue as follows: "As part of the accord,
the Palestinians recognize the right of the Jewish people to their own state and
recognize the State of Israel as their national home. Conversely, the Israelis
recognize the Palestinian state as the national home of the Palestinian people."
Once again, this was an acceptable formula because of the comprehensive nature
of the Geneva Initiative.

So far, as much as we can assess, the official Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
have only agreed on the principle of territorial exchanges but have not agreed
on the size of the territory which will be annexed by Israel. There appears to
be no agreement on refugees or on Jerusalem.

TO REACH a package agreement, both sides will have to make substantive
concessions. Just as the Palestinians will have to acknowledge the Jewishness of
Israel, Israel will have to acknowledge its part in the creation of the
Palestinian refugee problem. Israel does not bear full responsibility for that
issue, but it certainly does have partial and even significant responsibility.
Acknowledging Israel's partial responsibility is necessary for the Palestinians
to accept the principle that the "right of return" will be implemented primarily
to the state of Palestine and not to Israel.

Acknowledgement by both sides of these fundamentals is what is required to reach
an agreement that could enable real and lasting reconciliation. Both sides will
also have to recognize that Jerusalem will be the capital of both states with
the requisite division of sovereignty, including the division of control or
sovereignty over the holy places.

Both sides could also implement substantive steps immediately that would provide
a stronger foundation for the statements of acknowledgement listed above.
Palestinians could indicate their willingness, in principle, to accept the right
of Israeli settlers to become citizens of their future state, under Palestinian
sovereignty and laws. Israel could acknowledge and implement the right of Abbas
to pray in Al-Aksa Mosque beginning with this Ramadan. Both sides could agree to
the construction of a new city or cities in the West Bank to which first
preference would be granted to returning Palestinian refugees from Lebanon.

There is no reason to wait for a final agreement and its ratification by the
people to begin to implement steps that will build peace on the ground while
implementing specific clauses that will become central themes of the peace
treaty. Peace is not built solely by reaching agreements on paper - this is
necessary, but not enough. Peace must be built on the ground - from the bottom
up. We must begin to transform words and concepts into new realities.

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September 3, 2008 Wednesday

What 'occupation'?

BYLINE: ASHLEY PERRY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 987 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is an editor at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
for the Middle East Strategic Information Project.

The recent occurrences in Georgia present a good opportunity to compare how the
media describe certain world events.

The conflict between Georgia and Russia was immediately cited by President
Mikhail Saakashvili as an "occupation of Georgia." The case involved a sovereign
independent nation where a neighboring hostile army held onto and asserted its
authority over territory within its recognized boundaries. This is a classic
definition of an "occupation."

The Hague Conventions of 1907 state specifically that "territory is considered
occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army."
However, much of the world's media do not appear to have knowledge of the legal
definitions in its appellation of the Georgia- Russia conflict.

Most of the major media organizations have only used the word "occupation" when
quoting Saakashvili or others like British Foreign Secretary David Milliband.
Agence France Presse in almost every report used the term "occupation" in
quotation marks, or claimed that "Tiblisi has labeled them [the Russians] an
occupying force." Many other media organizations follow suit.

Senior British journalist Peter Wilby implies in The Guardian that Saakashvili
has used terms like occupation to win a public relations battle. He contends
that the Georgian president knows which words pull heartstrings in the West.
"Note the use of terms that trigger Western media interest: civilian victims,
nuclear, humanitarian, occupation, ethnic cleansing," Wilby wrote.

There is a sort of irony in the fact that The Guardian, long accused of treating
Israel unfairly in its reporting, has an article clearly stating how certain
words are utilized to garner sympathy for a particular cause, when all these
terms have been used against Israel in the past - and mostly without quotation
marks.

ISRAEL DOES not fit the literal definition of an occupying force. The Hague
Conventions and the later Geneva Conventions of 1949 do not appear to apply
definitively to the West Bank. The West Bank has never been sovereign territory,
and was won from a nation which held no legal claim to the area. After Israel
conquered the West Bank and Gaza, former Supreme Court president Meir Shamgar
wrote in the 1970s that there is no de jure applicability of the Fourth Geneva
Convention regarding occupied territories to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, since
the convention "is based on the assumption that there had been a sovereign which
was ousted, and that it had been a legitimate sovereign."

To take it a step further, former US State Department legal adviser Stephen
Schwebel, who later headed the International Court of Justice in The Hague,
wrote in 1970 regarding Israel's case: "Where the prior holder of territory had
seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that
territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder,
better title."

OBVIOUSLY, MANY would disagree with these formulations. However, there is enough
evidence to contend that Israel is not "occupying" the West Bank according to
the letter of international law. This is further codified in UN Security Council
Resolution 242 which, according to its drafters, allows Israel to hold onto
territories it won in the 1967 war. This stands in contradistinction to other
theaters of conflict and occupation.

In 1975, an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice established
that Western Sahara was not under Moroccan territorial sovereignty.
Nevertheless, when the Western Sahara receives any column inches in the
international media, it is seldom referred to as "occupied."

Nagorno-Karabakh, the area of Azerbaijan claimed as an independent republic by
indigenous Armenian separatists, is in the main referred to as "disputed."

Of course, the media attention Tibet received as a result of China's holding the
Summer Olympics provided another recent comparison. Again, the famous quotation
marks are frequently applied when using the term "occupation" - if the word is
used at all - to China's control of Tibet.

There are many other examples of territories that could denote an occupation but
are referred to as "disputed."

According to Dore Gold, former ambassador to the UN and president of the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, there appears to be a major disparity in
the terminology describing conflicts around the globe.

"Of course each situation has its own unique history, but in a variety of other
territorial disputes - from northern Cyprus to the Kurile Islands to Abu Musa in
the Persian Gulf, which have involved some degree of armed conflict - the term
'occupied territories' is not commonly used in international discourse. Thus,
the case of the West Bank appears to be a special exception," Gold wrote.

THE TERM occupation has been long used as an accusation by the Palestinians in
what Wilby would describe as a "PR war." However, as opposed to how circumspect
the world media are about other territorial disagreements, they are almost
unequivocal that the West Bank is "occupied."

This has had many ramifications as the UN now uses the term "occupied
territories" as if by rote in its resolutions when describing the West Bank.
Perhaps even more worryingly, the Israeli government has bought into this
terminology, which flies in the face of its own legal opinions.

The Road Map which was agreed to by the government referred to an "occupation
that began in 1967," and soon after prime minister Ariel Sharon criticized what
he called the "occupation" in the territories. By referring to the West Bank as
occupied, Sharon broke one of the greatest taboos in Israeli governmental
policy.

Today, it has almost become commonplace for high- ranking officials like Tzipi
Livni to use the term "occupation" in their speeches. Consequently, the
government has adopted the language of its accusers in the media, and has thus
handed itself a major defeat in its own PR war.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: IN 2003, prime minister Ariel Sharon referred to the West Bank
as occupied, breaking one of the greatest taboos in Israeli governmental policy.
(Credit: Bloomberg)

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September 2, 2008 Tuesday

Ramadan, 1429

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 725 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

From Granada in Spain and Aubervilliers in France, to Cairo and Jakarta, more
than a billion Muslims are this month marking the "handing down" of the Koran.
Through daytime fasting, Ramadan, which this year falls September 1-30, is a
time to subjugate the body to the spirit.

The advent of Ramadan, which most Westerners would hardly have noticed a decade
ago, now merits coverage in such disparate media as the Dallas News and London's
Times.

In a passage that Jews who observe communal and personal fast days can identify
with, a Muslim contributor to the Times explained that "The late afternoon is
always the hardest part of the fast." The Los Angeles Daily News tells its
readers that the fast is over only when the "crescent of the moon has been
sighted," while The Iowa City Press Citizen empathizes with how difficult it
must be to keep the holiday in a place where Muslims are a small minority.

This is also the period when the faithful try to resolve their differences
peaceably.

The Pakistani military said it would suspend offensive operations against the
Taliban.

As a Ramadan goodwill gesture, Egypt opened the Rafah crossing between Sinai and
Gaza.

And Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement announced it is committed to negotiating with
Hamas rather than fighting - even though the two sides can't even agree on the
time of day. Daylight Savings Time in Gaza ended Saturday, but will last for
several more days in the West Bank. Also in Gaza, thousands of government
employees, among them teachers and medical workers associated with Fatah, are on
strike against the Hamas government.

Curiously, this is also a time when some non-Muslims are prone to blame anyone
but Muslims for the violence and frustration so prevalent in Islamic
civilization.

For instance, an Agence France-Presse dispatch begins: "As most of the rest of
the Islamic world welcomes Ramadan... Palestinians in the Gaza Strip warily
brace for another holiday under a crippling [Israeli] blockade."

No mention is made of Hamas's adamant refusal to recognize previous Palestinian
agreements, end violence against non-combatants, or even accept the right of the
Jewish state to exist. There's nothing about Gilad Schalit; or about tons of
humanitarian aid Israel has allowed in; or about the 200 Hamas-authorized (and
revenue-producing) tunnels between Sinai and Gaza which funnel, among other
commodities, arms, missiles and explosives; or about concerted preparations for
further aggression. AFP notes only that "Israel has kept the sanctions in place
despite a two-month-old truce with Palestinian militants which has mostly halted
rocket fire on southern Israel."

DESPITE the fact that the second intifada was launched from the Temple Mount in
September 2000, Israel is going to great lengths to accommodate Muslims from
Judea and Samaria who wish to attend Friday prayers on the Mount. Married men
between 45 and 50 and married women 30-45 can request entry permission, with the
expectation that it will be granted. Men over 50 and women over 45 can enter
freely.

In addition, for this month the opening hours of checkpoints between the West
Bank and Israel proper are being extended. Palestinian inmates in Israeli
prisons will be allowed to receive special Ramadan packages from their loved
ones. And Arab citizens of Israel will be permitted to enter PA-controlled Area
A, from where all Israeli citizens are normally barred.

To sensitize Israeli soldiers who come into contact with Palestinian Arab
civilians during the holiday, the Civil Administration has distributed leaflets
explaining the times, dates and customs of Ramadan: "Soldiers [are] directed to
show consideration for the population and instructed to avoid eating, drinking
and smoking in populated areas, with an emphasis on the crossing points."

RAMADAN may be an appropriate time for Muslims to reflect on the challenges of
faith and modernity. Much of the bloodletting in the Mideast and other Muslim
population centers takes place among believers themselves - between those who
appear ascendant, who want to return Islam to its most bellicose and
imperialistic path, and those who seek coexistence with the "other."

Only when Muslims who aspire to live in harmony with those who do not share
their faith are able to triumph over the fanatics will peace between
civilizations become a reality.

For this, we too pray.

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September 2, 2008 Tuesday

God's thoughts on the election

BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 901 words

HIGHLIGHT: God delights in stories of redemption and joyfulness, which might
explain why He has shined especially brightly on Obama and McCain. The writer
hosts a daily US national radio show on Oprah and Friends. www.shmuley.com

It's time to play that all-American game, Who is God Punishing Now? Three years
ago, when Katrina devastated New Orleans, some on the religious Right suggested
that the city with the infamous French Quarter was being destroyed for its
debauchery. God poured fire and brimstone on Sodom in ancient times, and rained
down lightning and broken levies on New Sodom in modern times.

Fast forward three years and here we go again, only this time God is punishing
innocent men and women in Louisiana for the Republican Convention in Minnesota.
According to filmmaker Michael Moore, "Gustav is proof that there is a God in
heaven... that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for Day One of the
Republican convention up in the Twin Cities."

The theme was echoed by Don Fowler, the South Carolina Democratic Party
chairman, who joked that the hurricane was God's favor to Democrats. But Fowler
will have to forgive some New Orleans residents, both Democrat and Republican,
if they don't get the joke.

WE AMERICANS are a famously religious people, and can therefore be forgiven for
sometimes claiming to know the mind of God. But it behooves us to always
remember the words of Abraham Lincoln, who said, when asked whether God was
fighting on the side of the Union armies: "We trust, sir, that God is on our
side. It is more important to know that we are on God's side."

While none of us can know the mind of God, we can know right and wrong based on
what all the world religions agree God has revealed to be moral, holy and
ethical. I dare say that even atheists and agnostics agree with the general
morality propounded by religion.

Based on this revealed, universal morality, here is a list of what we can
assume, based on the Bible, God is thinking about the current presidential
election.

1. We don't know if God wants Barack Obama to win or lose, but we certainly know
that He is overjoyed that, perhaps for the first time in our history, tens of
millions of Americans are looking beyond skin color and seeing all human beings
as equal children of God and equally deserving of the highest national office.
At the very beginning of the Bible, God made it clear that He created every
human being equally in His image - something that it's taken us Americans
several centuries to digest.

2. We don't know if God wishes John McCain to win or lose, but we know He shines
with favor toward Cindy and John McCain for adopting their youngest daughter,
Bridget, who is Bengali but has been welcomed as an equal alongside the McCains'
three biological children.

3. America needs leadership, and people must run for president. But God
instituted a Sabbath day of rest even in the midst of the toughest contests, to
be with family and focus on what is even more important than becoming president.
This is especially true for people like Obama and Sarah Palin, both of whom have
children whose development cannot be put on hold until after an election. In
this sense, both campaigns can learn from the example of Joe Lieberman who,
while running for the vice presidency in 2000, refused to campaign on Saturdays
and was with his family instead.

4. God loves unity among His children. The first social sin was the fratricidal
conflict between Cain and Abel. Likewise, the Bible is clear that slander and
character assassination are forbidden. Attack ads, therefore, are ungodly and
unjust.

5. God loves the penitent. He shows special grace to those courageous enough to
confess their sins and correct previous errors. We should therefore be forgiving
both of Obama's admission to prior drug use and McCain's confession to moral
lapses in his first marriage. America often punishes its leaders for their
shortcomings. This is wrong. Righteousness in God's eyes is defined not as
perfection but as engaging in the struggle to be better. So long as our leaders
take responsibility for their actions and commit themselves to more righteous
behavior in future, we should be inspired by their courage.

6. God delights in stories of redemption and joyfulness. He repeatedly commands
us to be happy and rise above slights and resentment. This might explain why He
has shined especially brightly on Obama and McCain. The former is a black man,
abandoned by his father, who after educating himself in the best universities
chose to work with the poor. The latter is a man who lived through hell for five
and a half years but rose above the horrific experience of being tortured as a
POW to devote himself to inspirational public work.

7. God does not mind that Obama made millions on his book, or that McCain has
seven homes - so long as both are charitable. Those making money are required to
give at least 10% to charity, and so long as they commit a significant
percentage to the poor, we should applaud them for their industry.

8. God created the world with words such as "Let there be light." He demands
that language likewise be used for constructive and holy purposes. God's favor
therefore shines brightly on Obama's enormous capacity for using words to
inspire. But the Bible makes it equally clear that God hates those who use
language to sow discord. He therefore commands us to oppose people like Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly threatened to "wipe Israel off the map."

God calls on all men of justice - especially those in positions of leadership -
to neutralize evil before its words are turned into irrevocable action.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, with running mate Gov. Sarah Palin, announces
that the Republican National Convention will be curtailed due to Hurricane
Gustav. Did God time the hurricane to punish the Republicans? (Credit: AP)

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September 2, 2008 Tuesday

Letters

BYLINE: Hela Crown-Tamir, Daniel Abelman, Angela Grossman, Harvey Lithwick,
Ilana Drori, Hula K. Smith, Yan Sever, Andrew Balcombe, Michael D. Hirsch

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1152 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Rose and Alon

Sir, - Thank you for reminding us that "this time, we need to cut ourselves some
slack" ("Breast-beating over Rose," Editorial, August 31). All of us,
grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers especially, have been beyond shock,
enraged at the fate of poor little Rose Pizem. I believe that our turmoil is so
great because our society has such an enormous sense of caring for children.

I was a single parent here for many years before I remarried, and I always felt
part of an "extended family." No, we cannot continue to beat ourselves up over
Rose, and now dear little Alon Borison. We have to continue to be this caring
society and, through our tears, hope and pray it does not happen again.

HELA CROWN-TAMIR

Mevaseret Zion

First lesson is...

Sir, - I read aloud Elana Maryles Sztokman's "A radical suggestion for tired
parents" (September 1). Every paragraph was met with a 'Right on!' I felt the
name of the school - or at least the principal who was accused of "revolting"
behavior - should be made public to encourage response and open debate. I have
been informed that there is a genuine fear of pupils bearing the repercussions
of parents' actions.

A sad anomaly: Mediocrity rules in schools, out of fear for our children.

DANIEL ABELMAN

Jerusalem

...cuddle, don't coddle

Sir, - I also raised four children - the first three in three-and-a-half years
and the last with a five-year gap - so I can freely attest to the difficulties
involved in raising a family without the assistance of family members apart from
my husband (we were both new immigrants without siblings or parents to help
out).

Our solution was so simple that I always wondered why we'd never heard about it
from anyone else.

My husband got up at 6.30, woke each child only once and then ran back to bed.
The first child to reach our bed could get into the middle, and the others had
to make do wherever there was room. We spent about 10 minutes cuddling and
waking up slowly, then everyone went off to get dressed and ready for school.
No-one was ever late, and I can't honestly remember thinking that it was
difficult to get them out of the house.

They all had a 15-20 minute walk to primary school, went together and often
dropped the younger one off at kindergarten on the way. Nobody expected to be
taken to school, and it never occurred to me to inspect each child's bag to make
sure they had all their books. If they forgot one, it was the teacher's job to
say something.

All my children graduated from colleges and universities. All are independent
and they know how to get to places on time. To recommend that teachers be more
lenient is just asking for trouble, and a good way for parents to shirk their
responsibilities.

I feel the decision to start school at 8 a.m. is the right one due to the
climate in Israel. Starting at 9 makes no sense. Someone who can't arrive on
time at 8 won't be on time an hour later, either.

ANGELA GROSSMAN

Tel Aviv

How the rot got in

Sir, - One factor Jeff Barak's excellent "When did the rot set in?" (September
1) omitted was the introduction of direct election of the prime minister in
1996. This lame- brained scheme, which attempted to graft an essentially
American congressional component onto a totally different and incompatible
British parliamentary system destroyed whatever semblance of leadership
accountability remained in the country. It permitted leaders who lacked checks
and balances, either via other power centers (US - legislature and the
judiciary; UK - party discipline) to run the country as a personal fiefdom.

While this does not by itself explain the excesses of the past decade Barak
describes, it does explain how they were enabled.

The most egregious consequence of all is that it has discredited all new efforts
to introduce systemic reforms, which are so obviously and urgently required.

HARVEY LITHWICK

Metar

Good question

Sir, - Every day I read the Letters section with pleasure and find that most of
the letters are full of accurate information and healthy views. People are
smart, so why do we have such lousy politicians?

ILANA DRORI

Rehovot

No frivolity for

founding fathers

Sir, - So Tzipi Livni has no admiration for Golda ("Golda Meir becomes antihero
in Kadima race," August 23.)

Meir was a woman who devoted her entire life to Israel, who admitted to
neglecting her family in her single-minded determination to see the fulfillment
of the creation of the state and take an active part in all it entailed.

She cared not for frivolous matters, lived in very modest circumstances and,
like the other "founding fathers," was solely concerned with the welfare of the
Jewish people.

Right-wing, left-wing, secular, religious or anything else - all the original
members of Knesset devoted their lives to Israel. We have not seen the likes of
Golda, David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin in many years.

Did they make mistakes? Sure they did. No one can go through what they did
without making mistakes, even serious ones. Yet whether we agreed with their
policies or not, we have to admire the great efforts they put into the work of
making Israel a home for the Jewish people.

What has Livni done so far to earn our admiration? Putting UN forces in charge
of what happens with Hizbullah, something she pushed through with great
enthusiasm at the end of the last Lebanon war? We are going to reap the very
undesirable results of that one in the near future.

HULA K. SMITH

Bat Yam

Sir, - In the case of Gilad Schalit, Tzipi Livni should follow Golda Meir's
example. Golda was ruthless against terrorists who harmed Israelis. She chased
the murderers of our Olympic athletes to their deaths, albeit with one
unfortunate mistake when an innocent man was killed.

The inhuman thugs who hold Schalit are thumbing their noses at us, and we treat
them as negotiating partners!

Advice is simple to give, I know. Still, those up there should know what to do.

YAN SEVER

Kibbutz Moran

We'd like to be next

Sir, - We were delighted to read in "Jewish Agency cedes N. American aliya to
Nefesh B'Nefesh" (September 1) of the cooperation agreement signed in the US
between Nefesh B'Nefesh and the Jewish Agency. The Zionist Federation of Great
Britain and Ireland works with both organizations. In the past few years there
has been some cooperation, helped by our efforts to improve the situation.

We believe the process of aliya from the UK would be further encouraged, and
streamlined, by an arrangement similar to that signed in the US.

ANDREW BALCOMBE, Chairman

Zionist Federation of

Great Britain and Ireland

Jerusalem

'You don't say!'

Sir, - Bank Supervisor Rony Hizkiyahu's feigned incredulity at how the banks
have abused the privilege of setting fees reminded me of the classic line by
Claude Rains in Casablanca - "I am shocked!" Letting the banks determine fee
levels is like allowing an arsonist to set the fire prevention code ("Banks took
advantage of fee reform," September 1).

MICHAEL D. HIRSCH

Kochav Ya'ir

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September 2, 2008 Tuesday

Can Ahmadinejad lose the election?

BYLINE: BENEDETTA BERTI

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 872 words

HIGHLIGHT: Despite Ayatollah Khamenei's praise, the Iranian president's second
term seems far from assured. The writer is the Earhart Doctoral Fellow in
International Security Studies at the Fletcher School.

In the past week, newspapers worldwide have given ample coverage to Iran's
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his declarations in support of
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Khamenei publicly praised Ahmadinejad's policies
and the way he has been handling the nuclear crisis and confronting "the West."
Furthermore, the supreme leader encouraged Ahmadinejad to prepare for a second
term - a statement that many analysts interpreted as both an endorsement and a
forecast of the president's reelection.

However, although Khamenei's remarks have strong political significance -
especially in the race leading to the June 2009 presidential elections - it
would be too simplistic to construe them as unconditional support. Similarly, it
would be both inaccurate and premature to rely on them to infer that
Ahmadinejad's reelection is already assured.

IN FACT, three years after his decisive victory in June 2005, Ahmadinejad's
popularity has been steadily declining both within his own constituency and
among his former allies. This trend has been fueled by his failure to deal with
the ongoing economic and energy crises. Even Khamenei, only a few days after
praising Ahmadinejad's policies, urged the administration to focus on economic
reform and contain inflation, which - according to the central bank - has been
rising from 10.9 percent in 2005 to a worrisome 25.3% this summer. The
administration's economic mismanagement and massive increase in overhead are
partially to blame for this surge, which influences housing and food prices in
particular, thus strongly affecting the lives of ordinary citizens.

The ongoing economic crisis endangers Ahmadinejad's credibility and popularity
within his constituency, and increases the number of critics. Only in the past
week, former president and current head of the Assembly of Experts Ali Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani blamed Ahmadinejad's administration for the ongoing economic
and energy crises, saying the country was ready for change.

Given this decline in popularity, it seems that Ahmadinejad's reelection now
depends even more on the support of the conservative coalition, as well as on
the backing of the supreme leader. However, neither of these factors can be
taken for granted.

FIRST, SINCE the 2006 municipal elections, there has been a steady growth of the
Broad Principlists Coalition, which was created to challenge Ahmadinejad's
leadership within the conservative ranks. This ad hoc alliance, which includes
prominent politicians such as Teheran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qaliba and Majlis
Speaker (and main nuclear negotiator) Ali Larijani, won 53 out of 117 seats
assigned to the conservative block in the spring 2008 parliamentary elections.
Although Ahmadinejad's group, the United Front of Principlists, managed to hold
the majority of conservative seats, the pragmatist faction obtained an important
political result, subsequently enhanced by the election of Larijani as
parliament speaker.

The growing divisions within the conservative block and the rise of alternative
candidates such as Larijani, represent a substantial internal challenge for
Ahmadinejad, and also potentially hinder Khamenei's support. In fact, while the
ayatollah's backing of Ahmadinejad vis-^-vis his moderate opponents, already
crucial in 2005, appears solid, the level of support against candidates like
Larijani - a very close ally of the supreme leader - cannot be taken for
granted.

In this sense, Khamenei's endorsement of Ahmadinejad should not be interpreted
as unconditional, while his words encouraging the administration to engage in
long-term planning seem more a call for continuity and consistency than a
forecast of reelection. Furthermore, even if Ahmadinejad could count on
Khamenei's endorsement, it would be hard to know whether such support alone will
ensure his reelection, especially given the rift within the conservative ranks
and the depth of the economic crisis. In 1997, Mohammad Khatami won the
presidential race and defeated Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri despite the supreme leader's
support for the latter.

THEREFORE, TO ensure his reelection, Ahmadinejad needs to both address internal
challenges such as the economic crisis, and boost his personal credibility. In
this sense, he seems to be focusing on his foreign policy and on building
international strategic alliances to increase Iran's prestige and his domestic
popularity.

For the international community, this means he might be especially interested in
seeking a breakthrough in the nuclear negotiations. Any success in the nuclear
realm would boost his credibility and silence those who have been arguing that
he has mishandled both the negotiations and relations with the West.

However, the number and degree of concessions that Ahmadinejad would be prepared
to make in this context will be inevitably tied to his electoral propaganda - an
element the international community should keep in mind. International actors
should also consider the consequences of their policies on the Iranian political
arena. For instance, one of the unintended consequences of a military operation
against Iran could be a massive rise in both nationalism and support for
Ahmadinejad, as well as the silencing of the ongoing political debate.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: IRAN'S SUPREME leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's picture on a
highway billboard in Teheran. His backing of Ahmadinejad cannot be taken for
granted. (Credit: AP)

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September 2, 2008 Tuesday

US-Iranian tango

BYLINE: CHUCK FREILICH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 715 words

HIGHLIGHT: While Iran deeply resents a 232-year-old 'upstart' like the US
telling it what to do, neither does it want to become a pariah. The writer, a
former deputy national security adviser in Israel, is now a senior fellow at
Harvard's Kennedy School and a Schusterman Fellow.

For the first time, a senior US official has participated in negotiations with
Iran over the nuclear issue. Other officials have recently floated the idea of
establishing an interests section in Teheran. Hopefully, these are early
portents of an evolving US-Iran dialogue and a possible means of averting the
looming confrontation.

To date, Iran has shown no inclination to reach a negotiated end to its nuclear
program, and Western inducements to do so through increasingly stringent
sanctions have only heightened its bellicosity. Iran may, however, be starting
to feel the bite, as the West has finally started to apply some sanctions of
consequence and it has become increasingly apparent that continued defiance only
assures greater pressure.

Iran, a highly respectable member of the international community in its own eyes
and the proud bearer of an ancient heritage, deeply resents a 232-year-old
"upstart" presuming to tell it what to do. Nevertheless, it also doesn't want to
become an international pariah, subject to serious sanctions. For all its
bluster, Teheran is fully cognizant of the real balance of power.

IRAN HAS good strategic reasons for wanting a military nuclear capability; it is
not simply a whim of the mullahs. It is thus questionable whether any
combination of inducements, positive and negative, can convince it to forgo its
program. We will only know, however, if the attempt is made. If it is, only a
"grand bargain" - rapproachment with the US, an end to the threat of regime
change, integration into the world economy and some limited, fully safeguarded
civil nuclear program - may, just may, be a sufficient incentive. It probably
will not, but it's worth trying.

Engagement with Iran does not constitute appeasement, nor a slippery slope
leading to further concessions. It can be these things if mishandled, but there
is no reason for it to be anything other than a coherent, integrated policy. A
policy based solely on sticks, without carrots, will surely fail. Engagement,
however, should be conducted from a position of strength, with a concomitant
attempt to increase pressure, such as heightened restrictions on international
trade, banking and investments.

Iran is likely to demonstrate flexibility, if at all, only in the face of true
Western resolve to take severe measures. The time line is short, but Iran must
be convinced that a failure to cut a deal will lead to truly painful sanctions
even at a time of tight oil markets, such as a ban on exports of refined
gasoline products to Iran, which comprise 40 percent of its domestic
consumption, and even to a ban on imports of Iranian crude, which account for
80% of its national budget. The only alternative may be military action,
beginning with a unilateral US naval blockade and, as a last resort, an American
or Israeli attack.

THE MEDIA have recently been rife with reports of an Israeli exercise simulating
an attack on Iran, as well as dramatically overblown assessments of the
"disastrous" consequences of military action. While Iran will undoubtedly
retaliate if attacked, its options, at least vis-a-vis the US, are limited,
though certainly not painless. Given strategic realities, Iran will probably
choose to respond primarily against Israel, opening up with virtually everything
it and its Hizbullah and Hamas allies have. Israel should be ready to pay the
price of an attack if a significant delay in the Iranian nuclear program can be
achieved. Those who fear a more severe response against the US as well should be
especially supportive of the punitive economic measures suggested above.

Only a serious US engagement will convince domestic and international opinion
that all peaceful options have been exhausted and that a blockade, or even a
military strike, is necessary. Israel, which views nukes in Iran as an
existential threat, may respond to a US-Iranian "tango" with deep concern, if
not a feeling of abandonment. Upon further reflection, however, it may
understand that a tango may best serve its interests, even if a "hora" is not in
the cards - Iran's enmity runs too deep for that. A US dialogue, however, may
just provide an opening for a freeze of Iran's nuclear program. If not, it will
at least lay the groundwork for the more radical measures that may then be
required.

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September 2, 2008 Tuesday

Religion and American politics

BYLINE: IRA RIFKIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 855 words

HIGHLIGHT: Americans may tell pollsters they are fed up with religious leaders
who seek to control the political conversation, but they still desire political
leaders who espouse faith-derived personal values. The writer is the author of
Spiritual Perspectives on Globalization: Making Sense of Economic and Political
Upheaval (SkyLight Paths).

A recent Pew Center survey found that Americans are rethinking the role of
religion in public life. For a decade, a majority favored organized religious
involvement in the political arena - to the consternation of most liberal
American Jews but with the general support of the Orthodox community. Now, a
narrow majority (52 percent) believes the nation would be better off if
religious leaders stayed out of political discourse, says Pew, a leader in
religious polling.

Tellingly, most of this reconsidering has taken place among conservative
Christians, the group most identified with the mingling of religion and politics
on issues such as abortion, homosexuality and the public financing of
religious-run educational and social institutions. Four years ago, 30% of
religious conservatives said houses of worship should stay out of politics.
Today, 50% express this view, Pew reported.

How do we reconcile the poll findings with the presidential candidates and their
parties' continuing efforts to establish their religious bona fides? A flip -
but not entirely incorrect - answer is that politicians are always a step or two
behind public sentiment, no matter how visionary they try to sound.

A better answer is that because polling questions are narrowly focused, they
produce equally narrow answers; when Americans say they want religion out of
politics, they are differentiating between the often harsh and self-serving
judgments offered by media-savvy religious politicos and their own deep-seated
religiously derived values.

To put it another way, Americans favor the separation of church (or synagogue,
mosque, temple or whatever) and state even as they make their political
decisions through a prism of personal faith.

HERE'S HOW New York-based Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of CLAL-The National
Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, put it on the Washington Post Web
site "On Faith": "The separation of church and state is one of the great ideas
of the modern world. It attempted to end the thousands-year-old tradition... of
people using state power to kill other people in order to make God happy. But
the idea that faith should be separated from politics is one of the worst
expressions of 'baby-out-with-the-bathwater' thinking that has come along in
almost as many years."

Faith, he rightly explained, shapes values, which give rise, in turn, to
political inclinations. Simply put, there is no getting around the influence
that personal religious values - be they liberal or conservative - have on
political beliefs.

But its not just people who profess to have faith whose politics are shaped by
it. This is because all cultures are, at their core, vessels for disseminating
the values of the religion that shaped their development. Whether we like it or
not, we are influenced in virtually all matters by the religious culture into
which we are born, whether we are personally observant or not.

American culture - as is Israeli, Indian, British or Dutch culture, for that
matter - is infused with religious values simply because all civilizations
spring from a set of religious ideals. As Huston Smith, the renowned religion
scholar, notes: "It's [religious] revelations that set civilizations in motion
and establish their trajectories."

HERE'S HOW this works, using "justice" as an example. We take it for granted
that justice is a good thing, that a moral person strives to act in a just
manner, and that justice is a basic human right. Where do these notions come
from? From the Hebrew Bible, of course, the root of all Western religious
thinking (including Islam) and, hence, all Western notions of justice. We may
disagree on what constitutes justice, but the belief that justice is preferable
to injustice is a universally accepted value of religious origin, despite the
persistence of injustice everywhere.

By way of comparison, Eastern religions traditionally (meaning prior to the
triumph of Western norms via colonization and globalization) did not speak about
justice. Their closest equivalent was harmony. One acted not out of a sense of
what is just, but out of what advanced communal and personal harmony - a subtle
difference, but equal to justice as a force in ordering human activities.

The US consistently ranks among the most religious of industrialized Western
societies. Americans are, I believe, also among the most just of people, not
withstanding some obviously egregious failings. So don't be fooled. Americans
may tell pollsters they are fed up with those religious leaders who loudly seek
to control the political conversation - in particular those from the Christian
Right, as the Pew survey makes clear, who have tarnished religion by aligning it
too closely to partisan politics. But their desire for political leaders who
espouse faith- derived personal values and make no bones about it remains
undiminished.

Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain know this. Look for both
candidates to continue playing the personal faith card to the hilt - just as
they did during the recent televised pseudo-debate hosted by Rick Warren, one of
America's most influential Evangelical pastors.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SEN. BARACK OBAMA talks with Pastor Lars Olson and his wife
Pastor Katherine Olson after attending their Lutheran church in Ohio on Sunday.
Americans favor the separation of church and state even as they make their
political decisions through a prism of personal faith. (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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767 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 2, 2008 Tuesday

Answers, please!

BYLINE: Colette Avital

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 707 words

HIGHLIGHT: The public wants to know where the Kadima leaders stand. The writer,
a Labor MK, is a regular blogger on JPost.com's BlogCentral.

As Kadima primaries draw near and the atmosphere heats up, public statements
made by the candidates referring more to their personal qualities,
qualifications or lack thereof seem more suitable for a popularity contest than
for a substantial choice.

The real question is not which candidate will pick up the phone faster at three
a.m., but rather what kind of decision that phone call will entail and how it
will be reached. The question is one of substance.

Have Kadima's candidates digested and adopted some of the recommendations put
forward by the Winograd report? What soundly-based alternatives will stand
before them when called upon to answer the "hot line"? Will the National
Security Council, established by law, now be given enough tools and authority to
be able to provide relevant, up-to- date and serious alternatives allowing the
next prime- minister-to-be and the cabinet to reach the right decisions?

More importantly, the public at large and Kadima's voters in particular are
entitled to know where each one of the candidates stands on a wide array of
issues impacting the future of our society and our fate in this region.
Moreover, it is important to point out that decisions on such issues will have
to be taken in the very near future.

On the future of our society, for instance: What budgets will be allocated to
education? And how are we going to treat the elderly, approximately one third of
our society?

On political issues: What is going to befall our negotiations with the
Palestinians? Will they be stalled after PM Olmert's departure, or does each of
the candidates still mean to reach a real agreement by the end of 2008? We would
like to hear, loud and clear, opinions and commitments on issues touching upon
the core of our existence: the future of the welfare state, our borders,
Jerusalem, settlements.

Will the future prime minister - she or he - carry on negotiations with Syria?
Well-informed sources tell us that such negotiations have been serious, that
there is agreement on over 85% of the issues, and that the Syrians are eager to
continue. What will our response be? We all know the price to pay for peace with
Syria; we also know some of the advantages and dividends for Israel. Are Tzipi
Livni, Shaul Mofaz, Meir Sheetrit and Avi Dichter willing to hand over the Golan
Heights to Syria in return for peace?

How about the Arab Initiative, launched in March 2002 and which has been
collecting dust over the past six years? Only a couple of weeks ago Marwan
al-Muashar, former Jordanian ambassador to Israel and former foreign minister,
reminded us in an article published in the Israeli press the importance of this
document, for it proposes recognition of Israel and full normalization of
relations with us by all Arab States. Agree with it or not, the candidates owe
us a serious response to these proposals.

Do the candidates stand behind Kadima's action plan stating that "the choice
between each Israeli citizen's right to live wherever he desires and the
necessity to maintain Israel as a Jewish State demands giving up part of the
Land of Israel"?

What is each candidate's political agenda, after the founder of their movement
spoke of "painful concessions" and evacuated settlements? Will this entail
further evacuations? In this context, are they ready to allow settlers who wish
to leave the settlements now to get compensation?

In the United States, currently engrossed in an election flurry, the
presidential nominees are quizzed about every last detail of their political
platform. Americans care about such issues as their future president's energy
policy, his opinion on education or the war in Iraq and his religious
convictions. His approach to health care and contingencies regarding Iran are of
essence as well. The candidates are queried about these time and again, and
later held to their word. So why isn't it like that here?

Our candidates have thus far avoided addressing any of these questions. Perhaps
they believe they can get away with the "silence treatment" regarding matters of
grave importance. After all Ariel Sharon, founder of their party, was famous for
keeping silent for long periods of time. But it won't work this time, and
shouldn't. There is simply too much at stake.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: LEADERSHIP CANDIDATES Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz. Do they
support the Arab Initiative of 2002? (Credit: AP)

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768 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 2, 2008 Tuesday

Calling Israel's bluff

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1896 words

HIGHLIGHT: Between Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas, Fatah and their international
collaborators, not a day goes by when they don't. OUR WORLD

Hamas and its international collaborators have a new plan. To forcibly end
Israel's embargo of Gaza's seacoast, they intend to operate a "ferry" service
that will sail from Cyprus to Gaza every couple of weeks. The plan was announced
on Friday by American Hamas collaborator Paul Larudee. Larudee and 32 other
Hamas collaborators from North America and Europe disguised themselves as "peace
activists" last week as they ran the gauntlet of Israel's naval blockade in a
bid to facilitate Hamas's unfettered access to the high seas.

Israel is fully cognizant of what these Hamas collaborators are up to. It knows
they are trying to force the country to concede its vital interest in
maintaining the blockade to prevent massive quantities of heavy weaponry from
being brought into Iran's Hamas-controlled enclave. Israel understands what is
at stake. But it has absolutely no idea how to contend with this new challenge.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post over the weekend, defense officials said that
they have no policy for contending with additional ships in international waters
that set sail for Gaza with the declared aim of ending Israel's blockade of the
coastline.

The Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government claims that its handling of last week's
blockade runners was successful. By allowing the ships to sail to Gaza and then
return to Cyprus, the government argues that it averted a public relations trap
that Hamas and its collaborators set for it. Had Israel interdicted the ships,
they argue, Hamas and its allies on board would have been able to demonize
Israel by accusing it of preventing humanitarian aid from getting through to
suffering Hamas supporters and regime officials in Gaza.

While Israel's decision to capitulate rather than defend its interests did in
fact avert bad headlines, that success should be a comfort to no one. For
Israel's decision to permit the ships to sail to and from Gaza exposed two of
the government's most egregious and devastating strategic failings.

IN STANDING down in the face of Hamas's high seas challenge, Israel demonstrated
yet again that it prefers to capitulate rather than pay a price to defend its
vital interests. And Israel's readiness to surrender came as no surprise to
either Hamas or its European and North American agents. They have watched for
three years as Israel has taken no action to end Hamas's use of Gaza's border
with Egypt to smuggle sufficient quantities of advanced weaponry into the area
to transform Gaza from a tactical nuisance into a strategic threat to southern
Israel. Through its refusal to launch a military operation to retake control
over Gaza's international border, Israel has daily demonstrated its
unwillingness to fight to secure its vital interests of ending Iranian
encroachment on its borders, and weakening with the intent of overthrowing the
Hamas regime in Gaza. Knowing this, Hamas and its international collaborators
rightly assumed that Israel would similarly take no action to prevent their
access to the high seas.

The blockade runners were also quick to capitalize on was Israel's other major
failing: Its consistent refusal to recognize and contend with the role of
international collaborators in advancing the Palestinian war effort against it.
Hamas's international allies knew that Israel would take no action against the
ships because they have watched for years as Israel has capitulated to their
colleagues who challenge the IDF in support of Palestinian terrorists in Judea
and Samaria. They saw for instance in the weeks leading up to their decision to
set sail to Gaza that the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government has preferred to
humiliate and court martial IDF commanders operating against terror
collaborators in Ni'ilin rather than formulate a coherent information and law
enforcement strategy against them.

Since 2001, international groups posing as peace activists and human rights
champions have enjoyed generous funding of European governments as they have
violently challenged IDF counter-terror operations in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
Operating under the aegis of groups like the International Solidarity Movement,
the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions, Anarchists Against the Wall,
Rabbis for Human Rights and other EU-funded anti-Israel groups, these terror
collaborators have actively engaged in criminal behavior to thwart lawful IDF
actions.

They have illegally entered closed military zones. They have illegally
interfered with IDF operations. They have worked openly with Palestinian terror
masters including Marwan Barghouti and Ismail Haniyeh. In so doing, these groups
have been fully integrated into the Palestinian information war against Israel
which itself is a vital component of the overall Palestinian war effort against
Israel.

Far from acting to expose these criminals as terror collaborators, and then
targeting their European governmental financiers, outlawing them, and arresting,
imprisoning or deporting their members, Israel has not even tried to challenge
their false self-identification as "peace activists." In surrendering the war of
words to its adversaries, Israel has facilitated their war efforts against it.
In legitimizing Hamas's international allies, Israel has ensured that as they
have promised, they will expand their use of blockade running ships to enable
Hamas's free access to the high seas.

The terror-enabling ships' successful challenge of the government demonstrated
once again that under the Olmert- Livni-Barak-Yishai government, Israel's
deterrent capacity has utterly collapsed. In international affairs, deterrence
is the only truly effective way to prevent war. Deterrence is predicated on a
state's ability and willingness to credibly threaten its adversaries' vital
interests if its own are endangered. Under the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai
government, Israel's deterrence has collapsed because the government freely
dispenses threats that it has no intention of carrying through. Rather than
frighten its enemies and so convince them to relent in their attacks against the
country, Israel's reckless recourse to empty threats under the current
government has emboldened them and so placed the country in ever greater
jeopardy.

THIS ABYSMAL and dangerous state of affairs was fully in evidence with the
government's decision last week to tell the local media that it had just
"reached a strategic decision" not to permit Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
Showing again its contempt for Israel's empty sloganeering, Iran announced it
has finished installing 4,000 uranium enriching centrifuges at its Natanz
nuclear facility, that it is preparing an additional 3,000 centrifuges for use,
and that it has armed Hizbullah with long range missiles.

In light of our enemies' open contempt for the government's continued use of
empty threats it is clear that far from preventing war, the government's
continued utilization of threats actually increases the likelihood of war. The
question that necessarily arises then is why is the government still making
threats that its enemies do not believe?

THE ANSWER to that central question was provided on Sunday morning at the
government's weekly meeting. That meeting was dominated by statements by Kadima
ministers who are running to replace Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in this month's
party leadership race. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Transportation Minister
Shaul Mofaz, and Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter all outdid one another
in their criticisms of Olmert's last ditch bid to conclude and accord with
Palestinian Authority figurehead Mahmoud Abbas that will commit Israel to
surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the Hamas-dominated PA before he
leaves office.

Their criticisms of Olmert were shocking for what they say about the fundamental
cynicism of Kadima's would-be leaders. After all, in his feverish attempts to
strike his deal with Abbas, Olmert is simply discharging the policies that all
of them have repeatedly signed off on. Indeed, Livni has chaired Israel's
negotiating team, and Mofaz and Dichter, like Shas leader Eli Yishai have
repeatedly supported Olmert's and Livni's efforts in the face of outspoken
criticism from Likud.

The cynicism of Kadima's would-be leaders exposes the actual target audience of
the government's wholly discredited threats against Israel's enemies. That
audience is not Israel's enemies, but the Israeli people. The government knows
full well that none of Israel's enemies take its threats seriously. Between
Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas, Fatah and their international collaborators, not a day
goes by when Israel's bluff isn't called. The government makes those threats not
because it actually intends to defend the country, but because it wants us all
to believe that it will defend the country despite mountains of evidence to the
contrary.

BUT BEYOND that, the criticisms that Olmert's own Kadima colleagues launched
Sunday against the policies he is advancing with their full support and
participation tells us two fundamental truths about the nature of the Israeli
public.

First, it shows us that Kadima's leaders understand that in advancing the cause
of capitulation to the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, they are
acting against the wishes not only of the general public, but of their own party
members. Livni, Mofaz and Dichter are vying for the support of some 70,000
Kadima members who alone have the right to vote in their primaries. By attacking
Olmert for carrying out capitulationist policies they themselves have supported,
they are signaling that they understand that those policies are opposed not only
by their political opponents, but by their political supporters.

The second fundamental fact that their condemnations of Olmert exposes is a
troubling one. While Livni, Mofaz and Dichter - like Yishai - understand that
Israel's enemies are unmoved by their protestations of readiness to protect the
country - they all believe that Kadima members and the Israeli public as a whole
are willing to believe their cynical lies. And the polls seem to back them up.
Despite the Kadima-Labor-Shas government's systematic destruction of Israel's
deterrent capacity, public opinion polls show that one in five Israelis still
intend to vote for Kadima in the next elections. Shas's support has not been
significantly degraded since the last elections. As for the Labor party, its
recent fall in the polls is due to the exposure of a new corruption scandal
surrounding Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his wife, not to Barak's
facilitation of Hamas's entrenchment in Gaza. Although Likud still leads Kadima
in the polls, the Right's projected parliamentary majority is a narrow one.

The Kadima ministers' cynical manipulation of public opinion so prominently on
display on Sunday morning together with the utter collapse of Israel's deterrent
capacity makes clear the Right's central political challenge today. Likud
Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu and his allies must convince the public to call the
government's bluff, just as Israel's enemies have. Until the public stops its
habit of believing wholly discredited threats and declarations on the part of
the government, the incompetent politicians scuttling Israel's national security
will continue their failed policies. Moreover, they will stand a chance of
winning the public's trust to continue on this disastrous course for years to
come.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: LIKUD CHAIRMAN Binyamin Netanyahu and his allies must convince
the public to call the government's bluff, just as Israel's enemies have.
(Credit: Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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769 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 1, 2008 Monday

Dichter's disgrace

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 308 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Avi Dichter's intended transition from respected head of the Shin Bet to
would-be stellar cabinet minister was sullied almost from the start. As minister
for internal security, in early 2007 he declared that he could find no worthy
successor to Israel Police inspector-general Moshe Karadi from within the ranks
and thus would go outside to appoint a new chief.

But his attempts to appoint the outgoing Prisons Service head and various Shin
Bet and IDF ex-officers all failed, and Dichter was forced sheepishly back to
the existing police leadership, selecting David Cohen.

On Sunday, Dichter compounded that unhappy appointment by backing Cohen and
announcing that he intends to require one of the best and brightest of senior
officers to leave the force for no good reason and plenty of bad ones.

Charismatic and highly regarded, Southern District chief Cmdr. Uri Bar-Lev
helped smooth the trauma of the 2005 disengagement and has overseen a drastic
fall in crime. His very success in a job that Cohen once filled is the cause of
his downfall - the police commissioner is apparently jealous.

Cohen wanted to send Bar-Lev on (unnecessary) study leave. Bar-Lev refused.
Cohen then announced that Bar-Lev would be leaving the force. Bar-Lev said he
was doing no such thing.

On Sunday minister Dichter made his choice. He backed the commissioner who has
no justification for dismissing a fine officer and said he is set to approve
Bar-Lev's ouster, pending a hearing.

Dichter's fig-leaf is to claim that Bar-Lev does not respect the police
hierarchy. But respect must be earned, and when the men at the top act out of
narrow spite and weakness, they lose it.

It is not Uri Bar-Lev who should be leaving the police, but his boss, Cohen -
along with the former tough security chief, Dichter, who has so dismally
capitulated and failed to protect an admirable cop.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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770 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

September 1, 2008 Monday

'Shalom kita aleph'

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 710 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

The summer vacation is over and Israel's 1,466,000 pupils are headed back to
school this morning. Yesterday's cabinet meeting was dedicated to the start of
the new school year, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert saying that Israel's
"existence" was dependent "foremost" on education.

He said the government was devoting NIS 30 billion to schools and had opened 91
new facilities. Little was said about the 2,000 fewer staffers around this year
compared to last.

Olmert then turned the floor over to Education Minister Yuli Tamir, who briefed
the cabinet on the much- touted Ofek Hadash (New Horizon) school reforms. The
reforms are meant, among other things, to enable teachers to spend more time
with individual students. The ministry has undertaken a saturation advertising
campaign to promote Ofek Hadash.

PROMISES TO reform the school system are nothing new. In 1968 there was talk of
integrating children from different social and economic backgrounds into the
then newly-minted junior high schools. That has yet to fully happen.

Another reform was introduced in 2004 by Limor Livnat during her tenure as
education minister. Called the Dovrat Plan, after the committee that conceived
it, its major innovation was to evaluate and reward teachers by merit. Teachers
who failed to produce results were to be removed from the system by newly
empowered principals.

This newspaper strongly championed Dovrat.

Alas, the teachers' unions launched a concerted campaign against Livnat. Her
successor, Tamir, was quick to bury Dovrat and replace it with Ofek Hadash,
which borrowed some ideas from Dovrat - though mostly after watering them down.
For instance, like Dovrat, Ofek demands a minimum number of at-school hours from
teachers, but fewer than Dovrat.

Ofek won the Histadrut Teachers Union's blessing but is still opposed by the
Secondary School Teachers Association. Aspects of Ofek were implemented in 313
schools last year, and the promotional ad campaign is claiming glowing
successes.

Unfortunately, the "horizon" keeps receding. Though Tamir has embarked on a
cross-country tour using a specially hired bus bedecked with signs announcing:
"Education's Time has Come," the reality, uncooperatively, belies the hype.

Ofek's most important component - the one particularly ballyhooed in the
ministry ads - is smaller class sizes. Relative to other advanced countries,
Israel has the distinction of cramming far too many pupils into a classroom.
Ofek was to reduce the maximum number of youngsters per classroom from 40 to 32.
To facilitate this, 8,000 new classrooms were to be constructed, 40% of them in
the Arab sector. The needs in the Druse sector remain particularly pressing.

Tamir still talks about it, but in the budget just approved by the cabinet, the
plan to shrink class sizes has been put off for another year. In essence, the
postponement rips much of the guts out of Tamir's horizon, leaving little more
than the facade of reform. Even the ministry's own rosy promotions spoke of
adding only 400 new schools to Ofek's framework this year, meaning that the
heavily hyped reforms were not to go nationwide - Tamir's advertising campaign
notwithstanding.

AN ADDITIONAL blow, however, is the Treasury's decision to decrease its
contribution to local authorities' school outlays. Schools will now be financed
according to the socioeconomic status of the student body, which will be
determined by the parents' education (40% of the assessment quotient); by
whether pupils reside in the "periphery" (20%); by family income (20%); and by
the parents' country of birth (20%). This inevitably means that middle-class
schools, which most pupils attend, will be starved of funds.

The Education Ministry's ad campaign is aimed at making Israelis feel good about
their school system. Were the Finance Ministry to provide enough money, and the
Education Ministry better management, we might see an actual - as well as a
perceptual - improvement.

The good news is that for most students in most localities, the school year will
start on schedule. And first-graders will be greeted by the traditional: "Shalom
kita aleph." The bad news, however, is that again this year, we will be seeing
too little across-the-board improvement in the quality of our children's
education.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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The Jerusalem Post

September 1, 2008 Monday

When did the rot set in?

BYLINE: JEFF BARAK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 906 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.

It's hard to feel sorry for Ehud Barak, forced out of his 370 square meter
apartment on the 31st floor of the Akirov Towers in Tel Aviv. Barak has
apparently realized that a more modest address, less identified with the very
pinnacle of the Israeli business elite, would perhaps be more suitable for
someone who aspires to the premiership as head of the Labor Party.

But showing some of the business acumen that helped him make his fortune so
quickly after leaving public office, Barak is not prepared to move out cheaply -
according to some newspaper reports he has set a price of around $11 million for
the apartment which he bought for $2.5 million at the end of 2006. In
comparison, Yitzhak Rabin's former duplex, also in a ritzy Tel Aviv
neighborhood, was recently sold but reportedly for a much more modest price -
NIS 4 million, a 10th of what Barak is asking for.

And a more telling comparison can be found in the excellent Menachem Begin
Heritage Center museum in Jerusalem. There you can find a reconstruction of
Begin's apartment at 1 Rehov Rosenbaum in Tel Aviv, his private residence until
he became prime minister in 1977. The simply furnished living room is exactly
like the living rooms of other lower middle-class Israelis of that period, who
made do with very little. There is no room there for the grand piano so beloved
of Barak. Begin, despite being the most grandiose and theatrical of politicians,
lived a spartan way of life and handed this down to his children. His son Benny,
a Jerusalemite, was famous when a Knesset member for taking the bus to the
Knesset rather than using his MK's car.

Begin's successor, Yitzhak Shamir, as befits another former member of the Jewish
underground, also lived modestly. His son Yair, the successful hi-tech
entrepreneur, said that his father was disappointed in him when he decided to
leave the air force, where he had been a successful career officer, in favor of
the business world. Shamir senior was troubled by the thought, Yair said, that
his son was giving up a job in which the security of the state was paramount in
return for one where money became the prime object.

SO WHERE did the rot set in? On some levels, and as with so many other things,
with Binyamin Netanyahu. He was the first prime minister to whom money was seen
to really matter and who enjoyed the better things of life, preferably at
somebody else's expense. He did not hide his fondness for Cuban cigars,
expensive travel and sharp clothes, nor his unshakeable belief that he was
entitled to these luxuries. Now living in a villa in Caesarea, with Arkadi
Gaydamak as a neighbor, Netanyahu set the tone for others to follow, with Ehud
Olmert taking it to unfortunate extremes.

It would, of course, be naive to think that our politics was a haven of
puritanical idealism before Netanyahu took the stage. Begin came to power due,
in no small part, to the stench of corruption surrounding the then ruling Labor
Party, but Netanyahu injected a new atmosphere of "money talks."

Netanyahu wanted to Americanize Israeli politics and cultivated a coterie of
rich foreign businessmen to provide him with the means to take power. His highly
successful "Netanyahu is good for the Jews" 1996 campaign slogan, for example,
with its racist undertones as to what this means for Arab citizens, was funded
by the Australian Lubavitcher businessman Joseph Gutnik, then at the peak of his
wealth.

Netanyahu's dreams of turning the Prime Minister's Office into an Israeli White
House faltered, however, on the rocks of the local political reality, and he
left his successor with a Likud central committee that when challenged by Limor
Livnat as to whether the Likud was in power solely to provide its members with
jobs, brazenly answered her with a resounding yes.

Netanyahu's rise to power also reflected a wider change in society, in which the
modern-day hero was no longer the daring IDF commando or pioneering scientist,
but rather the rich businessman who knew how to triple his fortune, not by
producing anything of intrinsic worth, but by playing the stock market.
Suddenly, the value of a person lay not in what he or she had done, but in how
much he was worth. Once knocked off their perch as prime minister, the first
thing Netanyahu and Barak sought to do was make money, and lots of it, before
returning to politics.

While there is nothing wrong with wealth, and not having the funds to live in
the Akirov Towers is also no guarantee of wisdom, as Sderot resident Amir
Peretz's tenure as defense minister proved, there is something distasteful about
our former leaders using their status as ex-premiers to cash in. Public service
in and of itself, and not just as a springboard to the lecture circuit and
multinational boardrooms, should also be seen as a career in which one can take
pride. Ehud Barak has a fine record of public service behind him, as Israel's
most decorated soldier and as the first national leader to seek a final- status
peace agreement with the Palestinians, and it is a shame that his reputation has
been tarnished by a weakness for the high life. A leader of a social-democratic
party simply cannot afford to live with the economic elite of the elite if he
wishes to be taken seriously.

Barak's decision to move house shows he is serious about challenging once more
for the premiership, but come Election Day, it is going to take more than just a
change of address to alter his political fortunes.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: EHUD BARAK. Did he take the tone that Netanyahu set to extremes?
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The Jerusalem Post

September 1, 2008 Monday

Debate policies, not personalities

BYLINE: ISI LEIBLER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 912 words

HIGHLIGHT: Netanyahu should outline his platform and not get dragged into
mudslinging. Candidly Speaking

Much of the nihilism surrounding our government these past years is related to
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's insistence that "a prime minister does not require
an agenda."

Few of us harbor the illusion that Olmert's departure will, overnight, usher in
a new era of stability and good leadership. Nevertheless the time has come to
demand that politicians engaged in the current leadership campaign stop abusing
and bad-mouthing one another and focus instead on policies, providing the nation
with a genuine opportunity of debating the security and societal issues.

Politics remains at the lowest level it has ever been. True, at least in the
short term, the trials and pending indictments of so many key politicians are
likely to deter new leaders from indulging in questionable practices. But even
Tzipi Livni, one of the front runners to be the next prime minister, whose
principal electoral asset is that she has never been accused of indulging in
corrupt practices, seems relaxed about associating politically with Tzahi
Hanegbi, the former minister who to this day cannot appreciate the
inappropriateness of his having won a high place in the Likud primaries by being
best at providing "jobs for the boys."

Today, more than ever, there is greater awareness of the need to overhaul the
electoral system. But there is scant likelihood that structural reform which
would enable the public to reward and punish politicians according to their
performance will be realized any time soon. The sectoral, one-dimensional
parties most threatened by such reform - in particular the haredim - are being
courted by all the prime ministerial candidates and are, regrettably, likely to
occupy a pivotal role in the formation of a future government.

THE MANNER in which the primaries in Kadima are playing out exemplifies
everything that is rotten in our politics.

Kadima is a "virtual" party based primarily on the disastrous policies of
unilateral disengagement, which its leaders would prefer to forget. Nobody is
able to define what the party represents because most of the Kadima MKs defected
from other parties - not out of ideological motivation but simply to enhance
their personal ambitions. Genuine political discussions are rarely expressed.
Instead we are continuously subjected to ongoing personality conflicts and
attempts by candidates to demolish the characters of their opponents.

On the rare occasions when policies do intrude, they are often manifested in an
extremely primitive and even harmful manner - as when Shaul Mofaz got on the
soapbox and, to promote his credentials as a hard-liner, irresponsibly called
for all-out war with Iran.

Livni, the frontrunner for the Kadima leadership, assures us that she would make
the ideal prime minister. But beyond pontificating about Kadima being a moderate
centrist party purporting to reflect the views of the bulk of Israelis, she
still declines to provide the nation with a report on the negotiations she has
been conducting behind closed doors with the Palestinians. Nor is she even
willing to enlighten her own party members about what she proposes to concede to
the Palestinians in the "shelf agreement."

Livni has also failed to provide any indication of to how she intends to deal
with the Hamas or Hizbullah threats. In fact, all the signals suggest that she
lacks any kind of long-term strategic plan and would simply continue responding
to situations as they arise.

Labor Party leader Ehud Barak, whose political standing has plummeted over the
past weeks, has released a wide range of contradictory security policies
alternating between dovish and hawkish and guaranteeing that nobody knows what
he really thinks. This gives him the opportunity to zigzag according to his
perception of the opinion polls. His only consistent theme has been the personal
demonization of all his political opponents.

THE OPPOSITION has until now also failed to have a major impact on policy
debates. Binyamin Netanyahu is aware that he faces an overwhelmingly hostile and
heavily biased media undoubtedly poised to launch yet another hysterical "anyone
but Bibi" campaign. His advisers appear to have convinced him to maintain a
relatively low profile and avoid providing the press with any pretext to
demonize him.

But the time has now surely arrived for him to emerge, outline his policy
platform and establish the framework for a genuine national policy debate.

Unlike all the other aspirants to the premiership, Netanyahu does have a
genuinely coherent strategic outlook relating to the Palestinian Authority,
Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and the Iranian threat. By outlining his policies and
simultaneously resisting efforts by his opponents to drag him into mudslinging
matches, he could ensure that, for the first time in 20 years, we will have an
election in which the core issues facing the nation are debated.

Nor should Netanyahu limit himself to security issues, which are understandably
the main preoccupation of the nation. He must also aggressively promote his
platform on other areas such as the fragile economy, education, water and the
various long-term infrastructure issues that have been neglected by politicians
concerned only about immediate problems.

If Netanyahu succeeds in reviving the first serious national political debate
about our future since the Oslo Accords, he will have made an important
contribution to the well-being of the nation, and probably also advanced himself
to the premiership.

ileibler@netvision.net.il

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: BINYAMIN NETANYAHU. Could we have, for the first time in 20
years, an election in which the core issues are debated? (Credit: Bloomberg)

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September 1, 2008 Monday

Letters

BYLINE: Shifra Tarem, I. Kemp, Ron Goodden, Sharon Altshul, Shivta Wenkart,
Aymon Fabbricotti, Jan Sokolovsky, Mark L. Levinson, Rochelle Sobel, Cathy
Silberman

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1130 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Two women...

Sir, - Other than both being women in politics, there is little comparison
between Tzipi Livni and Golda Meir ("Tzipi's Golda problem," Gil Hoffman, August
29).

Golda was very much older than Livni is now and she had a health problem. She
was more or less at the end of her career and was brought in as a unifying
element because of the squabbles between Yigal Allon, Yitzhak Rabin and Moshe
Dayan.

Shaul Mofaz introduced the comparison to point out that a woman cannot be prime
minister because she has not been a general, although not all our male prime
ministers were generals.

SHIFRA TAREM

Rishon Lezion

...in politics

Sir, - Whether one was for Golda Meir or against her, she was worthy of great
respect.

She would not have remained in a corrupt government such as we have now; she
would not have tolerated a PM under endless investigation staying in power. She
would not have led absurd "peace" negotiations with a Palestinian leader who is
nothing more than a bad mirage.

She would not have been a party to the release of endless numbers of Palestinian
prisoners, some with blood on their hands, getting nothing in return; she would
not have stood for Israelis suffering continuing rocket and mortar attacks from
Hamas; she would not have gone along with the useless, and worse, UN peace
treaty 1701 ending the second Lebanon war; and she would have known when to say
no to the international community regardless of the consequences when our very
existence was threatened.

She put her country before herself and her own political ambitions and took full
responsibility for her mistakes.

I. KEMP

Nahariya

Palin's good for McCain

Sir, - The Obama campaign has been perfectly trumped by the elevation of Alaska
Governor Sarah Palin to the vice-presidential spot on John McCain's ticket.
Anyone who watched her initial campaign speech Friday can have little doubt of
that.

This seems to have left the Democrats reeling, committing an immediate double
faux pas by seeming to denigrate both Palin's gender and her small-town origins.
How typically out of touch with mainstream America, and with the continuing
sense of loss among women who witnessed Hillary Clinton being humbled by the
male power structure calling the shots in her own party.

Gov. Palin offers voters solid executive experience that everyone else on both
sides seems to lack; she stands as McCain's first best decision ("'Coldest
state-hottest governor' VP candidate an independent figure," August 31).

RON GOODDEN

Atlanta

How about a little

'Schalit-monitoring'?

Sir, - Israel has murderers in prison who can study and receive university
degrees and regular visits from their families. Gilad Schalit is being held
without so much as a sighting by the Red Cross.

Nine Free Gaza Movement activists plan to remain in Gaza to do "long-term
monitoring." A visit with Gilad Schalit as his 800th day in captivity rapidly
approaches would truly be a humanitarian cause to celebrate ("Israel allows Gaza
'blockade-breaker' boats to leave unimpeded for Cyprus," August 31).

SHARON ALTSHUL

Jerusalem

Hurricane Ehud

Sir, - Is there nothing to stop Hurricane Ehud, swelling to a speed of 450
prisoners released per month? ("Gustav swells to dangerous Cat 3 storm off
Cuba." August 31.)

SHIVTA WENKART

Arad

Inferiority complex?

Sir, - But what are the Palestinians really saying - that one Israeli is worth
1,000 of them? ("PA claims Israel has no objections to Barghouti's release,"
August 31.)

AYMON FABBRICOTTI

Genoa

Easy gesture

Sir, - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Israel's release of 198
Palestinian terrorists, timed to coincide with her visit, as "a sign of
goodwill" ("Rice: Israel-PA document in next month is unlikely," August 26). But
just a few weeks ago, the safety of US citizens was more important to her than
"goodwill," when she and the State Department acknowledged that Israel was
correct in identifying several Gazan candidates for graduate fellowships in the
US as suspected terrorists, and denied them student visas.

I guess that goodwill for terrorists depends on whose citizens may be gored.

However, here is a really easy goodwill gesture Secretary Rice could make to us
- no terrorists involved, purely humanitarian. She could override the arbitrary
decision of the US Consulate in Jerusalem and instruct it to issue a visa to the
caregiver of 86-year-old Harriet Weitz, now legally blind, so that she and her
husband Mike can attend the wedding of their grandson in New York in October
("Filipino caregiver of octogenarian American immigrant denied US visa," August
20).

JAN SOKOLOVSKY

Jerusalem

Let's avoid confusion

Sir, - According to Celebrity Grapevine (August 31), film director Yoel Silberg
was born in 1927 in "Eretz Israel." By using this term for what The Jerusalem
Post has, I believe, normally called "Palestine" ever since the newspaper itself
was called The Palestine Post, is the paper trying to avoid confusion between
British Mandatory Palestine and today's Palestine Authority?

If so, by ceding the name it is inadvertently strengthening the myth of a
long-standing Arab Palestine in which Jews never belonged.

I'd rather see the full term "British Mandatory Palestine"; and "territory
controlled by the Palestinian Authority" would be preferable to the shorthand
"Palestine" we sometimes read, which also promotes a confusing view of present
and historical facts.

MARK L. LEVINSON

Herzliya

Well done, Metuna!

Sir, - In Israel, road crashes have killed approximately 30,000 people since
1948 and 345 people in 2006 alone. A thousand individuals are hospitalized each
week. A Swedish tourist was run over on July 5 while sunbathing at a Haifa
beach.

The Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT) would like to commend
Metuna, a leading Israeli road safety organization, for organizing 24/7: A Day
of No Road Accidents, July 22-24, with the slogan "Wheel in Our Hands" reminding
people that we are each responsible for our own lives and those of others on the
road.

A wheel was passed from Metula to Eilat, and many towns held road safety
activities as the wheel passed by. MK Gilad Erdan, chairman of the Subcommittee
for the War on Traffic Accidents, received the wheel at the Knesset and pledged
to continue fighting for stricter punishments for offenders.

This program serves as an excellent model for other countries. Road crashes are
projected to dramatically increase over the next 20 years if conditions do not
improve. ASIRT has been fighting to improve global road safety since 1995, when
American medical student Aron Sobel, 25, was killed in a bus crash in Turkey.
ASIRT is dedicated to the principle that road crashes are predictable and
preventable ("Scream & weep," Letters, August 26).

ROCHELLE SOBEL

CATHY SILBERMAN

Association for Safe

International Road Travel, Potomac, Maryland

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September 1, 2008 Monday

A radical suggestion for tired parents

BYLINE: ELANA MARYLES SZTOKMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1229 words

There is a running joke among parents this time of year: The kids' vacation is
over on August 31, and the parents' starts on September 1. Well, not for me. I
really do not see the start of school as a vacation.

For me, as a parent, school is a lot of hard work. It's the morning routine, the
afternoon routine, the homework, the meetings, the endless notes, the forms to
sign, the messages from teachers, the arrangements, the special events and extra
instructions, the packing lunches and constantly buying rolls and on and on and
on. I always manage to miss something, despite all my efforts, and someone
always ends up upset. Honestly, I hate school.

Part of what makes my life as a school parent perpetually trying is the Israeli
culture of education in which even the slightest deviation from norms is treated
as sinful. From the time children are in preschool, they are expected to eat the
same foods at the same time of day and in "correct" amounts - not too much and
not too little. Kids are expected to sit when everyone sits, to listen when
everyone listens, to speak when everyone speaks and to play in the sand when
it's sand time. Rights and wrongs are absolute, like multiple choices about the
interpretation of literary texts. School culture is all about creating and
conforming to norms.

What really gets me, though, is the morning routine. Getting four kids out the
door from 6:35 to 7:30 is, I'm sorry to report, a nightmare. This, combined with
the culture that does not allow for any slight deviation - not even an 8:01
arrival, heaven forbid - is bad for parents, bad for kids and bad for culture,
and probably contributes to the rate of car accidents. The 8:01 punishment time
is as hard on teachers as it is on students, a rare moment when both teachers
and students are subject to the same glares and finger-waving from the
administration.

Teachers, who are often parents as well, have to jump through hoops to make it
to that first class. One woman I know leaves home at 7 to get to the 8 a.m.
class at a school five minutes from home - between drop offs and morning
traffic, that's how long the commute takes. But no matter what, teachers are
reprimanded just as students are for not immaculately navigating what is
undoubtedly a high- stress routine.

BUT IT'S worse for the kids. For a child to walk into school at 8:01 is
considered an excuse for shaming, ridicule and anger. In my son's elementary
school, the "policy" was to place students who walk in late, whether at 8:02 or
8:42, for an hour in the principal's office. I only learned about this on the
day I drove my son and pulled up to the school as the clock read 8:01. I thought
it was fine, but he went into hysterics and refused to get out of the car. So I
said wrote a note to the principal, explaining that there was some extra traffic
that morning. After school he came home and told me that the principal did not
accept the note and said instead, "Tell your father to leave earlier in the
morning."

The principal's message was not only drenched with misguided assumptions about
our family life, but was also a troubling example of a principal using a child
to reprimand his parents. That's just revolting.

Mornings are legitimately difficult. Planning an entire day, predicting every
possible scenario for the next eight hours and remembering to include all
necessary items into one easily toted bag is challenging enough for an adult.
Facilitating this process for an entire family while everyone is still yawning,
and adding to it the demands of personal hygiene and its accompanying
resistance, it particularly draining. Getting it all done at an hour when the
rest of the Western world is still drinking coffee is a little insane. Doing it
six days a week without a proper weekend leaves little respite. The constant
struggle to get everyone out with their bodies and souls intact, make it through
rush hour and arrive everywhere on time is enough to make me want to give up and
homeschool.

I WOULD like to suggest something else: Maybe we shouldn't care so much about
students' presence at 8:01, or even 8:20. Maybe the first thing kids should hear
when they arrive is not, "Why are you late?" but rather "How are you doing
today?" Sounds obvious, but it's unfortunately not the standard practice.
Moreover, the first activity in the morning can be something other than one that
requires absolute silence and stillness on the part of the students, such that
the slightest motion such as the swinging of a door ruins everything.

Maybe that first half hour can be spent in small groups working on puzzles,
games, building and other educational activities, where kids brains slowly warm
up while they socialize with their friends. Maybe the first half hour can be
spent in group sharing, going around the room and finding out what's happening
in people's lives and whether they can use support and friendship. Maybe the
first half hour can be spent on stretching, exercise or yoga, activities that
are considered a quite healthy way to start a day and where late arrivals can
blend in.

Or maybe it can be a reading and homework time, where kids can get some extra
help if they need it, or find some space to enjoy a good book before the rush of
school starts. This way, coming on time has extra benefits, positive
reinforcement, rather than negative reinforcement and shaming for being late. We
should really be thinking about how we spend those first few minutes of the day
to make it a time of goodness and care rather than of force and control.

BEYOND THAT, I would like to suggest something a bit radical. I think schools
should actually start at 9 instead of at 8. This would not only ease up on the
morning pressure, but would provide a useful solution to one of this country's
worst problems - a school system that finishes midday. I'm suggesting shifting
the school day from 8-1:20 to 9-3, with an extra 40 minutes for lunch (yes,
lunch).

The inspiration for this idea is a recent study by the National Sleep Institute
reported in The New York Times that found that 28 percent of kids miss the first
hour of school because they fall asleep. Schools in Jameson County, Kentucky
conducted an experiment: They made school start an hour later. The results were
so astounding that they shocked even the researchers. After six months, not only
did students increase their arrival time and not sleep during the first hour,
but they also found that students' grades improved on local and national levels.

Moreover, there was a significant reduction in incidents of violence and
substance abuse, as well as, get ready, a significant reduction in car
accidents. A look at any city in Israel at 7:50 a.m. will give a clear picture
of where road rage is located.

Moreover, this is a way for the country to squeeze in the much-needed afternoon
school time without costing the Education Ministry any extra hours. Kids can
relax through their day, achieving the same amount without all the stress. It
makes no sense whatsoever to rush at 6 a.m. so as to finish school at 1:30, then
rushing there to rush home. It's a recipe for a stress-inundated culture. And
that is, indeed, what we have.

Life for schoolchildren should be less about conformity, rules, punctuality and
stress and more about care, warmth and acceptance. Then maybe the education
system will be playing a role in forming a better society.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: School culture is all about creating and conforming to norms.
(Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 31, 2008 Sunday

Breast-beating over Rose

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 707 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Not often - except, God forbid, in wartime - are most of the evening news
programs on all three TV channels devoted to a single story. Not often do the
tabloids dedicate most of their news pages to that story, which captures
Israel's attention across class and sectoral lines and won't let go.

We may be far from knowing exactly what happened to Rose Pizem - the little girl
no one wanted during her short life, who posthumously ended up tugging at our
heartstrings. Reported police suspicions of a plot to do away with the child
that involved others besides the 45- year-old grandfather/stepfather are yet to
be substantiated.

But whether her death was an accident, manslaughter or cold-hearted murder, the
saga is titillating enough to have made headlines both locally and overseas.
Here, it also evoked Jewish guilt and collective breast-beating.

Pundits, jurists, social scientists, welfare professionals and psychologists
have reacted to the tragedy by demanding instant new legislation. They claim
Rose's death reflects a communal failing, that we are all somehow guilty, that
the social services and police were remiss.

The response of Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, director of the National Council for the
Child, to the Post was typical. While emphatically exonerating his own
organization's conduct, he declared: "I can't understand how a child disappears
and nobody notices and reports. Israeli society has become alienated and
uncaring."

SUCH A charge seems to presuppose that all crime is preventable, that all
youngsters can be tracked and their home life monitored. Yet this is a fallacy.
No society - and Israel's is one of the world's most child-friendly and
protective - can inoculate itself against aberrant individuals.

Example: In 1999, a divorced father, Erez Tiboni, set both his children on fire
at the Tel Aviv WIZO office where he was to exercise his supervised visitation
rights. He killed his son and daughter under the noses of the authorities. In
2002, Eli Pimstein drowned his 22-month-old daughter to punish her mother, then
hid the toddler's corpse and pretended to be distraught.

What malice breeds in which minds cannot be predicted. All the more so regarding
Rose, a French child, a recent arrival in this country and entirely unknown to
the social welfare agencies. Her family's background was, moreover, so
dysfunctional that not even a soap opera scriptwriter could come up with so
convoluted a storyline.

Chief suspect Ronnie Ron (originally Ya'acov) fathered Benjamin Pizem during a
brief fling with a French woman. Benjamin married Marie-Charlotte Renault when
both were teens. They are Rose's parents.

Discovering that his biological father was Israeli, Benjamin brought his wife
and infant here to meet him; whereupon the father-in-law made a play for young
Mrs. Pizem.

Benjamin returned to France with Rose and divorced his wife. His daughter was
apparently shunted between grandmothers and institutions. Marie-Charlotte, now
mother to two more daughters fathered by Ronnie, won custody of Rose after a
battle in the French courts.

In Israel, Rose was again shunted around. For several months she was cared for
by Ronnie's mother, her biological great-grandmother, Vivianne Ya'acov.

A daughter of Vivianne's, Sigalit, was recently murdered in Kadit. She had
persistently accused Vivianne of abusing her for years, and also described the
anomalous relationship of her brother Ronnie with his daughter-in- law.

IT'S HARD to make sense of all this and determine who is directly culpable for
Rose's fate. All that seems clear is that no amount of sanctimonious posturing
can blame the Israeli collective for one family's acute deformities.

No amount of legislation can protect every single child from abuse. Adequate
laws exist in abundance - but they cannot help in all circumstances. And we do
not want to make it excessively easy for government to remove children from
their parents.

Yes, citizens have a moral obligation to report possible abuse to the
authorities. But real life isn't like Steven Spielberg's 2002 sci-fi flick
Minority Report, in which crimes are preempted by "precogs" with foreknowledge
of what's about to be perpetrated.

Israel is a self-critical society. But this time we need to cut ourselves some
slack.

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August 31, 2008 Sunday

A Jew's guide to the Olympics

BYLINE: HERB KEINON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 857 words

HIGHLIGHT: Explaining to the kids whom to cheer - and whom to jeer. Out There

Few are the things that make me feel more inadequate than being around parents
who seize every opportunity, but every opportunity, to educate their children.

These are the parents who when walking their children to the corner grocery in
the evening will gaze at the stars and explain the orbits of the planets; who
when buying a lamp will explain the principles of electricity; who when in
synagogue will take advantage of the dead time - like when the Torah is being
returned to the ark - to point out an interesting Ramban on the parasha to their
kids.

Those parents make me nervous, because I look at them and wonder why I can't be
like that, why I can't take full advantage of every single moment with the kids
to enrich their knowledge.

Once my youngest son asked me how steel was made, and I couldn't answer him,
even after looking it up on Wikipedia. The only scientific process I can explain
is how they make Coca-Cola, and that's just because I once visited the Coke
museum in Atlanta.

When I walk with the kids to the corner grocery, I tell them what they won't be
able to buy. When I take them with me to buy a lamp, I warn how hard it will be
to take it out of the box and put it together. And that dead time in shul I just
use to space out.

EXCEPT DURING the Olympics. When the Olympics come around I'm in my element,
able to use the two weeks of games and ceremonies to educate my kids in many
different spheres: geography, Jewish history, current events and family history.

"Abba," the youngest son asks, as I command that he clap for the small but proud
Haitian delegation walking into the Olympic Stadium in Beijing. "Why do I have
to root for Haiti?"

"Because Haiti let your grandmother in after the Holocaust, son," I reply,
somewhat annoyed. "You should know that. We cheered for them last time."

"Abba," the third child asks, as I prod him to cheer the Portuguese delegation.
"Why am I happy to see Portugal?"

"Because of the Azores, son, the Azores. Have you not heard of the Azores? The
Azores belong to Portugal, and Portugal let the US refuel its planes there when
it was airlifting arms to Israel during the Yom Kippur War. No other European
country would do that. Cheer, son, cheer!"

"Abba," the daughter asks, noticing that I'm not booing the entrance of the
French, as I did four years ago. "Why aren't you screaming at the French? I
thought we hate the French."

"No dear," I explain. "We don't hate the French, we don't hate whole peoples. We
never hated the French, we just intensely disliked the French government under
George Pompidou, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Francois Mitterrand and Jacques
Chirac. But now Nicolas Sarkozy is in charge, so we actually like the French."

And on and on it goes, a gold mine of educational opportunities for the
conscientious parent, the parent who never lets an educational opportunity slip
by.

Actually, this is a very Jewish way of watching the Olympics, cheering or
cursing the countries depending on their record toward the Jews and Israel.

Spain we boo, as we do Germany, Russia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and
Ukraine for the sins they committed against us in the past.

Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden we boo because of their hypocrisy and
unfriendliness to Israel over the last decade.

Romania and the Czech Republic we cheer loudly, because they are now about as
pro-Israel as you can get. Bulgaria gets a big round of applause because that
country didn't turn its Jews over to the Nazis. And I never know exactly what to
do with England.

As for Iran and Syria, when they walk into the Olympic Stadium my home sounds
like Purim after the Megilla reader just said "Haman."

I did not invent this uniquely Jewish way of watching the Olympics, I got it
from my parents, who themselves cheered and jeered depending on a country's
attitudes toward the Jews.

But things have changed since then. Then my four favorite countries were - in
this order - Israel, even though I didn't live here yet; the US, both because it
was my native country and was very good to the Jews; Holland and Haiti.

Why Holland? Because that's where my mother hid during the Holocaust. I used to
cheer wildly for their cyclists and - in the winter Olympics - for their speed
skaters. My favorite names in the Olympics always started with van der.

Until I grew up and realized that while Holland gave refuge to my mom, the Dutch
behavior to the Jews was not so great. For years I bought into the myth - as I
explained to the kids when the Dutch women's swimming relay team took to the
pool - that during the Holocaust Holland stood apart from the rest of Europe
with regard to the Jews. It didn't.

I remember once in college having a discussion about the Olympics with a close
friend from South Dakota, a Lutheran guy of Norwegian ancestry who showed no
particular sympathy for Norway's national team, or any antipathy for anybody who
once defeated the Vikings. It was 1984, an Olympic year, and he was stunned when
I told him how we Jews sit around and watch the games.

"Can't you just root for the best athletes?" he asked.

"Are you kidding?" I replied. "Not if their ancestors had a hand in the
Inquisition."

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The Jerusalem Post

August 31, 2008 Sunday

Religious Zionism: The future of a lost movement

BYLINE: ELI KAVON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 901 words

HIGHLIGHT: It is almost forbidden to ask whether the settlement of Judea and
Samaria should be the supreme value of the followers of Rav Kook and his son.
The writer, based in Florida, is an adjunct lecturer on Jewish history at
Broward Community College.

Elul is finally here. Another year has passed in the Jewish calendar, and it is
time for Jews to prepare for a new year. During the next 30 days - a time of
religious introspection and spiritual stocktaking - Jews will begin to ask
themselves some difficult but important questions: Have I acted ethically in my
business and social life? How have my actions impacted others and have I made
the world a better place? Has my ritual life been one of deep meaning,
expressing a yearning to be close to God, or have I, instead, been going through
the motions without the proper intention and thought? Did I achieve my goals
during the past year and how will I try to reach the seminal milestones in my
life in the coming year? As we prepare for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, these
are the questions we must ask ourselves.

Elul is a month of repentance for individual Jews to evaluate the meaning of
life and the human relationship to God. But as a traditional Jew and a Zionist,
I need to ask questions that transcend my own life and faith. As an individual
Jew, I am part of a broader movement that has made many important contributions
to the State of Israel, Zionism and Judaism. Yet, Religious Zionism today is at
a crucial crossroad and must turn inward to deal with difficult challenges.

Religious Zionists need to ask questions about their movement's underlying
theology and its relationship to Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora. If the
movement's adherents do not deal with these questions, Religious Zionism will be
lost, slowly slipping into irrelevance as a force in Israeli and global Jewish
life.

THE QUESTION of the messianic theology of the great Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook is
certainly the most daunting and urgent for religious and secular Zionists today.
Kook was a genius, one of the most creative and original thinkers produced by
Zionism. Kook defied his religious colleagues in Europe who were fiercely
anti-Zionist. He proposed that the modern Zionist movement, though driven by the
idealism of anti-traditional socialist pioneers, was part of God's plan to
redeem the Jewish people and humanity.

The young pioneers may not have known it, but they were providing an
infrastructure in the Land of Israel for the coming of the messiah. In a
brilliant twist, Kook countered the argument of religious Jews against Zionism -
that its adherents did not wait for the coming of the messiah to build up a
state in Israel - and turned it on its head. For Zionists both religious and
secular, he remains a hero and a role model.

Yet, today, more than 70 years after Kook's death, we must ask questions
regarding his brilliant thesis. Is the State of Israel, an entity that Kook
never lived to experience, truly the beginning of the messianic redemption of
the Jewish people? Kook's son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, believed that the triumph
in the Six Day War was a harbinger of the coming of the messiah. Rabbi Shlomo
Goren, 40 years ago the chief chaplain of the IDF, proposed that the Muslim holy
sites on the Temple Mount be blown to smithereens and a Third Temple be built.

Is this really what Abraham Isaac Kook desired? Did Zvi Yehuda Kook's fervent
messianic beliefs serve as an inspiration for Yigal Amir, the assassin of prime
minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995? It is obvious that both Kooks would never have
condoned one Jew murdering another in the name of their religious beliefs. But
we must ask ourselves: Did the deep messianic yearnings of Religious Zionism,
yearnings that saw any return to the Arabs of biblical land captured in 1967 as
a betrayal of God's messianic plan, play a part in the horrible events of more
than a decade ago?

RELIGIOUS ZIONISM has not seriously dealt with these questions. It is tantamount
to heresy in religious Zionist circles to question Kook's theology. It is almost
forbidden to ask whether the settlement of Judea and Samaria should be the
supreme value of the followers of Kook and his son. These probing questions must
be asked if Religious Zionism is to move forward as a viable movement,
countering both the tenets of secular Zionism and the beliefs of the haredim.

The month of Elul demands introspection. The time has come to acknowledge Kook's
genius and how he understood the important role secular Zionism has played in
the modern development of Judaism - while at the same time partly rejecting the
messianic activism of Kook's theology. The messiah will come when the messiah
will come. Meanwhile, there is important work for religious Zionists to
accomplish beyond the settlement of the lands of the Bible and the building of a
Third Temple.

Most Jews in Israel and the Diaspora know little of their Jewish heritage and
the importance of Judaism. We must educate them in a spirit of tolerance,
without coercion. We must counter the post-Zionists on the extreme left who deny
the Jewish identity of Israel, and we must also oppose the cynical political
wheeling and dealing of haredi parties like Shas.

Religious Zionism must claim its rightful place as a movement promoting a new
understanding of Jewish faith and the Jewish commitment to the State of Israel
and its people through aliya and education. We must purge ourselves of the Yigal
Amirs, Baruch Goldsteins and other extremists of our movement. In this new year,
perhaps, the legacy of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook will provide a model for all
Jews and will inspire them in their search for peace and truth.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 31, 2008 Sunday

Letters

BYLINE: David Bedein, Gilbert Sievers, Olga P. Wind, Shainee and Milton H.
Polin, Henry Tobias, Zelda Harris

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 887 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Nathan's wartime plea

Sir, - "Maverick peace pioneer Abie Nathan dead at 81" (August 28) neglected to
mention Nathan's legacy from the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

On Yom Kippur, when we heard planes overhead and rumors of an impending war on
two fronts, we came home from synagogue and listened to the only station that
was broadcasting - Abie Natan's "Voice of Peace." Nathan's message: "Soldiers
must refuse orders, and must not fight. Instead, they should extend a peaceful
hand to the attacking Egyptian and Syrian armies."

Throughout that day, Nathan played the Beatles' song "Give peace a chance" and
urged Israeli soldiers not to fight back, pleading, over and over, "Throw down
your guns. Do not fight back. Hug the oncoming Egyptian and Syrian troops." This
was Nathan's theme on that long Yom Kippur, and in the difficult days that
followed.

The story receives confirmation from Jim Parkes's History of Offshore Radio:
"During the October war the [Voice of Peace] ship moved to the Suez Canal. While
the soldiers listened to the station, they only laughed at requests to lay down
their arms."

A few days into the war, Israeli intelligence closed down Nathan's transmitter,
which operated from the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv.

On August 2, 1995, Dr. Aaron Lerner, the director of IMRA (Independent Media
Review & Analysis) asked Nathan about his broadcasts during the Yom Kippur war.

IMRA: Did you ever get any flack from people who remember that you called for
soldiers to put down their arms at the start of the Yom Kippur War?

Nathan: We asked for people on both sides to put down their weapons and many
people still remember it. I know many Egyptians who tell me that they heard the
broadcast. I was broadcasting off of Port Said. We had just started broadcasting
on the ship. It was on Yom Kippur and all the [Israeli] radio stations were
silent. Since I was off of Port Said I was really among the first to know that
the war had started. No one thought there was anything wrong with calling for
the soldiers not to fight. If the soldiers on both sides had only listened to me
it would have left the war for the generals....

As Lerner noted, "He wasn't broadcasting in Arabic. It was in English. And while
some Egyptians may have heard him, his audience was overwhelmingly Israeli."

DAVID BEDEIN

Israel Resource News Agency

Jerusalem

Phew!

Sir, - I'm glad that Moscow appreciates "the balanced position Israel ha[s]
taken throughout the crisis," as well as its "low profile" ("Israel walks
tightrope as US, Russia dispatch warships to Georgia," August 28). If, feeling
such appreciation, Russia is moving apace to advance military cooperation with
Syria, a sworn enemy of Israel, one wonders what the case would be were Israel
bereft of such appreciation!

GILBERT SIEVERS

Jerusalem

It's about dignity

Sir, - Re "School year still under threat despite cancellation of cuts" and
"10,000 teachers expected to leave" (both August 28):

Low salaries are only one reason we are losing good teachers. Teachers' salaries
have always been low. The main reason is lack of respect from students and
parents. Teaching a subject becomes almost impossible when class behavior is
poor and there is no respect for an honorable calling.

Restore to the teaching profession the dignity it deserves, and we'll have men
as well as women going back into the classrooms.

Our children will be the beneficiaries, and we will again be the People of the
Book.

OLGA P. WIND

Holon

Reb Arkadi isn't exactly...

Sir, - We resent Arkadi Gaydamak's condescending attitude toward modern Orthodox
and secular Jews, who he said were welcome to live in Jerusalem while implying
that the growing haredi sector observes an authentic Judaism and that haredim
are therefore Jerusalem's true and rightful citizens.

Since when did Gaydamak become an authority to decide that haredim - who make up
only one-third of Jerusalem's population - observe a more "authentic Judaism"
than, say, the modern Orthodox, who insist that Halacha address modern problems
rather than remain secluded in a ghetto? ("Gaydamak: If elected mayor, I won't
allow gay parade," August 26.)

SHAINEE AND MILTON H. POLIN

Jerusalem

...our cup of tea

Sir, - Arkadi Gaydamak states he would ban the gay pride parade if he were
elected mayor of Jerusalem. God forbid he should win this vote.

Jerusalem and Israel would be better off if we had homosexual leaders who were
honest and governed by ideals and not expediency, instead of the dubious bunch
who are our present rulers.

HENRY TOBIAS

Ma'aleh Adumim

Devastating 'wonder'

Sir, - On August 18 Judy Siegel-Itzkovich reported yet another Israeli
scientific breakthrough ("New antibiotic approach outsmarts bacteria that 'play
possum'"). Until now these bacteria, known as pseudonomas, were treated by the
wonder-drug antibiotic Gentamycin.

How many people have been cured by this drug we cannot know, but more than
150,000, my husband included, have been damaged for life through its devastating
side effects.

The drug can totally destroy the vestibular cavity, turning the patient into
what is known as a "wobbler." Without balance and with affected vision and
hearing, most people who have been thus damaged can never again lead a normal
life.

Let us hope that this latest way to tackle the problematic bacteria will succeed
without the risk of horrific side effects.

ZELDA HARRIS

Tel Aviv

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The Jerusalem Post

August 29, 2008 Friday

From Humphrey to Obama

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 696 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

On this day 40 years ago, Hubert H. Humphrey accepted the nomination of the
Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States. As rioting raged
outside the Chicago convention hall, he began his stirring oratory by citing St.
Francis of Assisi: "Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is
injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where
there is darkness, light."

Humphrey, who ultimately lost to Richard M. Nixon, may have been the last
instinctive friend of Israel to seek the presidency. It was uncomplicated to be
a friend of Israel in 1968, even though Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated
by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab, only weeks earlier.

It was clear in those days that Israel faced an Arab world that refused to
accept a Jewish state anywhere in the Middle East; that whatever its blunders,
Israel was fundamentally in the right; that Arab diplomacy from the 1917 Balfour
Declaration through to the 1967 Arab Summit in Khartoum was nothing but a litany
of rejectionism.

On the night Humphrey accepted the nomination, Barack Obama, born August 4,
1961, was seven years old. For Obama's generation, and even more for the ones
following it, political, moral or theological certainties about Israel - or
about anything else - are passe.

LAST NIGHT, as this newspaper was going to press, it was Obama's turn to accept
the Democratic presidential nomination in Denver. Delegates had decamped to the
Invesco Field at Mile High stadium so that Obama could speak in front of 75,000
enthusiastic supporters. Sen. Hillary Clinton had earlier moved that the
nomination be offered to Obama by acclimation.

In the course of the convention, delegates heard vice presidential nominee Sen.
Joe Biden declare that the Bush administration had failed to defeat al-Qaida and
the Taliban, "the people who actually attacked us on 9/11," while getting bogged
down in the war in Iraq.

They applauded as Bill Clinton declared: "Hillary told us in no uncertain terms
that she'll do everything she can to elect Barack Obama. That makes two of us."

The Obama-McCain campaign kicks off in earnest after next week's Republican
National Convention, and Israelis have been watching the presidential race with
fascination. While the Israel-America relationship is fundamentally solid and
bipartisan, Washington and Jerusalem have had their ups and downs in every
administration from Harry S Truman to George W. Bush.

We do not take it for granted that both candidates define themselves as friends
of Israel - yet friendship has to be backed by substance.

* On Iran, Obama says he does not want Israel to feel as if its "back is against
the wall," and wants America "to act much more forcefully." Yet he would also
try to talk the mullahs into being better global citizens. What specific steps
on Iran would an Obama-Biden administration take in its first six weeks?

* On borders and settlements, this is what Obama told the Post in a July
interview here: "Israel may seek '67- plus' and justify it in terms of the
buffer that they need for security purposes. They've got to consider whether
getting that buffer is worth the antagonism of the other party."

Biden once warned premier Menachem Begin that if Israel did not cease settlement
in Judea and Samaria, the US would have to cut economic aid to Israel.

Do Obama and Biden think it is possible to be "pro- Israel" in 2008 while being
sanguine over an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines? Where does the
campaign stand on strategic settlement blocs and a Jewish presence in such
Jerusalem neighborhoods as Gilo, East Talpiot and Har Homa?

* On Palestinian refugees, Mahmoud Abbas has called for the "right of return" to
Israel proper for the refugees and their descendents. What's the campaign's
position?

IT MAY be unrealistic for Israelis to expect that an administration taking
office in January 2009 will empathize with Israel the way a 1969 Humphrey White
House might have.

But what the Obama-Biden ticket needs to demonstrate is that backing for a
secure Israel living within defensible boundaries is as integral to Democrats
today as it was when Hubert Humphrey was their standard-bearer.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 29, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: David S. Wyman, Hinde Fekete, Reuven Ben-Daniel

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 720 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

The rescuers must get their due

Sir, - Yad Vashem spokesperson Estee Yaari described a meeting my colleagues and
I held earlier this summer with the museum's chief historian Prof. Dan Michman,
concerning its omission of the Bergson Group and its Holocaust rescue activities
("Yad Vashem and the Bergson issue," Letters, August 25). Ms. Yaari claimed that
Prof. Michman asked us to make suggestions for including the Bergson Group "in
the many avenues available at Yad Vashem aside from the Holocaust History
Museum." According to her, my colleagues and I "ignored" Prof. Michman's
proposal. Ms. Yaari, however, did not attend the meeting, and her account of it
is erroneous.

Prof. Michman began the meeting by stating categorically: "As a matter of
principle, Yad Vashem will never change any of its exhibits." We asked if they
would change an exhibit that was found to have a mistake. He said that once
every 10 years, the museum staff reviews the exhibits to determine if there are
any mistakes that require correction. We argued that the omission of the Bergson
Group was a mistake that requires correction now, and not in 10 years (if at
all). He replied, "An omission is not necessarily the same as a mistake."

We made specific suggestions - in the meeting, and in a subsequent letter - as
to how the museum's panels on America's response to the Holocaust could be
corrected to include acknowledgment of the Bergson Group.

Prof. Michman did claim, in the meeting, that Yad Vashem already acknowledges
the Bergson Group's achievements through "other avenues." He pointed out that in
1993 it published a Hebrew-language edition of my book The Abandonment of the
Jews and asserted that it was in print and available. But, in fact, there are no
copies in Yad Vashem's book store, and its publications department has confirmed
to me, in writing, that the book was allowed to go out of print two years ago;
it has not been available since then. Nor have I been informed of any plans by
Yad Vashem to print a new edition.

The second "other avenue" Prof. Michman cited was Yad Vashem's Web site, where,
he said, the Bergson Group's achievements are described. The site does contain a
profile of the group, but it is extremely brief - just five paragraphs long. Is
this adequate attention, on Yad Vashem's enormous Web site, to a group that
played a key role in the events leading to the rescue of more than 200,000 Jews
from the Holocaust?

To make matters worse, another item on the Yad Vashem Web site erroneously
describes the Bergson Group as "a radical right-wing group" and claims that
Bergson's march by 400 rabbis in Washington in 1943 had "absolutely no impact
whatsoever." In fact, the march was an important part of the process of alerting
Congress, the American public and the American Jewish community to the need for
rescue, and it undoubtedly played a role in galvanizing Congressional concern
about the plight of the Jews.

Clearly, Yad Vashem's "other avenues" are not the answer. A book that is
unavailable, and a Web site that contains a negligible amount of information
about the Bergson Group - some of it inaccurate - are not the way to address
this vital historical topic.

A museum that includes materials about America's abandonment of the Jews, as Yad
Vashem appropriately does, should also acknowledge those in America who spoke
out for rescue.

DAVID S. WYMAN

Amherst, Massachusetts

A betrayal

Sir, - Your editorial "Unparalleled cruelty" (August 26) led me to the
conclusion that our government acted in an uncivilized and even barbaric fashion
by releasing 198 Palestinian prisoners while a lone Israeli soldier languishes
in Palestinian captivity.

I have always seen Israel as a democracy that upholds the political and social
equality of all. Now it feels as if one Israeli soldier doesn't equal even 198
of the enemy.

HINDE FEKETE

Netanya

Come, now

Sir, - To Andrew Carew-Morton I would reply: The UN constitution stated that all
Mandatory agreements would be adopted in their entirety. The Palestine Mandate
stated that all of "Palestine" west of the Jordan River was destined to be a
Jewish state. The Partition proposals of the UN were illegal by its own
constitution.

As for the second part of his letter (More than misguided,"August 28), it read
like virulent Arab propaganda.

REUVEN BEN-DANIEL

Kfar Mordechai

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The Jerusalem Post

August 29, 2008 Friday

When history is not repeated

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1898 words

HIGHLIGHT: COLUMN ONE

On Tuesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced: "We are not afraid of
anything, including the prospect of a new cold war."

Medvedev make this declaration after signing an order recognizing the
sovereignty of Georgia's two pro-Russian provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Some observers warn that Russian annexation of the two territories is just a
matter of time.

While less attractive than a competitive alliance, Russia's violent, bullying
behavior makes it impossible to imagine its leaders returning to their
pre-invasion cooperative posture with the West. As a consequence, like Medvedev,
many Western officials have been noting the possibility that a new cold war will
take place between Russia and the West.

Yet the nature of Russia's regime, which propelled its decision to launch its
war in Georgia, raises doubts about the viability of reaching an equilibrium of
hostility with the West comparable to that which existed during the Cold War. It
is true that similarities between Russia's current behavior and that of the
Soviet Union before it abound. As was the case with the Soviet Union, it is
fairly clear that Russia's current regime has expansionist aspirations far
beyond its immediate borders. Moscow's threat to attack Poland with nuclear
bombs, its aggressive naval deployment in the Mediterranean Sea, its hosting of
Syrian President Bashar Assad and its renewed talk of supplying Syria and Iran
with advanced weapons systems all make its Soviet-like expansionist aims clear.

Moreover, as Pavel Felgenhauer noted on the Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily
Monitor Web publication, Russia's government-controlled media is engaged in
Soviet- like frenzied demonization of US leaders. In one prominent example this
week, the government-mouthpiece Izvestia launched an obscene broadside against
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The newspaper referred to her as
"insane," and then crudely demeaned her as "a skinny old single lady who likes
to display her underwear during talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Ivanov."

As the West scrambles to build a strategy for contending with Russia, many
writers and policy-makers have pointed out that Russia is fundamentally weak. As
my former Jerusalem Post colleague Bret Stephens noted Tuesday in The Wall
Street Journal, Russia's demographic projection, like its oil and gas
production, forecasts, is dim. The CIA has pointed out through demographic
attrition, Russia's population will decline more than 20 percent over the next
40 years. And due to "underinvestment, incompetence, corruption, political
interference and crude profiteering," Russia's oil production will decline this
year for the first time. Its production rates are expected to drop precipitously
next year and in the coming years as well.

Cognizant of these negative trends, US and European leaders are hoping that
Russia's bleak prospects will convince its leaders to step back from the
precipice of war with the West to which they are now hurtling. On Wednesday, US
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried
warned, "Russia is going to have to come to terms with the reality that it can
either integrate with the world or it can be a self-isolated bully. But it can't
have both."

WHILE IT remains to be seen if the West will agree to isolate the Russian bully,
it is certainly the case that Russia's leaders are not blind to their country's
weaknesses. This is so because to a large degree, Russia's dim long-term
prognosis has been caused by the domestic policies of Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin and his cronies. And in light of this, it can be safely assumed that far
from causing them to avoid confrontation with the West, their cognizance of
Russia's problems is what caused them to adopt their belligerent posture.

In December, Russian political insider Stanislav Belkovsky told the German media
that during his two terms as Russia's president, Putin amassed a fortune in
excess of $40 billion, making him the wealthiest man in Europe. Putin's wealth
has been built through his ownership of vast holdings in three Russian oil and
gas companies.

Were Putin invested in the long-term prosperity and strength of his country, he
would have invested that money in Russia. Instead he has squirreled it away in
bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. And of course, Putin is not
alone in betting his wealth against his country's future. Like him, his cronies
in the Kremlin and the FSB (Federal Security Service) have accrued their wealth
through their ownership in Russian companies that Putin has nationalized. And
like him, they have taken their loot out of the country.

The behavior of Russia's rulers makes clear that they do not concern themselves
with the long-term health of their country as they construct their policies. And
their concentration on short-term gains makes their decision to confront the US
and Europe inevitable. It is now, when Russia's oil wealth is at its peak, that
they are most powerful. And with their current power they seek to maximize their
personal gains while justifying their actions in the name of Russian glory.

By doing this, they are working to ensure that despite their despoiling of
Russia's natural resources and fostering of social pathologies that guarantee
Russia will be unable to stem its decline, Putin and his men will go out in a
blaze of fire and light. Through his fascist cultivation of a cult of
personality and his jingoistic aggression and incitement against the US, Putin,
like Peter the Great and Josef Stalin, will enter the pantheon of Russia's great
heroes after he abandons his devastated country to be reunited with his money.
He cares not for the consequences of his actions for his fellow Russians. His
loyalties are to immortality, and his bank accounts.

It is due to Putin's non-domestic considerations that it is virtually impossible
to reach a stable equilibrium of hostility with Russia today like that which
existed with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This is the case for two
reasons. First, because it is impossible to know how long he will stay around.
And second, Putin's motivations block any chance of reaching a modus operandi
with Russia because his motivations are not shared by his countrymen.

THE FACT of the matter is that in its indifference toward Russia's long-term
well-being, Putin's regime is far more similar to Iran and North Korea than it
is to the Soviet Union that preceded it. As Iran invests hundreds of billions of
dollars in its nuclear program and still more billions in its terror proxies,
client states and offensive military systems in the name of its quest for
Islamic domination and salvation, its domestic economy is falling apart.

For the first time since 1982, this year Iran was forced to import wheat from
the US. Parliament member Sayed Delkhosh announced Tuesday that 30% of Iran's
$280b. annual budget has gone toward preventing failed government-owned
companies from going bankrupt. Then, too, Iran's oil distribution company just
announced that it intends to cut the public's gasoline rations ahead of the
winter.

As for North Korea, its principal exports are missiles, weapons of mass
destruction, forged currency and narcotics. North Korea is a slave state replete
will full regimentation of the entire starving population, abandoned, ruined
villages and an archipelago of concentration camps. It is a country dedicated
completely to the perpetuation of the pathological regime of absolute dictator
Kim Jong-Il and his family.

It is due to the fact that they base their national policies on considerations
unrelated to their national well-being that Russia, Iran and North Korea have
chosen a posture of war and confrontation with the West. For it is through
confrontation and aggression that they coerce the West to pay attention to them.
The identification of the West as the enemy enables them to divert their
peoples' attention away from their domestic policy failures. Through their
manipulation of public opinion Russia, Iran and North Korea have convinced their
people to blame the outside enemy for their impoverishment and their suffering.
And in light of the supposed enemies at their gates, the Russians, Iranians and
North Koreans feel free, indeed compelled, to repress all opponents of their
regimes.

It is true that each of these regimes is motivated by different governing
rationales. But whether their governing rationales are apocalyptic messianism,
megalomania or greed, the result is the same. Guided by short-term goals, the
leaders of Iran, Russia and North Korea seek out confrontation and war with the
West.

TO UNDERSTAND the acuteness of the challenges that Russia, Iran and North Korea
constitute for the West, it is useful to compare them to the ascendant People's
Republic of China. It is absolutely clear that like the Soviet Union before it,
the PRC is currently engaged in a long-term strategy of expanding its military
and economic power. Like the USSR, the PRC is emerging as a major power in
competition and in conflict with the US.

While the emergence of the PRC as a competitor of America's presents the US with
major strategic challenges, the US has many options short of overt confrontation
for contending with the rise of China. It can expand its naval forces and
modernize its nuclear arsenal. It can strengthen its alliances with Japan, South
Korea and other Asian democracies. It can expand and develop manufacturing
markets in Thailand and India to compete with Chinese factories. At the same
time, it can diversify its energy consumption to lower tensions over oil
supplies with China.

The fact that Russia, Iran and North Korea are unstable does not simply bar the
prospect of reaching accords with them that will enable a stable equilibrium of
terror and deterrence to emerge. Their inherent instability, evidenced by their
otherworldly and so necessarily short-term policy horizons, makes clear that the
lifespan of any deal is unknowable at best and most likely extremely limited.
Moreover, even in the absence of a deal, it is impossible to reach a stable
balance of terror.

In contrast, during the Cold War, even when explicit agreements were impossible
to achieve, there was still a basic framework of deterrence that limited the
nature of the threat and the magnitude of possible conflagrations. Both the US
and the Soviets based their strategies for contending with one another on a
balance of terror predicated on mutually assured destruction. This understanding
was founded on the American and Soviet presumption of the stability of the other
side. In contrast, when forging policies to contend with the Russian, Iranian
and North Korean regimes it is impossible to presume their stability because
they are by their very natures unstable.

The lesson of all of this is that while all enemies present dangers, not all
enemies are alike. The same strategies cannot be employed against unstable
enemies as can be employed against stable ones. Rather than forging policies
toward Russia as well as Iran and North Korea based on false analogies with the
Cold War, it is vital to recognize that regimes that do not concern themselves
with the welfare of their own people are not regimes that will be credible
negotiating partners or stable antagonists in cold wars based upon an assumption
of mutual assured destruction.

www.CarolineGlick.com

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The Jerusalem Post

August 29, 2008 Friday

Hey Jews!

BYLINE: DAVID HOROVITZ

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 2187 words

HIGHLIGHT: A semi-serious A to Z set list for Paul McCartney's Tel Aviv show
next month. EDITOR'S NOTES

In the mid-1960s, the family story goes, my mother took my very young sister to
see The Beatles live at London's Hammersmith Odeon. Both today acknowledge they
heard no music at all, only adulatory screams from the hysterical audience.
After the show, my sister wanted to wait at the stage door in hopes of seeing
the band. "Not a good idea, is it?" my mother asked a policeman hopefully. "No,
madam," he solemnly agreed. "Not a good idea."

Now, finally, the lovable, doe-eyed member of the best pop group the world has
ever seen, the group who enriched so many of our lives, is coming to Israel. The
date is set - September 25 at Park Hayarkon - and the tickets went on sale this
week. As the song goes, "It's been a long, long, long time."

After all these years of waiting for you, Sir Paul, what we're getting is just
"a day in the life." So to accelerate the acclimatization, here are some brief
insights into the Israel context you almost certainly never dreamed your own
song book contains. (Not only your song book, to be honest. I've had to cheat.
But only a little...)

Any Time At All (1964, from The Beatles album "A Hard Day's Night")

Let me get the complaint in early: I know we banned you in 1965, but did it
really have to take this long? "Any time at all." That's what you promised. "All
you gotta do is call, and I'll be there." That was 43 years ago! Forty- three
years to answer the phone?

Baby, It's You (1963, from "Please Please Me")

One of several Beatles songs and cover versions our opposition leader has always
assumed were written about him: "Bibi, It's You," "Bibi's In Black,"
"Everybody's Trying To Be My Bibi," "Twist and Shout." (Twist and Shout? "Well
shake it up Bibi, shake it up Bibi..." Keep up!)

I'd suggest you put "Baby, It's You" on the tentative September 25 set list.
That way, if Tzipi Livni has won the Kadima leadership - following your wise
advice to "Run for your life if you can, little girl" - you can play it as her
victory anthem: "Don't want nobody, nobody, 'cause baby, it's you!" (Maybe get
an Ehud Olmert lookalike to sing the middle eight: "You should hear what they
say about you - cheat, cheat. They say, they say, you never, never, never, ever
been true.")

If, on the other hand, Shaul Mofaz comes out on top, you can quickly replace it
with "Soldier Of Love," "Some Other Guy," or another of the numerous classics
the Beatles used to play. Perhaps even a commiseratory "That's Alright Mama."

Come Together (1969, from "Abbey Road")

All credit to John Lennon for this astoundingly prescient critique of our
internal divides, of the boundless intolerance we in the Jewish state exhibit
for approaches to Judaism that differ from our own. I guess we're not "good
looking" enough, because those opportunities for Jewish harmony really shouldn't
be "so hard to see."

Drive My Car (1965, from "Rubber Soul")

In Israel? Are you crazy? Take my advice, Sir Paul: Let someone else drive it.

Eight Days A Week (1964, "Beatles for Sale")

You sing it, we live it - six-day work week, two-day weekend. What we really
need is nine days a week, so that the Orthodox among us get a proper weekend
too.

Fixing A Hole (1967, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band")

Please, Paul, maybe you can help us on this. It's not "fixing a hole where the
rain gets in" that we need. It's fixing a hole where the rain gets out. We used
to have a Dead Sea; now it's a Dead Pond. Lake Kinneret? More like Lakelet
Kinneretlet. "Words are flowing out like endless rain," Lennon wrote in "Across
The Universe." What we need, in this most verbose and opinionated of nations, is
rain flowing out like our endless words.

Give Peace A Chance (1969, John Lennon single, originally credited to
Lennon-McCartney)

Believe me, Paulie, we've tried. We said yes to two states in 1948, and we've
been doing so ever since. Have you thought about singing this to the Iranians?
(See also "All You Need Is Love." If only. "Don't Let Me Down." But they do,
every time. "Let It Be." Can't; time is not on our side. "Happiness Is A Warm
Gun." Believe us, it isn't.)

Here Comes The Sun (1969, from "Abbey Road")

Great song. Arguably George's greatest. But not, I have to tell you, quite the
rare cause for celebration in heat struck Tel Aviv that it is in permanently
drizzly London and Liverpool.

I'll Be Back (1964, "A Hard Day's Night")

That would be nice. And, forgive me, maybe somewhere more intimate next time?
Have you thought of the amphitheater in Ra'anana - very good acoustics? Or,
better yet, Sultan's Pool in Jerusalem, nestling in the shadows of the Old City
walls. It worked for the likes of Bob Dylan and Dire Straits - long ago, before
the first intifada, when rock superstars came here as a matter of routine. Bring
Stevie Wonder, play "Ebony And Ivory," put the world "together in perfect
harmony"?

Junk (1970, from the album "McCartney")

"Motor cars, handle bars, bicycles for two... candlesticks, building bricks,
something old and new" - this list of bric-a-brac from your first solo album is
what Prime Minister Putin should be selling the Syrians. Not the advanced
Iskandar missile system.

Kansas City (1963, from "Beatles for Sale")

Rather too many of our people have gone to "Kansas City" - and, for that matter,
"here, there and everywhere" else in the US over the years - whether to "get my
baby back," as this Leiber and Stoller song has it, or for more permanent
reasons. We love America, we cherish the alliance, we think no one else
understands us better. But we wish fewer Israelis were taking a "ticket to ride"
in that direction, and more American Jews were Nefesh B'Nefeshing this way.

Live And Let Die (1973, theme to the Bond movie)

Ideally, of course, it would be "live and let live." What we're up against,
though, is "die and let die."

Money (That's What I Want) (1963, from "With the Beatles")

Haven't seen this old Barrett Strong number on your recent set lists. "The best
things in life are free, but you can keep 'em for the birds and bees; now give
me money, that's what I want..." Hmm. Probably best not to try it in Park
Hayarkon. "Money don't get everything it's true, what it don't get I can't use;
now give me money..." The prime minister might think you're singing about him...
And so might the former finance minister. A handful of our mayors. Senior
officials at the tax authority...

Worse, some might think you're singing about yourself. "Baby you're a rich man,"
it's true, but not - to the tune of $50 million - quite as rich as you were
before the divorce. (Still, this tour should help. Reports are that your one-off
here will generate a hefty three or four million dollars. I was up most of the
night on Wednesday trying desperately to get on-line to the overwhelmed ticket
agency to make sure I could give you my share.)

Nowhere Man (1965, from "Rubber Soul")

And this one might be risky, too. "He's a real nowhere man, sitting in his
nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody." Who are you talking
about here - Netanyahu? Barak?

OB-LA-DI, OB-LA-DA (1968, from "The White Album")

Word is that behind the easy-going reggae-ska rhythm, you were trying to make a
point about the virtues of immigration - about people building new lives, new
families and "a home sweet home," in their new country, "with a couple of kids
running in the yard." You were writing it, as music magazine Mojo recently
noted, in the spring-summer of 1968, when Conservative politician Enoch Powell
was warning about the "rivers of blood" that would flow if the influx from the
collapsed Empire to the UK continued. Ours, Paul, is a country that thrives on
immigration - one in six or so Israelis arrived here from the former Soviet
Union during the past 20 years alone. "Life goes on," you sang jauntily, and we
wouldn't have it any other way.

Piggies (1968, from "The White Album")

Charles Manson was only the most notorious of the many to have misinterpreted
this Orwellian Harrisong as a specifically anti-police diatribe rather than the
more general social critique your late bandmate intended. For us, unfortunately,
it works both ways. We watch dismayed as Israel becomes less of a light unto the
nations and all too "normal" a country, with rising crime and a police force
that seems increasingly incompetent, if not corrupt itself. Meanwhile, earning
inequalities mean that for low-income families, Holocaust survivors and all the
rest of "the little piggies, life is [indeed] getting worse," while the affluent
"bigger piggies... always have clean shirts to play around in."

Questionnaire (The Rutles, 1996)

We can't really expect you to play this, being as how it's the work of that most
skilled and admiring of Beatles tribute bands, The Rutles. Then again, George
did make an appearance in The Rutles' legendary TV mockumentary "All You Need Is
Cash." And this song, a pastiche hybrid of "Fool On The Hill" and "I'm So
Tired," with a touch of "Imagine" and "I Am The Walrus" thrown in, has a certain
Israeli resonance, with its depiction of a weary, over- surveyed public
answering a pollster's questions: "Do you think there's One True God, a False
God, or No God at All? Put a tick in the appropriate box."

Revolution 1 (1968, from "The White Album")

"You say you got a real solution, well, you know, we'd all love to see the
plan..." Uncanny, John wrote this 40 years ago, and yet it's exactly what Bush
said to Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas only last week... and the week before that, and
the week before that...

Sexy Sadie (1968, from "The White Album")

We've reworded this one a little. Hope you don't mind. Now we call it, "The
Nasrallah Song":

"Hassan Nasrallah, what have you done? You made a fool of everyone. You made a
fool of everyone... But Hassan Nasrallah, you'll get yours yet. However big you
think you are. However big you think you are. Hassan Nasrallah, ooh- ooh, you'll
get yours yet."

Too Many People (1971, from the McCartney album "Ram")

"Too many people going underground," you sang, doubtless in subtle reference to
the well-protected subterranean Teherani nuclear program. Too subtle,
unfortunately. The Chinese, the Russians, even the Germans, don't yet seem to
have gotten the message.

Unfinished Music (1968 John Lennon album)

Your acerbic other half/rival released this album with Yoko One inside a cover
showing the couple fully, frontally nude. The album title, its "Two Virgins"
subtitle and that naked photograph, they said, were intended to convey their
sense of being "two innocents lost in a world gone mad." The astoundingly
controversial nature of the cover art meant that next-to-nobody bothered to
listen to the music.

In Israel, Paul, we often have the sense of being misjudged on the basis of that
kind of superficial approach, of grappling with misrepresentations peddled and
disseminated by people who haven't bothered to look beyond the controversy and
listen to the real music within. (This analogy, I should stress, should not be
over-stretched. The tracks on "Unfinished Music" are entirely redundant, self-
indulgent rubbish. I defy anyone to get past the first four minutes of bird
noises and clanging, even for research purposes.)

Venus And Mars (1975 McCartney and Wings album)

We Israelis have been at the forefront of entrepreneurs buying up real estate on
the moon ($60 for an eighth of an acre) and if we can't yet reach the pair of
planets you've been singing about, we'll travel everywhere on this one in our
relentless search for challenge, adventure and improbable UN allies (step
forward Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands). If only half the country is
in Park Hayarkon to hear you, that's because the other half is probably still
getting over summer jet lag.

We Can Work It Out (1965 Beatles single)

"Life is very short, and there's no time, for fussing and fighting my friends."
Never a truer line. "So I will ask you once again: Try and see it my way..."
Yes, indeed.

taXman (1966, from "Revolver")

Income tax and VAT and national insurance and city tax and health tax and fuel
tax surcharges and parental contributions to education and airport tax and TV
license fees and customs and worse than ever bank charges. And you thought it
was bad with prime minister Wilson in the 1960s?!

Yesterday (1965, from "Help")

Truth is, our troubles didn't seem "so far away" yesterday, and we've known for
a long time that they're "here to stay" for the foreseeable future. But if you
can elevate us to your fundamentally cheerful, thumbs-up world for a few hours
on September 25, Sir Paul, then, to quote from your first post-Beatles album,
"that would be something, really would be something."

Zoo Gang (1974, B-side of the McCartney and Wings "Band on the Run" single)

You wrote this faux dramatic instrumental as the theme tune for a British TV
series about a group of ex-World War II fighters who reunite three decades later
to put the world to rights. The world evidently decided it could get along
without them; the show was canceled after six episodes. A good place to end,
some might say, since the title aptly describes the menagerie running our
country.

Still, I hope you'll give us an encore. How about "Hey Jews." That's what it's
called, isn't it?

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: GOOD DAY SUNSHINE! The world's most inventive pop bassist,
who also wrote some nice songs and played in a famous band, is coming here on
September 25.

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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783 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 29, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: N. Weisz, David Gleicher, Cecile M. Cohen, Oscar Davies, Popsy Leibler,
Nechama Veeder

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 680 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

RATES OF PAY

Due to the inconvenience and danger to Jerusalemites of the roadworks, it seems
to me that the arnona (property tax) rates should be reduced - especially as
most of the time the workers aren't working anyway.

N. Weisz

Jerusalem

NEW ADVICE

Your article on the proposed Baka traffic changes ("Rejecting its own advice,"
August 22) raises two points:

* In 1776, one of the British proposals to quell the American rebellion was to
launch a flotilla up the Bronx River. On a map, the idea made some sense. In
reality, the Bronx River is a tiny stream. Similarly here, maybe on a map,
converting Derech Beit Lehem into a major road makes sense, until someone
actually walks on that street and sees how impractical an idea it is.

* The article refers always to "the municipality." A municipality does not
speak; a municipality does not come up with proposals. Individuals do. The
article nowhere names these individuals who are proposing traffic changes in
Baka, allowing them to hide behind the curtain of anonymity. Perhaps if we knew
who they were, we would know their true motivations.

David Gleicher

Baka

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

I object to Moshe-Mordechai van Zuiden's scathing description of our Bridge of
Strings (Letters, August 1). To me, it is a work of art, and like any sculpture,
it should be viewed from various perspectives. See how the interplay - real or
illusory - of the straight lines (yes, each "string" is a straight line) creates
the illusion of beautiful curves. Is this beauty understood and appreciated only
by those of us who appreciate mathematics?

Cecile M. Cohen

Jerusalem

Your correspondent, in denigrating our magnificent new bridge, suggests it is
out of touch with its surroundings. And a good thing, too! Can he point to any
building in the vicinity of the new structure that has any architectural merit
whatsoever?

Oscar Davies

Retired fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects

Jerusalem

MISSIONARY MONEY

As a member of Emunah, I find it very disturbing that the Emunah women,
representing both World Emunah and the local Emunah, chose to respond to your
recent article about Christian donations ("Holier than thou," August 1), by
nothing other than a personal dissociation from Mina Fenton (Letters, August 8).

Is Emunah, an organization representing national religious women, so desperate
to accept donations from Christian sources that the women heading this
organization, who undoubtedly all do wonderful work, willingly and publicly
ignore direct halachic decrees of leading religious Zionist rabbis not to accept
such moneys?

Two weeks ago, Emunah Jerusalem hosted a seminar where Fenton, along with Penina
Taylor, who heads Jews for Judaism, Israel, presented some very alarming facts
about the growing presence of missionaries in Israel and the ill effects of
Christian moneys accepted by charity organizations, with seemingly no strings
attached.

Had the Emunah women who signed letters against Fenton been present at that
event, perhaps they would have chosen to address the problem rather than
dissociating themselves from someone who has worked tirelessly on behalf of Am
Yisrael.

Kol Hakavod, Mina!

Popsy Leibler, Jerusalem

A request from the editor

I consider living in Israel a priviledge. However, life here often challenges us
with frustating and sometimes mind-boggling experiences. Bureaucracy; a seeming
absence of order, planning, and organization; lack of accountability; baffling
business prractices. These are but some of the unfortunate day-to-day issues we
meet.

You are hereby requested to share with us your own personal experiences so that
In Jerusalem can get to the source of the problem, get answers and hopefully
help bring about a solution. Ultimately, we can make a difference, but your
participatioon is needed.

Please send us by e-mail a concise account of your experience - including all
the actors involved, when and where it took place, as well as suggestions for
action - and we'll contact the appropriate authorities for explanations.

Nechama Veeder

Editor, In Jerusalem

You may e-maiil your sotries to ij@jpost.com

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The Jerusalem Post

August 29, 2008 Friday

Mailbag

BYLINE: B.B., A.R., Mignon Lubinski, Edith Ognall, Frances Barrow

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 690 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Thank God for good books

Dear editor,

Re: The riot act (August 22)

I agree with every one of the complaints you received concerning HOT. It seems
that companies (and politicians) do not include the word 'integrity' in their
standard operating method.

There are not only repetitive movies on the channels, but also repetitive shows.
I only have the basic analog channels and sometimes find evenings where there is
absolutely nothing to watch. Thank God for books.

Also, it is almost impossible to reach technician/customer service by phone.
Only after I was willing to wait 15 minutes did someone finally answer
(Netvision answers faster).

Regarding monthly payments, everyone noticed that the amount went up
automatically these last two months. Not only that, if you don't know the date
the contract expires, and don't call beforehand to renew at the discounted rate,
you get charged a new extravagant price.

I asked to get a copy of the contract sent to my e- mail and they e-mailed me
back to go to their website, put in my username, password and see the amount
billed. But no date is mentioned therein.

Seems to me that HOT couldn't care less about its customers. Sad.

B.B.,

Haifa

Still HOTand bothered

Dear editor,

Re: The riot act (August 22)

The reply of Ms. Hila Shafir of HOT in your article is completely unacceptable.
It is a deplorable attempt to whitewash Hot's miserable service and is
definitely not a satisfactory reply to the complaints. It even shows contempt to
the complainants.

The caliber of a large number of the movies is very low and reflects poorly on
whoever chooses them. I doubt very much if HOT receives requests (as Ms. Shafir
states) for the same movies to be repeated over and over again, day after day
and week after week. One only has to take the programs of the past six months to
see how many times the same films have been repeated on the Movie and Hallmark
channels.

It is obvious that the extremely poor schedule service in the basic package on
the Hallmark and Movie Channels is on purpose, with the object of coercing
clients to subscribe to the more expensive package.

All my friends agree and none of them will do so. I am an 80-year-old pensioner
and will prefer our public library, Steimatzky, and a more satisfactory way to
spend my time than HOT.

A.R.,

Ramat Hasharon

Hang the black flags high

Dear editor,

Re: Zaka ups the ante in anti-drunk driving campaign (August 15)

I lived for many years in Switzerland. When there was a road accident, a long
pole was erected on the pavement- edge near the place of the accident, with a
long black banner. Attached to the pole was a plaque with the words: (I
translate from the German) "A person was killed here in a road accident."

At the bottom of the pole was always a bunch of flowers. I can assure you that
seeing this pole makes one's stomach turn. If Israel were to use this method,
there would be, unfortunately, many black banners flying, but it would remind
people to drive slower, or better.

Mignon Lubinski,

Ra'anana

The Messiah has his own schedule

Dear editor,

Re: Holier than thou? (August 15)

In last week's Metro, Mina Fenton (National Religious Party) made a statement
that taking money from Evangelical Christians is "even more dangerous than the
Katyushas and the Kassams because it steals our people's souls." Not sure our
people's souls are so easily bought.

However, the problem I have with Mina Fenton is when she goes on to ask, "Have
we come here (to Israel) in order to support the process of bringing back their
(the Christians') Messiah?"

Does she really think that if all Jews live in Israel (we should be so lucky)
their Messiah will really come?

Edith Ognall,

Netanya

Bring in the clowns!

Dear editor,

Re: Not jest for laughs

Just wanted to congratulate the wonderful "clown- doctors" and to suggest that
they consider bringing their joy (maybe with small pets or with magic, too) to
seniors.

Elderly people in secured residences (diyur mugan), , , es (batei avot), on
"siudi" floors in hospitals and in internal medicine (refua pnimit) wings of
hospitals could use a good laugh or just a reason for a little smile too, I am
sure. Just a thought!

Frances Barrow

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The Jerusalem Post

August 29, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Isi Leibler, Joyce Kahn, Aharon Goldberg, Prof. Benjamin Corn, Dvora
Corn, Yitzhak Ben-Shmuel, Jac Friedgut, Zelda Harris

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1277 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Why Yad Vashem is wrong

Sir, - I feel privileged to know Yehuda Bauer personally. He is the greatest
living scholar on the Holocaust and his works were the formative influence in
enabling me to gain an understanding of the horror of the Black Years and the
factors which created them.

I stand corrected that it was state secretary Sumner Welles rather than
president Roosevelt who pressured Rabbi Stephen Wise not to disclose the content
of the Riegner telegram alerting the world to the Nazi genocidal campaign. Yet
Wise's acquiescence in suppressing the information under these circumstances
places him in an even worse light than if he had done so under pressure from the
president.

Besides, there is no disputing that Wise regarded himself as a close friend of
Roosevelt, who did tell him later that "The only way to stop the slaughter is to
win the war. Tell your Jewish associates to keep quiet."

Yes, there was much anti-Semitism and, yes, American Jewish leaders were
pressured and frightened. But having a personal appreciation of such leadership
situations, I stand by my belief that the passivity and silence of the American
Jewish establishment during those terrible years displayed a combined breakdown
of courage and judgment and represented the most shameful failure of Jewish
leadership in the 20th century.

Worse, Wise and his associates tried to muzzle and demonize Hillel Kook (Peter
Bergson), going as far as attempting to have him deported for his efforts to
make Americans aware of the horrors European Jews were undergoing.

Whereas I concede Bauer's assertion that the change of climate by the US
government in 1944 was not exclusively due to any single individual, it is
undeniable that the belated, last-minute interventions to save Jews were heavily
influenced by the extraordinarily effective public campaigns Kook initiated.

I respectfully disagree with Bauer, who feels there is no space in Yad Vashem
for reference to Hillel Kook ("Why Kook is out," August 22). If the US Holocaust
Museum could find space, surely Yad Vashem can do likewise. I feel that those
visiting Yad Vashem should be made aware that in times of crisis, there is an
obligation on Jews in free countries to follow Kook's example rather than that
of the failed Jewish establishment, which feared to rock the boat and placed
their faith in princes.

Even if the request is problematic, it is outrageous for Yad Vashem spokesmen to
dismiss a petition from over 100 distinguished Jewish scholars and public
figures ranging over the entire political spectrum, and say "We might review the
situation in 10 years' time."

Yad Vashem is not a personal fiefdom, and in lieu of such arrogance it should at
least be willing to constructively discuss and review situations, especially
when raised by responsible and concerned citizens.

ISI LEIBLER

Jerusalem

Sir, - Having read books and a number of articles by Prof. Bauer, I wish to
express my great admiration for his tremendous knowledge and expertise on the
Holocaust. However, I would raise a point: When recording history, a very fine
line exists between opinion and fact.

The fact is that Rabbi Stephen S. Wise was in possession of sinister details
regarding the Final Solution. As a Jewish leader, he had an overriding
responsibility to his people, above that of his relationship with White House
leaders. From August to December 1942 he did nothing with this vital information
and evidence. It should have been made public, enabling financial and other help
to be recruited.

Wise chose to remain silent, and in doing so failed his responsibilities
miserably.

JOYCE KAHN

Petah Tikva

Sir, - Yehuda Bauer of Yad Vashem tells us that the museum "is devoted, by
design, to what happened to the Jews of Europe, in Europe." Does that mean it is
not interested in the Holocaust the Nazis introduced in North Africa,
specifically Tunisia?

AHARON GOLDBERG

Hatzor Haglilit

Saying goodbye...

Sir, - Jonathan Rosenblum's "Lessons from the grave" (August 22) drew attention
to the important messages of Randy Pautsch and Tony Snow. Both succeeded in
remaining optimistic as they said goodbye to friends and family. Although dying
is part of the human experience, when death nears we all struggle to find the
right words to show our love and avoid regret.

Here in Israel, Life's Door-Tishkofet is a non-profit organization whose
programs support patients, families and professionals to enter an open dialogue
about life- threatening illness and the end of life; this candor opens doors to
growth, meaning and significant contributions to society.

An example of this process can be seen firsthand as the organization is
presenting an experiential exhibition conceived by Ilan Dimant, a 24-year-old
Jerusalemite who suffers from a terminal brain tumor. This unique display -
What's Going on in My Head - offers a powerful glimpse into the world of serious
illness.

A professional team has developed an interactive format that prompts us to
understand the emotions Ilan and others have experienced. Visitors are invited
to join his journey and thereby gain insight, caring and the courage to explore
a world we all know, but rarely examine.

The exhibit will be open to the public September 5-25, at the Amiad Center,
Rehov Amiad 12, Jaffa. For more information, go to www.tishkofet.co.il; (02)
631-0803.

PROF. BENJAMIN CORN, MD

DVORA CORN, MSC

Founders, Life's Door-Tishkofet

Jerusalem

...and living with gratitude

Sir, - Talk about inspirational articles! In these days of cynicism and fear,
when we are bombarded by statements in the public arena conveying hatred,
pessimism and fatalism, Jonathan Rosenblum blessed us with a beautiful essay on
hope and the sanctity of life.

It is not easy to keep your head while all around you people are losing theirs.
But such is the divine nature of Rosenblum's message about the unique lives of
two men, their premature deaths from cancer, and how they accepted their lot
with courage and love.

What moved me most of all in this piece was the section devoted to how we can
live our lives as well as possible in preparation for death. We often forget the
blessings of what we have been given, complaining about what we were denied.

YITZCHAK BEN-SHMUEL

Modi'in

'Lamentations' at the promenade

Sir, - I was glad that, at the end of his "Museum of the extinct race" (August
22) Daniel Gordis said that he does plan to return to the Haas/Sherover
Promenade next Tisha Be'av. Organized services have been held there since at
least 1985 - before the promenade was even built.

The members of the fledgling Kehilat Moreshet Avraham (Masorti) in East Talpiot
had at that time been displaced from their temporary quarters, and decided to
observe Tisha Be'av at the promenade as a last resort, on a one-time basis.
However, the experience was so moving for the 50 of us that even though we now
have a handsome building only a few blocks away, we have continued the alfresco
tradition. The number of those who worship at our services there has grown
10-fold, to well over 500.

JAC FRIEDGUT, Past President

Kehilat Moreshet Avraham

Jerusalem

Memory lane

Sir, - Judy Siegel's lighthearted article about her trip to California after so
many years in Israel could have been written by so many of us.

Going down memory lane and making comparisons between life in the place we once
called home and our lives as Western olim in Israel can be painful. On the other
hand, her final sentence on landing moved me to the same tears I shed on my very
first flight to Israel many, many years ago.

When we clap hands to show our gratitude to the pilot for a safe landing, we
also express our happiness at being "home." Crazy people, we Israelis!

ZELDA HARRIS , Tel Aviv

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The Jerusalem Post

August 29, 2008 Friday

Can Labor resurrect?

BYLINE: AMOTZ ASA-EL

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1057 words

HIGHLIGHT: Middle Israel

In several months the Labor Party will replace its leader for the eighth time in
13 years.

Whether this happens before or after the early election that is likely to follow
Ehud Barak's replacement is immaterial. With polls showing Labor's already
record- low following shrinking a further 30 percent to hardly one voter in 10 -
the only question about the party leader is whether his removal will come as a
precaution or as a punishment.

When this happens, many, especially those armchair zealots who tell us from afar
that we are not fighting our enemies hard enough, will foam at the mouth, as if
witnessing the long-overdue exorcism of a dybbuk that has one word written all
over it: Labor.

Well, Middle Israelis don't see it that way. To them, even if they never voted
Labor, it is still the movement that for better or worse built the Jewish state,
and for decades genuinely looked after the social interests of a broad swathe of
Israeli society. Since then, of course, Labor was hijacked by corrupt hacks,
shallow generals and naive peace processors, but this does not mean it deserves
to die. What Labor needs is a new start.

BARAK IS indeed a major cause in Labor's demise. The man who as prime minister
reneged on his main campaign promise, to focus on domestic issues, and made
almost the entire Knesset, cabinet and even his personal staff abandon him in
despair, has forgotten nothing and learned nothing. Last week he offered a fresh
reminder of his arrogance, with a clumsy attempt to change the subject, which is
his incompetence, to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's name and gender, which he
apparently thinks disqualify her to rise at 3 a.m. and deal with an emergency.

Well, I don't remember whether it was dawn, noon or dusk when Barak got the
phone call in fall '01 about Hizbullah's capture of three soldiers off Mount
Dov, or whether it was winter, spring or autumn when Barak showed up for the
Shepherds-town talks with Syria despite Hafez Assad's insulting dispatch of his
foreign minister. And I don't remember whether Barak was left with 50, 40 or 30
percent of the Knesset when he offered the Temple Mount to Yasser Arafat. I just
know that in all these cases Barak all alone made decisions that the rest of us
later lamented.

So who is he trying to impress now with all this bravado about knowing how to
make decisions under pressure? Moreover, what was he insinuating about Livni:
that she can't take that early-dawn phone call because she is a woman or because
she wasn't a commando? Evidently, after all these years Barak still thinks the
premiership is about crisis management. Yet for that, prime ministers have
generals who await their inspiration and direction, such as, for instance,
Margaret Thatcher displayed when the Falklands were invaded, and Barak lacked
when soldiers were captured into the Lebanon he had just evacuated.

If Labor's non-leadership under Barak needed more substantive proof, it was
offered in this week's budget brouhaha, in which he tried to defend our
bottomless defense budget.

In 1985, when the national interest demanded a deep cut in defense spending,
Yitzhak Rabin delivered it, because he understood his job was to defend the
taxpayer, not the generals. With a global recession looming and local layoffs
budding, this is also no time for a leader to come to the taxpayer hat in hand.
Had he been inspired, Barak would have actually imposed austerity on the IDF,
whose non-combat lawyers, engineers and doctors are paid 15, 50 and also 100
percent more than their civilian equivalents, besides getting budgeted pensions
for decades; a sergeant- major who retires at 45 receives a monthly NIS 7,500,
for instance.

In all, Barak's IDF spends NIS 4.2 billion annually on pensions, four times what
it spent two decades ago. Evidently, the army that underperformed in its last
war spent too much on featherbedding, a distraction that is precisely the
defense minister's job to both detect and undo.

Add to this the hedonistic Barak's emotional distance from the downtrodden his
party purports to lead and the revelation about his PR-agent wife's hastily
shelved plan to exploit his political connections for a business enterprise, and
you get the public's revulsion with Labor.

But what comes after Barak goes? Can Labor ever stage a comeback? The answer is
yes - big time.

LABOR CAN have a future, provided it returns to stand for values. There is room
in Israel for a social democratic party that represents the working and middle
classes while displaying the simplicity, balance, pragmatism, personal example
and can-do spirit for which Labor once stood.

True, for that to happen, Labor must first unseat its mandarins and change its
primary election system, which is vulnerable to hacks' manipulations. And yes,
Labor's breakthrough will not come as long as its leaders refuse to say,
publicly, loudly and for the record, that the Oslo process, their main political
move since the 1985 austerity plan, was a bad idea. Yet at some point all this
will happen, and Labor will be in a position to storm the electoral mainstream
with a vision of social compassion, political reform and diplomatic pragmatism.

Surely all this would best be led by someone who was removed from Oslo, someone
who has actually built something in the spirit of Ben-Gurion's legacy and
someone whose domestic vision blends economic prudence with social solidarity
and political reform.

Labor actually has such a man in the current Knesset: Finance Committee chairman
Avishay Braverman, the humbly born economist who built a sterling university in
the middle of the desert, not far from Ben-Gurion's grave.

Braverman had nothing to do with Oslo, on the budget he is identified with none
of Amir Peretz's populism or Barak's militarism, and on reform he is an
outspoken advocate of a regionally elected legislature and a presidential
executive. Braverman also knows how to appear in public, and is a rare example
of an accomplished professional who actually left a thriving career to join
politics. He will bring more votes than any other Laborite out there today.

Still, Labor won't crown Braverman just yet; it must first taste just a few more
grapes of the public's wrath. Evidently, the way Labor hacks see it, we who yell
to the pollsters that we will never in our lives vote Barak just don't know how
good his grapes taste.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: MK Avishay Braverman. Labor's only viable choice. (Credit:
Conference of Presidents)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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787 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 29, 2008 Friday

Rabbis for Human Rights - the 20th anniversary

BYLINE: DAVID J. FORMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 1153 words

HIGHLIGHT: Counterpoint

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of Rabbis for Human Rights
(RHR). In many ways, this is a sad occasion for the organization and the
original nucleus of rabbis there at its inception. Not long ago, when RHR
dedicated its new office, much more spacious than its previous one, I remarked:
"We have failed, because our ultimate goal was to go out of business; and yet,
we find ourselves having to expand our field of operation to engage in seemingly
never-ending human rights challenges."

With the creation of the State of Israel, Jews sought to educate the world that
the Zionist enterprise would be unique in character; that the Jewish state would
not be a nation like other nations; and that through Israel, the Jews would
fulfill their mission of being a "chosen people." The concept of "chosenness," a
subject of perennial controversy, should be understood to mean that the people
Israel has been selected for a particular purpose. It does not connote
privilege, but rather obligation, not superiority, but rather unusual dedication
to become a "light unto the nations," whose commitment is to implement the words
of the prophet Micah: "To do justice, love goodness and walk modestly with your
God" (6:8).

Throughout its first 20 years, RHR has attempted to humbly pursue righteous
deeds and practice decent behavior. Yet, with all of its noble intentions, its
work, like that of other human rights and civil liberties organizations, remains
incomplete. But it can take pride that it holds accountable those who commit
grievous offenses against the "other," including those who do so in the name of
God, arrogantly fostering a belief in the concept of a chosen people that has
led to delusions of celestial grandeur, whereby chosenness is equated with
exclusivity and chauvinism.

IT IS virtually impossible for any socially and politically progressive movement
to measure its successes. Because standards are set so high, there are more
failures than achievements. However, those of us in RHR are committed to what we
do, not only to help those who are victims of human rights abuses and civil
liberties violations, but also because we have no alternative if we want to
answer that we were not silent when our children ask, "What did you do when
Israel engaged in acts contrary to the best of the Jewish value heritage."

In the words of the 18th-century Anglo-Irish philosopher Edmund Burke: "All that
is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." In a country
where Judaism is often associated with intolerant and uncompromising beliefs and
actions, RHR teaches an alternative understanding of the Jewish tradition, one
that emphasizes Judaism's humanistic and universal side. The indifference of
much of the country's religious leadership and religiously identified citizenry
to breaches of human rights was a cause of great concern to RHR's organizers,
and the raison d'etre for its creation.

Further, the founders felt that all sectors of the public needed to be reminded
that human rights abuses are not compatible with the Jewish tradition of moral
responsibility and sensitivity and the biblical concern for "the stranger in
your midst" - even in the face of undeniable physical danger, which is the
ultimate test for maintaining one's ethical standards and values. Therefore, RHR
was initially established to address human rights violations committed by the
IDF in its suppression of the first intifada, but since then has greatly
broadened its agenda to address a host of social concerns within Israel and the
territories.

RHR IS the only Israeli rabbinic organization comprised of rabbis from all
streams in Judaism. Its membership includes 100 rabbis, many of whom hold
positions of national leadership, as well as those who are Jewish educators and
those who serve congregations. RHR has no political affiliation, and its members
represent an eclectic range of ideological perspectives.

With branches in the US and England serving North America and Europe, RHR
includes approximately 750 associate rabbinic members in the Diaspora. It has an
extensive international mailing that reaches thousands of people, making it an
important resource for information on human rights issues. Frequently quoted in
the domestic and international media, RHR is widely respected by journalists and
other human rights agencies. In 1993, RHR received the Speaker of the Knesset
"Quality of Life Award" for "enhancing the rule of law and democratic values,
protecting human rights and encouraging tolerance and mutual respect." RHR has
garnered many more awards, prizes and accolades for its activities.

Admittedly, there are those Jews, here and abroad, who berate RHR, claiming it
supplies fodder for Israel's detractors. Instead, they should be singing RHR's
praises, for it is organizations like RHR that show the world there are Israelis
who, while supporting the absolute right of Israel to defend itself, also
concern themselves with safeguarding the country's moral integrity. Rabbis for
Human Rights is the rabbinic voice of conscience in Israel - the only
organization in the Jewish state concerned specifically with relating the Jewish
religious tradition to matters of human rights.

CONSEQUENTLY, RHR will continue to stand with Palestinians who wish to pick
their olives and harvest their grapes, free of settler harassment; defend Arabs
who want to build homes without fear of administrative demolition orders;
protect foreign laborers from draconian work conditions; advise the economically
deprived and the socially disenfranchised of their basic rights; engage in
interfaith dialogue and activities; promote religious tolerance for different
lifestyles and respect for all streams in Judaism; join with other human rights
organizations in combating human trafficking; and educate Israelis about the
value of human rights as a bulwark of a Jewish and democratic state through its
Human Rights Yeshiva, its Tractate Declaration of Independence and its text,
"Life, Liberty and Equality in the Jewish Tradition," as RHR teaches in pre-army
programs, in army and police officer training academies, in Israeli public
schools, both religious and secular, Arab and Jewish.

To the above ends, with the approaching new year, RHR, on its 20th anniversary,
vows to rededicate itself to pursue its sacred work, no matter the obstacles,
and fulfill the powerful command of the prophet Isaiah, which we recite on Yom
Kippur: "To unlock the shackles of injustice, to undo the fetters of bondage, to
let the oppressed go free, to break every cruel chain, to share your bread with
the hungry, to bring the homeless poor into your house." (Isaiah 58:6-7).

If Isaiah and Micah provide Rabbis for Human Rights with its modus vivendi, then
Rabbi Tarfon accords it its modus operandi: "It is not incumbent upon you to
finish the task, but you are not free to desist from it" (Sayings of the Fathers
2:16).

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Rabbis for Human Rights organized an interfaith visit to Sharon
Maman, seriously wounded in the 2002 terrorist attack on the Sbarro Pizza Parlor
in downtown Jerusalem. (Credit: Amiel Hazon)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The Jerusalem Post

August 29, 2008 Friday

New Chelm in Jerusalem

BYLINE: SARAH HONIG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 1227 words

HIGHLIGHT: Another Tack

The Jewish state has already had several trial runs. The most noteworthy was in
mythical Chelm, which was governed by its own inimitable system of logic.

So is New Chelm - aka Israel.

The original Chelm's town fathers, for example, were intent on deploying a
formidable security force to daunt evildoers, like the pesky burglar who prowled
the narrow alleys after dark. The burly constable they employed soon apprehended
the miscreant and forced him to stand in the corner until all inspection rounds
were completed. Needless to say, the thief took flight.

However, upon returning to the scene of the crime the next night, he was again
taken into custody. This time his ankle was tied to a lamppost. Yet as the
relentless cop pounded the beat, he lost his man once more. On the third night
the determined lawman simply took the recidivist along with him on patrol. But
then the felon's cap fell and rolled away in the wind. He proposed to go after
it. The savvy policeman, though, took no more chances and ran to retrieve the
loss all by himself. Left on his own, the detainee made his getaway.

Not to worry. The story had a happy ending. The grateful town council rewarded
the officer's tenaciousness with a cash prize, a citation of merit and a
promotion for catching an outlaw every night.

IN ISRAEL we do things true to the Chelm prototype, though on a far larger,
existentially-threatening scale. We send out soldiers and members of the
security forces on perilous missions to nab dangerous terrorists. Valiantly
risking their lives, our men capture the villains, who are then duly brought to
justice and given every break which our scrupulous due process offers. They are
sentenced only following fair conviction by our uber-tolerant courts.

Behind bars their conditions enable them to further their education, indulge in
hobbies, wed, receive conjugal visits, procreate and commission more terror
onslaughts. They can also derive solace from the realization that they won't end
their days in durance vile, no matter how heinous their crimes. Our system
deters sadistic slayers every bit as terrifyingly as the above fabled defender
of Chelm's citizenry frightened the malefactor he routinely arrested.

Bestial brutes know they'll be sprung sooner or later. It may be because their
accomplices on the outside take hostages or because the Chelmites at Israel's
helm volunteer to pay ransom a priori - before innocents are kidnapped. The
unassailable Chelm rationale is that prophylactic measures obviate the enemy's
need to abduct Israelis - they get what they want without having to bother with
the mess of seizing captives. Chelmite policy-makers - like the flawlessly wise
and always self-assured Tzipi Livni - refuse to so much as contemplate the
uncharitable notion that shedding Jewish blood, cruelly torturing Israeli
families and exploiting New Chelm's proclivity to tearjerker mawkishness are
irresistibly tempting terrorist goals in themselves.

AND SO Livni and crew yammer to the utter satisfaction of all Chelm intellects
that setting loose those who had murdered, or whose murderous schemes were
temporarily frustrated, is nothing but "a goodwill gesture" because we're
getting absolutely nothing in return.

If one set of bandits (Hamas) holds an Israeli hostage, then neo-Chelmites pay
off the rival gang (Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah) lest it be disadvantaged by the fact
that the more effectively aggressive mob stands to gain by its malfeasance and
enhance its prestige. Jerusalem makes sure that the extortionist abilities of
the less-thriving thugs aren't outmatched. In Chelmite parlance this is called
"encouraging moderation."

Still, confoundingly, the recipients of Israeli beneficence don't exude
gratitude or extol our sophisticated broadmindedness. They know us for the Chelm
fools that we repeatedly and indisputably prove ourselves to be. After all,
Israel keeps funding Hamastan and paying absconded treason-suspect Azmi
Bishara's Knesset pension. Hence Abbas presses on with his aggrieved victim
pose, claiming to have elicited only a negligible fraction of what's his by
right and to deserve much more. His pseudo- moral indignation is way more
persuasive than New Chelm's liberal largesse.

NOWHERE IN foreign media reports is it mentioned that 149 of the 198 terrorists
released Monday were involved in attempts to slaughter Israelis. The fact that
not all plots succeeded isn't for any lack of homicidal ambition on the
conspirators' parts. Many haven't served even half (many not a quarter and
others not a third) of their sentences. Some of those sent up for long stretches
are getting out after less than a year.

So far, bedeviling "goodwill" has sprung 1000 terror convicts for Abbas's sake.
Hundreds more are slated to be let out by the end of the year. Although
bloodthirsty fanatics who haven't done their time are free to return heroically
to their gory pastimes, the abiding impression abroad is that the hobnailed
oppressors from New Chelm have only grudgingly and marginally diminished
injustice by freeing too-few noble prisoners of conscience.

So what if Ibrahim Mahmad (aka Muhammad Abu Ali) - who killed yeshiva student
Yehoshua Saloma in Hebron and later callously slit the throat of a fellow inmate
he accused of collaboration - doesn't quite fit the Amnesty profile of
nonviolent idealists incarcerated for their beliefs? The world's news-purveyors
choose to depict Abu Ali as a martyred saint and Livni's Chelm as the tyrannical
baddie.

LIVNI AND fellow Chelmites should have known there would be no accolades for
their imbecility. The persistent implied bottom line overseas is that terrorists
in Israeli prisons aren't there justly but are held illegitimately. Not only is
Israel censured for any feeble self-defense, but it mustn't even punish the most
despicable of barbarians, whose records are never examined - as if they were
nothing but propaganda sheets.

Foreigners don't much care what atrocities were perpetrated here. Why should
they if Chelm's suckers pooh- pooh them as forgettable bygones and regard
convicts as fungible currency with which to bankroll politically expedient
deals? By Chelmite reckoning such "reasonableness" will unilaterally strengthen
pragmatism among Israel's implacable enemies.

It'll surely show, as Livni stated, that "Israel doesn't only free prisoners in
response to force, thereby broadcasting weakness and capitulation to pressure.
We want to signal to the other side that abductions aren't the only method to
get results from Israel. We want to demonstrate that there are other ways to get
results." In Livni's Chelmite lexicon "results" mean allowing genocidal killers
to escape justice. Under one circumstance or another, Israel owes its assorted
enemies "results" and must pay. In New Chelm lulling respites come at a steep
price, but the wise don't pinch pennies. It's prudent to try to preempt any
future emergency. They used to do that in Old Chelm all the time.

Like when the aforementioned thief made off with the new safety railings mounted
on the town's rickety antiquated bridge. The constable no longer bothered
pursuing him because he always escaped anyhow. Meanwhile, carts and buggies
tumbled down into the ravine below. There were casualties. Nevertheless, Chelm's
dependable leaders knew how to handle the crisis.

They built a hospital directly beneath the crippled bridge.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Released Palestinian prisoner Muhammad Abu Ali waves on Monday.
Was this killer of a yeshiva student and fellow prisoner portrayed in the world
media as a martyred saint? (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The Jerusalem Post

August 29, 2008 Friday

A Middle East strategy for the West

BYLINE: BARRY RUBIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1029 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Region. The writer is director of the Global Research in
International Affairs Center at IDC Herzliya and editor of the Middle East
Review of International Affairs Journal.

The great battle during our younger years was between communism and democratic
liberalism. Its contemporary equivalent is Arab nationalism versus Islamism.

That implies some extremely important, often misunderstood conclusions: First,
regrettable but true, democracy isn't in the running. The problem is not just
that cynical rulers mislead the masses through demagoguery - though that's true
- it's that the masses embrace extremist world views.

Even in Iraq or Lebanon, what exists is not democracy but merely elections
regulating the precise balance among ethno-religious blocs. Instead of lobbying,
they use violence as a means of persuasion and leverage, violence periodically
breaking into civil war.

Other countries are dictatorships, though the degree of repression varies.
Kuwait, a sort of monarchical semi- democracy, is the exception proving the
rule. There, pro- democratic liberal forces do poorly against dynasty-
controlled Islamists and tribal foes.

The Palestinian political scene provides another example. Remember, Fatah
accepted Hamas's victory at the polls. Only after an agreement made a coalition
government possible did Hamas stage a coup.

There is nothing theoretical about this. Is democracy possible in the
Arabic-speaking world? Why not, once one discounts all the existing political,
ideological, social and organizational forces?

Will it come eventually? Probably, if "eventually" is long enough.

In terms of practical politics and strategy, however, these two questions are
irrelevant. Democracy isn't on the agenda.

JUST TO provide guidelines, and remembering that every country differs, I'd
suggest roughly 60-70% of the Arabic- speaking world is still Arab nationalist,
20%-30% is Islamist and 10% pro-moderate democracy. Numbers and definitions are
subject to challenge, but the basic proportions seem right.

Two hybrid regimes exist. Libya follows dictator Muammar Gaddafi's bizarre
mentality. More important is Syria, where the regime is Arab nationalist but its
international policy and domestic propaganda are largely Islamist. It backs
Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian Islamist terrorists, and is deeply committed to
the Iranian alliance.

NOT ALL Islamists are the same or allied, but all are extremely dangerous. Iran
and Syria, which can subvert whole countries and sponsor large political
organizations, are far more dangerous than al-Qaida.

The notion of helping groups like the Muslim Brotherhood become more powerful or
seize control of countries is insane. It is more likely to ensure decades of
bloodshed, the deaths of many thousands of people in internal strife and foreign
warfare, and the destruction of Western interests.

The two contending forces are both local. The West is an outside factor whose
intervention - either through force or concessions - won't decide this contest
generally, and certainly isn't going to transform either side. The West can,
however, do some critical things if it knows how to distinguish between friends,
enemies and interests:

*ÊHelp one side against the other where appropriate. The people to help are the
Arab nationalists. As a group, at least with Saddam Hussein gone from Iraq, they
are less internationally aggressive and less internally repressive than the
revolutionary, enthusiastic and ideologically idealistic Islamists.

They have also absorbed some lessons from the past half-century about their own
limits and Western power. Their people suffer because they're incapable of
transforming these societies for the better; their subjects benefit because they
don't seek to transform these societies and govern every detail of their lives.

*ÊDon't romanticize Arab nationalist regimes. They're incompetent, corrupt,
anti-democratic and unreliable. We know their failings are one significant
reason the Islamists have grown but, frankly, there's nothing we can do about
it. There's no third alternative. The Bush administration tried and failed
miserably. Ironically, a genuinely moderate government, the Lebanese "March 14"
coalition, didn't receive serious Western support and inevitably fell to
Hizbullah pressure and Iranian-Syrian subversion.

Arab nationalist regimes will do as little as possible to combat the Islamists
internationally, appease the other side quickly if they think it's winning, and
play anti- American, anti-Western and anti-Israel cards.

*ÊShow Arab nationalist regimes that the West won't let them get away with
anything nasty, and show the Islamists it won't let them get away with anything
at all. Any concession made to the Islamist side - including Syria - sends a
signal to regimes, radical Islamist groups and the people that the Islamists are
winning and everyone better join or appease them.

*ÊTrying to obtain Israel-Palestinian or Arab-Israeli peace is a useless
strategy, distracting from real issues. It isn't going to happen; Islamists
would use any such peace to portray those signing it as traitors; and even many
Arab nationalists would denounce it to raise their credibility as tough,
unyielding fighters. Violence and unrest would increase, not lessen.

Similarly, the main reason to oppose Iranian nuclear weapons is not because they
would threaten Israel - though that's important - but because they endanger
Western interests by swinging the balance wildly in favor of the Islamists.

If you want a good analogy, think of how the US and Britain had to ally with
Joseph Stalin's USSR during World War II (though they were too trusting of him)
and with a variety of dictators during the Cold War (without countenancing their
systems or practices, which didn't happen often enough but more so than many
think today).

In short, the priority is not to be nice to Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, the Muslim
Brotherhood or Syria, but rather to work with - critically and sometimes
pressuring - the governments of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, the smaller Gulf
states, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, and with democratic forces in Lebanon. This
group also includes Fatah's Palestinian Authority, but that already receives far
more money and diplomatic support than it needs or deserves. It should be made
to work for these benefits rather than contribute so much to the problems.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: President Bashar Assad gestures at President Dmitry Medvedev.
Syria is a hybrid. (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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790 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 29, 2008 Friday

Toward self-realization - and contribution

BYLINE: BARBARA SOFER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1551 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Human Spirit

We're eight miles above the Atlantic Ocean in the cockpit of a Boeing 777. A
full moon, melon-yellow, hangs like a giant balloon in the silent sky. "This is
the most advanced passenger plane in the world. You only need an experienced
pilot when anything goes wrong," says Capt. Gideon Livni. He is an experienced
pilot. He's been flying for El Al for 18 years. Before that, he was full-time
IAF.

Livni keeps a watchful eye on the rows of illuminated buttons of the flight
deck, as the management and satellite communications system propels us eastward
from the United States to Israel. But there's time to relish the passenger log:
Tonight he's carrying 240 immigrants, among them 104 children. The oldest
passenger is 72, the youngest one month old. That doesn't count the guests like
me on this chartered flight, invited by Nefesh B'Nefesh, the six-year- old
nonprofit organization which spares no effort to catalyze and facilitate
immigration of North American and British Jews.

Every Zionist cell of my heart is beating fast when I meet the immigrants at
JFK. "Are you making aliya? And are you making aliya?" I ask them. I can spot
the immigrants among the well-wishing friends and relatives who have come to
wish them a bon voyage.

THE MIX of excitement and weariness is etched in their faces. Despite the help
of Nefesh B'Nefesh staff at every juncture of the immigration process, packing
and closing up households and planning for a new life remain a huge challenge. A
pregnant mother of five from Los Angeles has a blaring headache. A father of
five from Queens, originally from Azerbaijan, sounds uncertain as he describes
the forthcoming moving to Bnei Brak to make sure his children grow up with
Jewish values. He asks me if I think I made the right decision by leaving
America so long ago and bringing up my children in Israel.

I assure him that I have no regrets. Just the opposite. I moved to Israel in
1971, the bumper year of all time for immigration from the US when, according to
the Central Bureau of Statistics, 7,364 Americans took on Israeli citizenship.
But as terror and economic troubles of the second intifada combined with a lull
in immigration, a mere 1,237 Americans became Israelis in 2000.

That was before Nefesh B'Nefesh reversed this trend. The organization has
brought 36 chartered and 22 group aliya flights, totaling more than 16,000
immigrants from the US, Canada and the UK.

At last, the well-wishers depart, and the passengers fill the wide-bodied jet.
They applaud as Capt. Livni takes off.

BY THE time these men and women and children land - nine hours and change later
- they'll step onto Israeli soil as fully-processed new immigrants. They don't
even have to go through passport control or customs. Interior Ministry reps
spend a sleepless night walking around the plane with electronic PC-Tablets, the
electronic pads that hold personal details of every immigrant. These were
developed by Nefesh B'Nefesh as one of a myriad of technological devices aimed
at making the notoriously labor-intensive aliya "paperwork" an anachronism.
Their immigrant cards will be waiting at Ben-Gurion Airport, and three days
later they can pick up their ID cards at the Nefesh B'Nefesh office in
Jerusalem. We veteran Israelis can appreciate this dazzling efficiency even more
than the newcomers.

Nonetheless, the operative question remains the same as it was decades ago: Why
are you making aliya? I can still pinpoint the exact moment I decided to move to
Israel. Why are these Americans Jews, from such a variety of ages, religious
practices and lifestyles, uprooting themselves and casting their lots with the
Zionist enterprise?

For Beverlyn Baer, 22, in a sleeveless T-shirt, the decision was about falling
in love. She discovered Israel on a Birthright Israel free trip, loved it and
also one of the soldiers who accompanied her group of college kids. She came
back and volunteered in Ramle for five months to get better acquainted with the
country and the young man. Her boyfriend will be waiting at the airport and
they'll go to either the Golan Heights or Tel Aviv. They haven't decided yet.

Jo Anne Alderstein is a much-heralded immigrant attorney in New York. Today she
is an immigrant herself. The events of September 11 were a personal wake-up
call. On September 5, 2001, she'd moved into her dream apartment near the World
Trade Center. Then her daughter gave birth to a baby in Israel and Alderstein
quit unpacking and caught the first flight out. Hence, she missed the terror
attack. "If that wasn't a kick in the pants, I don't know what is," she says.

Her dream has changed; her dream apartment is now on Rehov Emek Refaim in
Jerusalem. To remind herself, she'll keep a framed magazine cover of the New
York skyline before 9/11 next to the words "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let
my right hand lose its cunning," at the entrance to her Jerusalem apartment. "I
should have come 30 years earlier," she says. "I knew I needed to come. The
existence of Nefesh B'Nefesh made the transition easier."

Indeed, the organization is an endless font of practical information: your
rights as immigrants, where to go for Hebrew classes, how to arrange health
insurance and register the kids for school, how to release your shipment from
customs. It also provides financial aid. But the greatest innovation is the warm
welcome and encouragement; there's nothing ambivalent about its belief in aliya
as the ultimate tool for self-realization and for building the State of Israel.

EBULLIENCE OVERCOMES tiredness on the flight. The immigrants can hardly sit
still and catch up on their sleep. No steward reprimands them as they crowd the
aisles, introducing themselves to others, jotting down names, ideas. Immigration
means starting all over in acquiring the contacts of people who will be your
friends and provide a safety net for you.

At one bulkhead seat, a young religious couple from New York are rocking their
eight-month-old daughter. The father turns out to be an Israeli, the son of
American immigrants. On a visit to the US, he met Jenny Rosenfeld, a graduate
student in English literature, at a Shabbat dinner table. It was love at first
sight for both of them. They married and waited for her to complete her
doctorate. His name is Pinhas Roth and he's from the Ramot neighborhood of
Jerusalem.

Suddenly I realize who he is: the older brother of the late Malki Roth. Malki
was planning a youth movement activity with her best friend Michal Raziel in the
Sbarro pizza restaurant when a terrorist with a guitar-case full of explosives
murdered them. The eighth anniversary of their death will take place in two days
. "Our baby's name is Neshama Malka," Jenny says softly. "We know she has the
wonderful soul of her Aunt Malki."

I think about how Nefesh B'Nefesh got started. In 2002 Yehoshua Fass was serving
as a successful community rabbi in Boca Raton, Florida when his Israeli cousin
was murdered by terrorists. He got a clear vision of what he had to do. He
couldn't replace his cousin or other victims of terror, but he could pledge to
do everything within his power to encourage immigration from the West and
strengthen the State of Israel in their memory.

Aliya had to become easier if it was to attract Western immigrants.

Rabbi Fass found a partner in Florida businessman Tony Gelbert in forging a
service-centered aliya engine that would provide the answer to overcome the
daunting economic and practical obstacles associated with the move. He would set
the example. Fass and his family were on the first Nefesh B'Nefesh flight, and
he and Gelbert are on this, the 35th flight, as they seek to continually refine
the process. At first they relied on private donations, but at the end of 2005
the Israeli government began contributing too, and they work together with the
Jewish Agency and the Immigrant Absorption Ministry.

The aliya of eight-month old Neshama Malka Roth is the fulfillment of their
pledge.

Sitting in the cockpit, as we sail through the sky, I share some of these
stories with Capt. Livni, who hasn't had a chance to meet the passengers. He
tells me a little about himself, how he grew up on a kibbutz and how he formed
and commanded the very squadron of F-16s that astronaut Ilan Ramon flew in.
Later, when I have access to the Internet I'll fill in a few details about the
good captain which he didn't share with me. His name pops up on Web sites that
mark the world's ace pilots. It seems that the avuncular Livni flew Mirages and
downed six planes in the Yom Kippur War.

But it's the contribution of immigration to which he gives credit for the
country's success. "The million Russian Jews saved our country," he says. "I
don't know where we'd be without them. Now, if only we had a million Jews from
the United States, we'd really be in terrific shape."

Still musing aloud, Livni says, "If only we could figure out how to get them to
come." Then suddenly his face lights up in a wide smile. Nefesh B'Nefesh does
indeed know how to get them to come. The process has started. There are 240 new
immigrants in his plane right now.

Livni issues new orders to his crew. Today each El Al breakfast omelet will come
with a plastic cup of Israeli wine. As the newcomers are reaching the Promised
Land, the veteran fighter pilot wants to toast them with a l'hayim.

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Mission unaccomplished

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 712 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Sigal Barda lived in the Gaza Strip community of Elei Sinai for 15 years. Her
husband is a policeman, which tipped the scales three years ago in their
decision to cooperate with the authorities during the disengagement. She also
did not want her children to be traumatized by a forcible expulsion.

From the start, the Bardas cooperated with the system - unlike some settlers who
initially refused to play any role in facilitating their removal.

Yet even for the Bardas, not much went right. There was nowhere to put them up
initially; and promised housing in Kibbutz Or Haner never materialized.

The Disengagement Authority, known as Sela, charged with relocating and
rehabilitating as many as 10,000 evacuees from the Gaza Strip and northern
Samaria, haggled over every aspect of compensation - as if the Bardas were out
to exploit the state. Even the monthly cost of warehousing their possessions was
deducted from their compensation package.

They were eventually put up in a trailer at Kibbutz Karmiya, pending the
construction of new homes at Moshav Talmei Yaffe. These have not materialized
because of bureaucratic snafus, and the kibbutz has repeatedly tried to eject
them and other evacuees.

Barda says she "never imagined that law-abiding citizens, who lost everything
one day through no fault of their own, would encounter such hardheartedness. For
three years we have existed without hope in cramped, temporary accommodations,
with Kassams fired at us from the ruins of our destroyed homes. We did our
share. Why can't the state live up to its obligations?"

SELA WAS to have served as a central clearinghouse for the evacuees, a
multi-service agency that would cut through the red tape so families wouldn't
have to run from one ministry to another for assistance as they tried to rebuild
their lives.

Unfortunately, Sela did not have the clout it needed to get the job done. Of an
estimated 1,667 families removed from Gush Katif, 1,405 remain in transitory
lodgings. Only seven of 24 projected new settlements are reportedly under
construction. And only 50 of 400 farmers received some kind of land to work, and
few are back in business. Of 3,500 working people, 822 remain jobless. Most
others earn a fraction of their previous income. Independently employed
entrepreneurs went broke. Communities which strove to resettle together are
still unable to do so.

As early as 2006, the state comptroller reported that Sela was "a crushing
failure." Today, the comptroller supports establishing a state commission of
inquiry into the treatment of the evacuees, a step recently approved by the
Knesset Control Committee.

MISSION not accomplished, Sela has been slated to be disbanded by the end of
2009. It is being closed at the request of the Finance Ministry to save money,
and legislation to that effect is included in the 2009 budget. Whatever
contracts and agreements are still pending with the evacuees, and with the
regional councils or communities into which they are to be absorbed, had better
be concluded by the end of 2009 or they will be passed to another governmental
body.

Its faults notwithstanding, Sela was at least an address for the uprooted
settlers. Now they will have to take their problems to various ministries -
Housing, Agriculture, Welfare, Health and Justice, to name a few.

The argument has been made that, at this stage, these ministries might actually
be better positioned to deliver where Sela could not. Perhaps.

If the Treasury will not salvage Sela and give it the wherewithal to finish the
job, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert needs to immediately direct each ministry to
appoint an ombudsman to be responsible for disengagement issues - someone on the
inside who knows how to get things done. That should be implemented sooner
rather than later for a smooth transition.

There also needs to be an official in the Prime Minister's Office to keep the
big picture in view and coordinate the work of the various ministries involved.

On August 22, 2005 this newspaper editorialized against the "institutional
callousness, bureaucratic run- arounds and official hardheartedness" facing
those who lost their homes in disengagement's wake. Out of simple human decency
and for the sake of the political system's credibility, the travails of the
uprooted must end.

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Letters

BYLINE: Jackie Altman, Barry Lynn, David Teich, Paul Harris, Maish Rubin,
Leonard Dreyer, Esther Rafaeli, David S. Addleman, Lou Scop, Elana Rozenman

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1152 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Actually, it's...

Sir, - Get your facts right, Andrew Carew-Morton! ("More than misguided,"
Letters, August 27.) The IDF does not target civilians. Its targets are the
terrorists who are either on their way to kill Israeli civilians or guilty of
master-minding such missions. These IDF targeted assassinations are carried out
with pinpoint accuracy and, in most cases, are highly successful. It is,
moreover, a known fact that such planned assassinations have been aborted when
there was too great a risk to Palestinian civilians in the area.

As for your reference to "illegal occupation" of land, perhaps you should go
back a few centuries - say, 2,000 years - and study the history of who owned
this land and how it was illegally taken from them. Read your Bible if you want
to learn the truth about "land grab," and the reasons for the Jewish people's
yearning to return to what is theirs by historical right and justice.

JACKIE ALTMAN

Netanya

Sir, - Since when is it illegal to settle "non- sovereign land?" Since when are
terrorists (innocent) civilians?

BARRY LYNN

Efrat

...the other way around

Sir, - Andrew Carew-Morton provides a wonderful example of selective perception.
"The repeated targeting of Palestinian population centers"? Really. The
Palestinian terrorists openly use their own people as shields, so attacking the
terrorists means going into population centers. Your correspondent seems to
intentionally be putting the cart before the horse.

Statistics from both sides clearly show that Israel's civilians make up more
than half of our casualties, while Palestinian non-combatants are less than
half.

What's really "deeply abhorrent" is using Orwellian doublespeak to support
terror.

DAVID TEICH

Rehovot

Sir, - May I suggest that Mr Carew-Morton Google San Remo conference 1919/1920,
with additionally, the Vienna Conference on Treaties 1969/89, Section 70[1].

PAUL HARRIS

Tel Aviv

About Gilad...

Sir, - There is no need to exchange prisoners for Gilad Schalit's release
("Wishy-washy," Letters, August 27). Israel should seal the borders of Gaza.
Nothing goes in, nothing goes out until Schalit is returned to us safe and
sound.

To the "humanitarians" who object to the suffering of the Gazan Arabs, we say:
"Go in and bring our Gilad back - we are also suffering."

It's time Israel stopped fighting with her hands tied behind her back.

MAISH RUBIN

Beersheba

...and gestures

Sir, - I, for one, am fed up with the non-reciprocal gestures we keep making to
Mahmoud Abbas ("Freed prisoners receive hero's welcome in Ramallah," August 26).
How about he makes one in return?

For example, now that the new school term is beginning in Palestinian schools as
well as ours, it would not be unreasonable to ask him to remove just one
textbook from the Palestinian curriculum that incites hatred toward the Jews and
refers to us as sons of pigs and apes.

Just a thought.

LEONARD DREYER

Ra'anana

Those vital others

Sir, - Further to "Yad Vashem and Hillel Kook" (July 8): Much of the recent
publicity surrounding the work of the Bergson Group in the US during the
Holocaust refers to "Peter Bergson and others." I feel a need to give names to
these "others" and explain who they were: a remarkable group of Etzel members
who worked as emissaries in 1930s Europe, organizing illegal aliya and building
political support.

In February 1939 the Revisionist leadership decided to send an Etzel delegation
to the US to promote political and financial support. The first group included
activists Haim Lubinsky and Yitzhak Ben-Ami, the Irish Col. John Patterson,
commander of Hagdudim Ha'ivriim in WWI, and Robert Briscoe, the only Jewish MP
in Ireland.

After a few months, only Ben-Ami, who already during his work in Central Europe
had the idea of relocating to the US, continued the task. He was joined by Arieh
Ben- Eliezer, who reached out mainly to the Yiddish-speaking population, and
Alex Rafaeli, who focused mainly on the entertainment world on the West coast.

Hillel Kook (Bergson) was the commander of Etzel activities in the Diaspora and
their highest-ranking officer. Shmuel Merlin was the ideologue and historian,
and Eri Jabotinsky the experienced rescue organizer. Ben-Ami and Rafaeli joined
the American army in 1943 and served in Europe.

The delegation members trained as an underground unit and became a coordinated
team unified by shared ideals. Aware of the fate looming over Europe, they
became a powerful lobby for rescuing Jews and for establishing the Jewish state.
They preceded their time and created a unique model.

Operating under various names such as the Committee for a Jewish Army and the
Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, they made wide use of
the media and built broad circles of public support. The delegation's
headquarters in Washington were known as the Embassy.

Unhappily, these personalities are no longer with us, but they should not be
dismissed as anonymous "others."

ESTHER RAFAELI

Jerusalem

Crisis on wheels

Sir, - With news reports this week putting the massacre on Israel's roads since
the beginning of this year at a figure of 292 dead, it's fair to say we are in
crisis mode. Should anyone ask how this could happen in a civilized country such
as ours, I would suggest he walk to the nearest main road and observe the
passing traffic. He will see an array of stunts and infringements that defy
belief.

For example: drivers racing up to the traffic lights to catch the green light;
drivers drinking from bottles, shaving, reading newspaper headlines, fiddling
with the radio/CD player and turning around to address back-seat passengers. He
will see women engrossed in plumping up their hair and applying cosmetics, eyes
glued to the mirror. And, of course, mobile phones will be clamped to the ears
of both sexes.

Is it any wonder, then, that concentration - the essence of car-driving - is
dispensed with, leading to mayhem and wholesale death?

Our family is in deep shock this week, after our young son's best friend lost a
leg owing to yet another road accident ("Four killed in weekend accidents,"
August 24).

DAVID S. ADDLEMAN

Mevaseret Zion

Sir, - I would take great joy in breaking the fingers of the very many bad
drivers on our roads - every minute of every hour of every day - making it
impossible for them ever to drive again. Then, while sitting in jail for the
rest of my life, I would reflect on what a good thing I had done....

LOU SCOP

Netanya

More than gossip

Sir, - Your Grapevine of August 27, "Reconciliation through dialogue," was
another example of taking a gossip column and elevating it to another level,
bringing in politics, philosophy, history, religion and psychology and imbuing
it with an insightful take on Israeli life. This Greer Fay Cashman does, giving
praise or short-shrift, as she sees fit.

Kudos to her for writing a consistently informative and enjoyable column, and to
the Post for providing us with this journalistic treasure.

ELANA ROZENMAN

Jerusalem

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Leviticus traps

BYLINE: DAVID BENKOF

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 728 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is a Ph.D. student in American Jewish history at New York
University.

When Orthodox Jews like me discuss man-woman marriage and other public-policy
issues relating to homosexuality, we often run into what I call "Leviticus
traps." Such quasi-arguments suggest that people who follow the Bible are
singling out homosexuality for condemnation out of prejudice or
narrow-mindedness, because if we really valued Scripture we'd follow all the
other "silly rules" in the Torah.

Perhaps the most famous Leviticus trap was set several years ago by president
Josiah Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen on the former NBC series The West Wing. A
character (Dr. Jenna Jacobs) modeled after radio advice-giver Dr. Laura
Schlessinger (an Orthodox Jew at the time) visited the White House and the
president confronted her:

Bartlet: I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination.

Jacobs: I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President, the Bible
does.

Bartlet: Yes, it does. Leviticus.

Jacobs: 18:22.

Bartlet: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I
had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as
sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian,
always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her
be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo
McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should
be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it okay to
call the police?... Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing
garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would
you?

THIS CONFRONTATION, which is based on a Leviticus trap in an open letter to Dr.
Laura that circulated on the Internet eight years ago, sent gay and lesbian
opponents of traditional religion into a tizzy of righteousness and
self-congratulation. The problem is, the scene shows zero awareness of the
beliefs and practices of Orthodox Jews like me, Dr. Laura at the time and
presumably Dr. Jacobs (a Jewish name).

Orthodox Jews believe not only that the written Torah is divine, but that God
gave an oral Torah as well, which has come to be written down in the Talmud.
Orthodox Jews believe male-male intercourse is forbidden to everyone not because
we open the Torah, read a verse from Leviticus and reason out its meaning.
Rather, we listen to rabbis who are experts in the entire Jewish legal corpus,
which explains how we should understand the written Torah. All serious Orthodox
rabbis agree that male-male intercourse - and same-sex marriage - are
universally prohibited.

Bartlet's diatribe dramatizes a made-up death penalty (it's mentioned nowhere in
the Torah) for mixing two threads together. Of course, Orthodox Jews indeed do
not wear garments with both linen and wool - I had to get my new suit approved
by a rabbi before I could buy it - but doing so has never been a capital crime.

The biblical prohibitions that do carry the death penalty demanded such a high
burden of proof that executions were extremely rare. I know of no specific case
in which a Jewish court executed someone for gay sex, for example. Punishments,
in Jewish thought, even the death penalty, are meant as atonement, not
vengeance. Today's traditional Jews look at each violation's corresponding
punishment as a measurement of the severity of the sin, not a practical plan for
disciplining offenders.

In addition, many of the examples Bartlet gave - such as mixing fabrics and
observing the Sabbath - are laws that apply only to Jews. In fact, we believe
non-Jews are forbidden to fully observe the Sabbath. So Jacobs' special
condemnation of gay sex actually does make sense, because the prohibition of
intercourse between males (and, incidentally, of same-sex marriage) are
"Noahide" laws - laws that apply to all human beings. In other words, one answer
to "Why don't you lecture your radio listeners about violating the Sabbath and
wearing mixed fabrics rather than just homosexuality?" is "Judaism believes only
the prohibition of the latter applies to everyone - and most of my listeners
aren't Jewish."

The people who set Leviticus traps for Orthodox Jews display a basic ignorance
of Orthodoxy. It's time to have some honest dialogue on marriage and other gay
issues, but nobody's beliefs should be misrepresented or mocked.

DavidBenkof@aol.com

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Brand Israel

BYLINE: HASKELL NUSSBAUM

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 773 words

HIGHLIGHT: A pilot program to put Israel in a new light gets under way in
Toronto. The writer is the author of the just- released 101+ Ways to Help
Israel: A Guide to Doing Small Things That Can Make Big Differences (Gavel
Press).

After 60 years of Diaspora Jews complaining that Israel's hasbara efforts fall
flat, there is finally reason for Jews worldwide to believe that the Foreign
Ministry is beginning to get it. September marks the beginning of an ambitious
new pilot program, being run by the consul- general in Toronto, Amir Gissin, to
"rebrand" Israel.

Starting with print ads that will be featured prominently in bus shelters and
billboards across the city, and continuing with radio and editorial content,
Torontonians can expect to see Israel being portrayed as an innovative leader in
technology that brings real benefits to their own lives. One ad, for example,
depicts an Indian mother and daughter smiling under the words "Coronary stent.
Lifesaver." At the bottom is a new iconic logo, "Innovation Israel," and the tag
line "Touching lives." The message to the growing Indian community in Toronto
couldn't be clearer.

Notably, one type of message that will be conspicuous by its absence is any type
of explanation or defense of Israel's actions in regard to its politics.
"Explaining why we are right is not enough," says Gissin. "Our goal is to make
Israel relevant and attractive to Canadians and to refocus attention away from
the conflict."

IN THIS Gissin is entirely correct. There is plenty of attention given to the
Israeli-Arab conflict in the media already, and plenty of opportunities for
pundits and diplomats to debate Israeli policies in front of audiences who
listen. The conflict, after all, is not going away soon. The real challenge lies
with the growing population of the Diaspora for whom Israel is not relevant and
who tune out much of the news regarding the conflict as being hopelessly
confusing and morally muddled.

These are people whose very indifference or inattentiveness make them
susceptible to being swayed by charged anti-Israel labels that are thrown around
by our adversaries, such as the word "apartheid." With campuses around the world
hosting "Israel Apartheid Week" on an annual basis and ex-presidents of the
United States using the word in a book title, the need to have an ongoing
campaign that will implant positive emotional associations to Israel has become
crucial.

But will the Israeli pilot program in Toronto work? And will it be relevant to
the rest of the Diaspora? Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the
world, with more than 200 languages spoken and with almost half the population
belonging to a minority. There are, for example, 470,000 Chinese living there,
many of them having little or no preconceptions about Israel. There are, as
well, more than half a million Italians. That makes Toronto a very attractive
laboratory to experiment in.

AND IT will be a real experiment, with a local company measuring the effects of
the campaign with ongoing surveys to measure any progress. (These surveys will
be carefully constructed so that respondents are unaware of who has sponsored
them and will strenuously avoid politics.) Ads and editorials that are deemed
successful by the consulate will, in later years, find their way to other cities
around the globe.

There are good reasons for optimism. Gissin and the other people and companies
involved in running the campaign are well versed in the local nuances and are
aware of the difficulties involved in running a branding campaign that is short
on budget. (Most of the advertising budget for the pilot program is being
provided by local Jewish philanthropists). The ads are professional and
appealing.

But the overwhelming consensus of marketing professionals is that no rebranding
campaign can work without grass-roots involvement. Without buzz being generated
by word of mouth, without the target audience discussing Israel among
themselves, the campaign is likely to fail and the experiment will then not be
repeated globally.

It is far too early to tell if the Foreign Ministry's campaign will generate
such buzz on its own. But one lesson from the pilot program can already be taken
by all supporters of Israel in the Diaspora and that is that even when the
ministry does everything right, it can't really do it without local support.
Diaspora Zionists must get involved. We must help create the buzz that others
will perpetuate.

Even without a formal "rebranding Israel" program, we all have a role to play to
help Israel's image. It can be as simple as e-mailing a news story about a
recent Israeli invention to a colleague, hanging a picture of beautiful Israeli
art on our walls or helping our cities and towns twin with an Israeli town. The
government is, belatedly, doing its part. We must lend it a hand.

nussbaum@WaysToHelpIsrael.com

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The three monkeys do Lebanon

BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1120 words

HIGHLIGHT: The commander of the UNIFIL force in Lebanon neither sees nor hears
any evil - except on the part of Israel. Civil Fights

As my colleague Caroline Glick aptly noted two weeks ago, Russia's invasion of
Georgia was an object lesson in the folly of relying on others to protect you.
But lest anyone remain unconvinced, Claudio Graziano has kindly offered further
proof.

Graziano, an Italian general, commands the expanded UNIFIL force stationed in
Lebanon under Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second
Lebanon War. On August 14, he gave a press conference on the resolution's
implementation. His conclusions were simple: Israel, he said, is in "permanent
violation," whereas Hizbullah is "one of [the] parties that agrees with 1701,"
and has cooperated fully.

The next day, outraged Israeli officials met with Graziano to point out the
Hizbullah violations he had somehow overlooked. Graziano countered that Israel
has provided no intelligence to support its allegations. That is conceivable,
since his coziness with Hizbullah undoubtedly deters Israel from sharing
sensitive intelligence with him. But since Hizbullah's most egregious violations
have been conducted in full view and reported in major media outlets worldwide,
classified intelligence is unnecessary. It is enough not to be blind and deaf.

FOR INSTANCE, 1701 repeatedly cites an earlier resolution, 1559, which demands
that all Lebanese militias disarm. Indeed, it begins by "recalling previous
resolutions... in particular 425 (1978), 426 (1978), 520 (1982), 1559
(2004)...," which is UN-speak for "we still want those resolutions implemented."

Next, operative paragraph three "emphasizes the importance of the extension of
the control of the government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in
accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004)... so that there will
be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon and no authority
other than that of the government of Lebanon."

Operative paragraph eight calls for a "long-term solution" based on "full
implementation... of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the
disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that... there will be no weapons
or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state."

Finally, operative paragraph 10 asks the secretary- general to develop
"proposals to implement the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and
resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), including disarmament..."

YET FAR from disarming and accepting the elected government's authority,
Hizbullah not only rearmed, but used its arms to stage a coup against the
government in May. The coup involved days of battles against other Lebanese
forces, which were extensively reported worldwide, even if Graziano somehow
failed to notice them on the ground. But about 10 days after the fighting ended,
he and his spokesman, Milos Strugar, gave a joint interview in which Graziano
declared Hizbullah in full compliance with 1701, while Strugar termed it a mere
"social organization... that runs charitable associations."

The coup produced a unity government in which Hizbullah has veto power. And a
week before Graziano's August 14 press conference, this government approved the
following guidelines: "Lebanon, its army, its people and its resistance [i.e.
Hizbullah] have the right to act to liberate lands that remain occupied at Shaba
Farms... with all legitimate means possible." Then, lest anyone think the
qualifier "legitimate" precludes violence, President Michel Suleiman announced
that "all means," including military, are "legitimate to this end." In short,
the government formally authorized Hizbullah to attack Israel whenever it
pleases - which flatly contradicts 1701's demand for "no weapons or authority in
Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state" (not to mention the UN's 2000
ruling that Shaba is not Lebanese). But Graziano, like the three monkeys, sees
and hears no evil.

Finally, 1701 prohibits "sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon
except as authorized by its government" (paragraph eight, and again in more
detail in paragraphs 14 and 15). Just this Monday, the UN's own inspectors
reported that smuggling is rife despite this provision. Yet Graziano denies its
existence. Does he imagine the government authorized Hizbullah to acquire the
arms used in its May coup?

THUS HIZBULLAH has grossly violated numerous key provisions of 1701, while
Graziano turned a blind eye. Yet he persistently denounces three Israeli
violations: its overflights of Lebanon, its continued presence in Ghajar and its
failure to provide maps of unexploded cluster bombs in Lebanon.

The latter is never actually mentioned in 1701; the closest thing is paragraph
eight's prescription for a long- term solution, which includes Israel handing
over "all remaining maps of land mines" it possesses. This same paragraph
explicitly requires Hizbullah's disarmament and an end to arms smuggling, yet
Graziano deems Hizbullah in compliance. Nevertheless, since unexploded cluster
bombs primarily harm civilians, Israel should provide additional maps if it has
any.

The overflights and Ghajar, in contrast, undoubtedly violate the resolution's
demands for "full respect" for the international border and a full Israeli
withdrawal from Lebanon. Yet both are defensive moves necessitated mainly by
Graziano's whitewash of Hizbullah.

The overflights are aimed solely at gathering intelligence on the Hizbullah arms
buildup whose existence Graziano denies, and would thus be unnecessary had his
force either prevented it or collected and shared accurate intelligence on it.
As for Ghajar, the international border runs right through this village. Thus
the only way to defend southern Ghajar, meaning Israel, is either to sever the
halves completely (which residents oppose) or to have a trustworthy force in
northern Ghajar. And a force whose commander so blatantly ignores Hizbullah's
hostile activities hardly qualifies.

By falsely declaring Hizbullah in compliance, Graziano has shielded it from
international pressure that might impede its preparations for renewed
hostilities. By denouncing Israeli violations, he has simultaneously sought to
generate international pressure that would impede Israel's defensive efforts.
And since no country with troops in UNIFIL has protested this double standard,
they evidently deem appeasing Hizbullah to be in their interests.

And that is precisely why relying on others for protection is folly: Not only
will no country ever consider another state's defense its top priority, but
often, such defense will actively conflict with higher priorities.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has yet to learn this lesson; she still claims that
UNIFIL bolsters Israel's security. One can only hope that other Israelis are
better attuned to reality.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: UNIFIL FORCES in a Lebanese restaurant. Commander Claudio
Graziano says Israel is in 'permanent violation' of 1701, whereas Hizbullah is
in compliance. (Credit: Bloomberg)

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796 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 28, 2008 Thursday

The growing gap between architecture and urban planning

BYLINE: GERARD HEUMANN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1003 words

HIGHLIGHT: A city must be far more than a mere compilation of individual
buildings, however remarkable. The writer is a Jerusalem architect and town
planner.

In the 1960s a young architect applying for work in Eero Saarinen's office might
be asked, to his surprise, to draw an elephant. Today, most likely, he would be
requested to list the computer-assisted drawing and design programs he is
familiar with.

In a world where a new international global culture is gradually but steadily
supplanting cultural identities that over centuries have been based on
established geographical boundaries, more and more architects are jet-hopping to
building sites around the globe. The accumulation of capital has led to building
on a far larger scale. Building technology has spiraled. New and far more
plastic possibilities have opened up in the wake of the digital revolution.
Architects are being faced with a host of new challenges.

Drawing and designing by computer have severed that age-old and miraculous
connection between the hand and the mind which began with the earliest cave
paintings. We now have, for the first time, a great many architects who no
longer know how to draw. Gone forever are the beautiful and delicate colored
pencil renderings of Frank Lloyd Wright, the ink-line vignettes of Le Corbusier,
to take but two examples from the not too distant past, drawings which clearly
and remarkably expressed the very philosophies of their makers. Instead we are
today often confronted with ice-cold, virtual 3D images built up of elements
taken from some "menu."

While the computer has cut laborious drafting time at least in half, this has
had serious consequences. The patient, searching labor of love that had
characterized the work of the architectural profession over generations is now,
for the most part, a thing of the past. The power of the tool over the product
is everywhere evident. The major emphasis has shifted to speedy production.
That's where the money is.

This being the case, thoughtfulness, sensitivity and even real design talent are
often quickly cast aside. The computer enables the duplication of building plans
at the touch of a key. Thousands of designs made up of similar or identical
elements of a deadly conformity have been the predictable result.

A new breed of "superstar" architects has developed, as if architecture were
just another form of entertainment. Younger architects, quite naturally
attracted to the new possibilities, are in a mad rush trying them out, the only
problem here being that precious few among them possess the necessary discipline
and talent enabling the handling of complex formal languages. There is, of
course, no doubt that computer-assisted design is here to stay. Surely it can be
put to better use.

LARGE-SCALE BUILDING projects pose formidable problems for the architect. We
know that time works against large projects that go up quickly. More often than
not, they wind up sterile, lacking that sense of life found in areas built up
over time, where old and new co-exist side by side. History, memory and context
are, after all, important human necessities.

One of the most difficult problems to be overcome in large new residential
developments, for example, is the problem of repetition with its concomitant
deadening and dehumanizing effects. Given the choice, where would you choose to
live - Har Homa or the German Colony? And so far as giant single structures such
as sports stadiums are concerned, reconciling mass-scale with human scale is far
from an easy task, rarely accomplished. Without the right degree of organized
complexity, organic diversity, call it what you will, projects die. Variety
really is the spice of life.

Every architectural concept has an equivalent urbanistic one. Spaces exterior
with respect to buildings are interior with respect to the city. The real life
of any city takes place on the ground plane, at the level of the street, the
plaza and the park Without this basic understanding Piazza Saint Mark's in
Venice, the Capitol in Rome by Michaelangelo or Haussmann's Parisian boulevards
would never have existed.

PRACTICALLY OBLIVIOUS to their immediate physical environment, most of the new
architectural icons offer little or nothing in the way of thoughtful urban
space. Some are of giant proportions. Others, such as architect Norman Foster's
"Egg" in London, appear as alien presences. Many stand alone. Dictatorial
regimes, more than others, have the capacity for rapid and sometimes ruthless
action. From Beijing's Olympic Green, driven by image, to Dubai's artificial
paradise, Manhattan Instant, bordering on insanity, sensitive urban planning is
a rare commodity indeed.

Formal experimentation incorporating state-of-the-art techniques should always
be given much room, but mature restraint is a prerequisite for working in an
urban context. Few works need shout "Here I am." And while a single building
might be outstanding, it is the structure of an entire city that demonstrates
the level of organization of its life in any period. A city must be far more
than a mere compilation of individual buildings, however remarkable, or
self-contained plans.

With little understanding of its relation to the past or its route to the
future, the life of any given period will be lived aimlessly. Can anyone doubt
that in our time, short-term thinking predominates almost exclusively, resulting
in the present lack of unity. Although technology progresses in some ways, in
others it tends to separate itself more and more from humanity. Lacking a
dynamic balance between technology and human existence, technological advances
may pose a threat to contemporary cultural forms and social structures.

Architects and designers are the only people who stand precisely on this middle
ground. We are told that today you can build anything. Anything goes. Given the
present climate of opinion, when the fashionable, the luxurious and the global
are so very much sought after and so severely damaging the intricate and
delicate fabric of the city, it is critical that architects manifest their
creativity responsibly. Architecture, urban design and town planning must again
be made one.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: LONDON'S 'EGG.' Most of the new architectural icons offer little
or nothing in the way of thoughtful urban space.

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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797 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 28, 2008 Thursday

Ship of fools

BYLINE: DAN KOSKY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 604 words

HIGHLIGHT: The 'Free Gaza' voyage demonstrates how EU governments are funding
the politicized agendas of NGOs. The writer is communications director of NGO
Monitor.

When the "Free Gaza" voyage belatedly reached its destination, the fanfare and
world attention that its organizers craved was thankfully largely absent. Claims
that they had "broken the blockade" were quickly refuted by the Israeli
government, which well understood that the voyage had little to do with
humanitarian aid and everything to do with publicity. This important lesson must
be learned by others, including European governments which are among the donors
to the Free Gaza organizers.

There is no doubt that the Free Gaza crossing was nothing more than an expensive
publicity stunt. Claims by its organizers of a "humanitarian mission" are
refuted by simple logic. The activists estimated that the voyage cost in excess
of $300,000, yet the only genuine humanitarian cargo consisted of several
hundred hearing aids. Beyond the possibility that Free Gaza purchased history's
most expensive hearing devices, one wonders how much genuine aid could have been
purchased at this cost. More worrying, is the moral danger posed by the Free
Gaza organization. Theirs is one of the clearest examples of a radical agenda
masquerading as human rights.

Free Gaza is a coalition of several groups, including the International
Solidarity Movement (ISM), Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)
and Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR). ISM has a shameful record of
placing foreign nationals in danger through encouraging "direct action," most
recently as a leading force in the violent protests against the security barrier
at Ni'lin. In 2003, ISM's ideology was underscored when terrorists, originating
from the UK, used ISM as a cover to attack the Mike's Place bar in Tel Aviv,
murdering three people. As part of Free Gaza, ISM attempts to veil its extremism
beneath the cause of humanitarian aid.

Less notorious although no less pernicious are the activities of ICAHD.
Manipulating the language of human rights to promote a similar ideological
agenda, ICAHD refers to Israel as an "apartheid" state and promotes anti- Israel
boycotts. ICAHD's director, Jeff Halper has been one of Free Gaza's leading
spokesmen.

WORRYINGLY, SEVERAL European governments are hoodwinked by the "humanitarian"
agenda of radical NGOs, allocating them significant funds. The European Union,
under its Partnership for Peace program, awarded ICAHD a two-year grant of
473,000 euros in 2005, comprising the majority of ICAHD's 2006 annual budget.
Recently the Spanish government too deemed ICAHD a worthy recipient of its
funds. Meanwhile, another Free Gaza member, PCHR, receives funding from the
Danish, Norwegian and Irish governments.

The EU and others argue that their funds are directed to specific projects,
rather than organizations in their entirety. But, European government backing
affords significant legitimacy to these NGOs and their politicized agendas, in
which they too are implicated. The exploits of Free Gaza, Halper and his cohorts
come with a European stamp of approval. European governments have, perhaps
unwittingly, placed themselves in the midst of a stunt orchestrated by extreme
groups and endorsed by Hamas.

The Israeli government commendably recognized the agenda of the Free Gaza
organizers and denied them the confrontation which they so desired. European
governments must internalize this important lesson. NGOs are guilty of
manipulating the rhetoric of human rights, betraying genuine humanitarian
principles in the process. Yet the European governments, whose money legitimizes
this practice, are also complicit. So long as they continue to support radical
NGOs, charades such as Free Gaza will continue.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: FREE GAZA members demonstrate outside UN headquarters in Gaza
City. A stunt orchestrated by extreme groups and endorsed by Hamas? (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

798 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 28, 2008 Thursday

Livni's the One

BYLINE: LARRY DERFNER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 871 words

HIGHLIGHT: The peace camp's new great white hope has arrived. RATTLING THE CAGE

One by one, the great white hopes of the Israeli peace camp, the leaders or
contenders for national leadership with left-leaning ideas, turn out to be huge
disappointments. Ehud Barak has become a cross between Dr. Strangelove and
Donald Trump. Amir Peretz revealed himself to be a power freak and a blowhard.
Shlomo Ben-Ami came to the conclusion that Israel didn't deserve him.

The only exception is Amram Mitzna, who has gotten only better since leaving
national politics, taking on the job of mayor of Yeruham and basically saving
that isolated Negev town. I'd love him to be prime minister, but he doesn't have
the killer instinct necessary to get elected. Israel's loss, Yeruham's gain.

All these politicians, of course, are with the Labor Party, Israel's
traditionally exclusive source of great white hopes - i.e. peacenik social
democrats who have the potential to get elected prime minister.

But that's finished now. The Labor Party under Barak isn't a party of peace and
social democracy, it's a party of militarism and millionaires. If Labor ever
finds the guts to get rid of him and choose a chairman with a speck of humanity
in his person and politics, it may produce another leader worthy of the peace
camp's support. Until then, that party has nothing to say to any liberal voter -
or any other voter, as the polls seem to be bearing out.

There is, however, still hope, still one great white hope remaining for the
Left: Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. I'm waiting for the crowds that used to fill
Kings of Israel (now Rabin) Square to get behind her, to generate a little
enthusiasm, to realize that she's got what we're looking for in a leader.

She's very popular among moderates, but the Left, I guess, is too insular to get
excited about her. Livni belongs to the wrong party, and she comes from an even
worse one. She's a Likud princess, for God's sake. She still hasn't gotten over
the Altalena. How can we get excited over such a character?

THIS IS the Israeli peace camp's myopia. It's too bad, because we've been
shuffling around for most of the last eight years, complaining that the country
has moved so far to the Right, that the only thing anybody believes in anymore
is military force, and that politics has gotten too corrupt to care about
anymore. (This last complaint isn't limited to the Left, of course.)

All this, I think, should only accentuate Livni's appeal - she's not only the
best of the current contenders, she's the only good one in an otherwise
miserable field. Look at her competition: Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu, Defense
Minister Shaul Mofaz and Barak. Three glowering, doomsaying, saber-rattling
pills. Three know-it-all, trigger-happy, good ol' boys.

I've never been one to favor more women in politics (or fewer), but when the men
in the race remind me of 15- year-old boys flexing their muscles in the mirror,
competing to see who can puff out his chest the most, then Livni's femininity
alone makes her seem the mature candidate, the wisest, the most trustworthy. If
Netanyahu, Mofaz and Barak are Israel's idea of what it means to be a strong
leader, to be a man, then I'd say Israel ought to try letting a woman run the
show.

She was the only good minister in an otherwise miserable cabinet during the
Second Lebanon War - the only one who called for ending the war after the first,
successful week, for quitting while we were ahead. She's the only contender who
doesn't sound like she's in a hurry to bomb Iran. (Interior Minister Meir
Shetrit has gone much further, calling it a "megalomaniacal, reckless idea," but
he has no chance in the September 17 Kadima leadership primary, which is
effectively between Livni and Mofaz.)

She's also the only contender who has the ear of the Palestinian leadership. In
terms of the territory she's willing to concede in return for peace with the
Palestinians - and with the Syrians - I think she would fit comfortably in the
ranks of Peace Now. She is less sanguine about Arab intentions than Peace Now,
and I think she's right to be. Unfortunately, though, she has little or nothing
to say about settlement expansion and IDF brutality against Palestinians, which
is where Peace Now could be her example. The other legitimate knock against her
is that she has little or nothing to say about poverty.

NO, LIVNI is not an ideal candidate for the Left, but she has certain qualities
that Israeli leftists, rightists and centrists are all searching for in a prime
minister: Integrity. Conviction. She doesn't insult your intelligence when she
talks. It's very hard to imagine her taking a nickel that wasn't hers.

These are qualities associated with the old Betar tradition of Jabotinsky and
Begin, the tradition she comes out of. Imagine if Menachem Begin, or Benny Begin
for that matter, had had a change of heart and become a dove - a wary dove, but
a dove nonetheless.

That's the way I see Tzipi Livni. Obviously, she could turn out to be one more
great white hope that failed. But as things stand, she could become Israel's
prime minister very soon. She could win an election against Netanyahu. For
Israeli peaceniks, after what we've been through for the last eight years, her
candidacy and the potential it carries ought to be cause for celebration.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: TZIPI LIVNI. In terms of the territory she's willing to concede
in return for peace with the Palestinians and Syrians, she would fit comfortably
in the ranks of Peace Now. (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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799 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 27, 2008 Wednesday

Dichter, take charge or hand over

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 729 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Lurid details are now emerging about the murder of four-year-old Rose Ron -
allegedly by her grandfather, with the complicity of her mother (the two were
married). Police suspect Rose's body was placed in a suitcase and dumped in the
Yarkon River.

Since the story of her disappearance first broke on Sunday and her haunting
portrait seared itself into the public consciousness, we all feared something
evil had happened to her. Now we know it did.

Meanwhile, two alleged organized crime figures, brothers Itzik and Meir Abergil,
are facing extradition to the United States over their reputed involvement in
the 2003 murder of an Israeli drug dealer in Los Angeles. Their syndicate is
also reportedly implicated in the botched mob hit on a Bat Yam beach last month
that saw an innocent bystander, Marguerita Lautin, shot dead in front of her
children and husband.

Chaim Nachman Bialik, the legendary Hebrew poet, was said to have coined the
Zionist credo: "When the first Jewish prostitute is arrested by the first Jewish
policeman and sentenced by the first Jewish judge, we can consider ourselves a
sovereign state."

Israel has achieved this, and more.

Protecting law-abiding citizens from evil and the criminal falls mostly to the
guardians of civilized society, the police. Yet as the Post has been reporting
since Monday, the police itself is under criticism: Key field assignments, set
to take effect next year, have apparently been made on the basis of cronyism.
Even the appearance of favoritism, let alone the reality, shakes the already
wobbly faith of Israelis in their political and legal systems.

WHEN ISRAEL'S top cop, Insp.-Gen. David Cohen, decided to transfer his number
two, Deputy Insp.-Gen. Shahar Ayalon, to the post of Tel Aviv police chief and
replace him with the current head of the Tel Aviv district, Cmdr. Ilan Franco,
he created at least the appearance of impropriety, casting himself and Avi
Dichter the minister for internal security, in a dismal light.

Franco would be positioned to replace Cohen as Israel's top cop, even though a
2007 panel headed by former District Court Judge Vardi Zeiler specifically
recommended against giving Franco the country's top police post. The Zeiler
Committee was set up to examine the police command's questionable handling of
suspicions that a rogue cop had maintained ties with underworld figures Oded and
Sharon Perinian.

Besides his plan to promote Franco, Cohen also embarked on a series of
appointments intended to help old friends (Dep.-Cmdr. Jackie Bray and Cmdr. Shai
Amihai, for instance) and hinder those who aren't - specifically, Cmdr. Uri
Bar-Lev, a reform-minded manager credited with a huge drop in crime in the
southern district.

Rather than advance him through the ranks, Cohen allowed personal animosities to
rule and ordered Bar-Lev to take paid educational leave. Bar-Lev, a decorated
veteran of an elite IDF unit, already holds two undergraduate degrees and
refused to waste public funds on unnecessary study or be put out to pasture.
Cohen then released a bogus statement announcing that Bar-Lev had decided to
quit, to which Bar-Lev responded: "I have no plans to resign for the next 10
years."

Bar-Lev is precisely the kind of policeman a good boss should be nurturing, and
a chorus of universal outrage has rightly erupted over Cohen's abysmal treatment
of him, and Dichter's failure to date to decisively rectify it.

CAN A force plagued by a lack of professionalism and a leadership vacuum afford
to lose a commander of Bar-Lev's caliber? And for what? To make room for more of
the commissioner's good ole' boys?

Israelis cannot help but wonder how we got saddled with the apparently
mendacious Cohen and, in Dichter, a minister who seems more concerned with
respecting "the organizational culture" of the police than its effectiveness.

This episode is not only about an honest, dedicated and charismatic cop being
unwarrantedly shunted aside, but, most fundamentally, about a law enforcement
organization begging for upstanding leadership, adequate resources and competent
ministerial oversight - and, so far anyway, getting none of these.

The buck stops with Dichter, a former Shin Bet head and now a candidate for
Kadima's leadership. The minister of internal security, who appointed Cohen to
the commissioner's job, is failing the public, and should get a grip or hand
over to someone who can.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The Jerusalem Post

August 27, 2008 Wednesday

Peace in their own time

BYLINE: DOV ZIGLER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1500 words

HIGHLIGHT: The supposition that the time is always right for diplomacy is deeply
flawed, for diplomacy cannot shape larger political forces. The writer is a
fellow at the Shalem Center and at the ICSEP (Israel Center for Social and
Economic Progress).

August 21 was a landmark day in Middle East politics: Israel and Syria agreed to
high-level peace talks; Hamas and Fatah formed a unity government, which
immediately exchanged captive soldier Gilad Schalit for the imprisoned Fatah
leader and convicted terrorist mastermind Marwan Barghouti; America gave Egypt
$5 billion and a plutonium- fueled nuclear reactor; and Syria was granted Most
Favored Nation trading status and a package of American military aid.

These events transpired not through the looking glass, but at the Middle East
Student Conference, hosted by the pro-Israel advocacy and education organization
StandWithUs.

The conference brought 50 university students and young foreign policy
professionals to Tel Aviv University to simulate Arab-Israeli peace
negotiations. The participants arrived from locations as varied as Jordan, Umm
el-Fahm, Paris, Ramat Gan and India to travel through Israel, hear lectures from
prominent locals and, most importantly, try to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict
in five days.

AT FIRST glance, the conference seemed grandiosely presumptuous in its ambitions
to reconcile the interests of nations in the halls of Tel Aviv University. But
as time went on, I found that the simulated negotiations represented the Middle
East's reality in microcosm. According to Shira Bergman, one of the conference's
organizers, it aimed to "bring people together from different countries and
viewpoints and show them the complex reality of the situation," and indeed it
introduced its participants to the manifold strange realities of Middle East
diplomacy.

For the purposes of simulating peace talks, the conference's 50 participants
were divided into five delegations, each pretending to represent a different
political actor. Israel, Egypt, the Palestinians and Syria formed four groups -
Iran and Saudi Arabia were conspicuously absent. The EU and US were merged into
a single team, which miffed some of the European participants because, as
explained by Andreas, a wise political scientist from Vienna, "Austria has
different values than America."

And yet, the EU/US group quickly found its role in the negotiations. "Everybody
likes us because we give them money, which is what they want," explained Eugene,
a Ukranian emigre studying modern music composition in Paris who played the head
of the EU. Aashish, an Indian student of international peace and conflict
resolution, discovered the conference on Facebook. He played the president of
the US and nicely summed up how the West conducts peace talks: "Mostly the US
will give the people anything they want, as long as they say they'll stop
terror."

Naturally, the largesse of the Western superpowers was artfully exploited by the
Arab states. Dylan, the Canadian PR man who led the Syrian team, expertly
negotiated trade concessions from America and the EU. Though an Assad might have
pursued other goals, forgive Dylan: He comes from the land of the North American
Free Trade Agreement.

The Egyptian team focused on the important things: guns and money. "We persuaded
the US to give us a civilian nuclear reactor and $5 billion just for agreeing to
host a Cairo summit," explained Ortal, the Israeli spark plug who generally had
her way in the negotiations.

True to form, the Palestinians emerged empty-handed. While three quarters of
their delegation argued about the settlement of refugees, the others vainly
solicited money from the Americans and Europeans. Saddened by the mounting
failures of the Palestinian delegation, I offered unsolicited advice. I
explained that if token rhetorical concessions were offered, like a promise to
have fair elections or to crack down on militants, then maybe Aashish would fill
their imaginary Swiss bank accounts.

But my radical plan required the approval of the Palestinian delegation's
leader, who was nowhere to be found. When I finally cornered the rais, an
Israeli named Uri, he promptly left to be interviewed on TV. I believe that Uri
got some face time, but the Palestinians, as usual, made good on an opportunity
to miss an opportunity.

FOR THEIR part, the Israelis were strangely and inexplicably desperate to sign a
peace agreement with the Palestinians. Late on the final day of the conference,
after Israeli-Palestinian talks had broken down and most participants just
wanted to go to a bar in Jaffa, I saw the prime minister of Israel, a short
fellow, crawling across a row of desks waving a crumpled sheet of paper in the
air and screaming something about "the right of return" - or was it "secure
borders"? He was frantically searching for a member of the Palestinian
delegation who might sign his latest peace overture. No takers.

The urgency of the make-believe Israelis to sign a peace deal was more realistic
than the conference participants might have guessed. At the conference's closing
dinner, real-life MK Colette Avital delivered a speech calling for peace - now:
"Peace agreements are on a ticking clock," she said. "Of course, I'm referring
to the two sets of elections likely coming up, not only our own, but the
Palestinian ones in which Fatah might be replaced with Hamas."

Well, at least Avital is on a ticking clock. She presented the Israeli
imperative to sign a deal - any deal - thus: "We need to agree about a
Palestinian state now, because we might have a Hamas government in the West Bank
soon." I do not pretend to have the powers of logic necessary to understand
this.

FOR ALL of the conference's virtues - the education of its participants in the
ways of Middle East diplomacy and their introduction to Israel, which they
universally loved - the mock peace negotiations seemed anachronistic, a relic of
the 1990s when the promise of the Oslo process waxed. The issues that were
debated - permanent settlement of Palestinian refugees, the borders of a
Palestinian state - are no longer timely.

Today's Israeli policy makers labor to minimize the role of Iran-backed Hamas in
the West Bank and to keep al- Qaida out of Gaza, while preparing to confront the
more ominous Iranian threat. The Palestinians are principally focused on
internal rivalries funded by outside powers. The Arab states are obsessing over
a shift in power from the region's west to its east, which they perhaps wrongly
interpret in schismatic terms. The US is occupied with Iraq and the mounting
crisis in the Straits of Hormuz. In 2008, the importance of the shepherds' war
in the Judean Hills has diminished and is more than ever derivative of the
larger conflict in the Persian Gulf. As a result, negotiations between Israelis
and Palestinians may not be able to accomplish much.

Therefore, the supposition that the time is always right for diplomacy is deeply
flawed, for diplomacy cannot fundamentally shape larger political forces - at
best, diplomats may navigate them. Miracles may still be expected from
diplomacy, and it is true that stunning feats of statecraft, like Richard
Nixon's famous trip to China, reshape political reality. But meaningful
diplomacy is based upon shifts in the architectonic political forces, not
bluster.

In the "Nixon goes to China" example, hostility between China and the US
transformed into cooperation because the USSR. had become the principal threat
to both countries - and not because Henry Kissinger or Zhou Enlai made fancy
speeches. While Kissinger's and Zhou's genius was to see the diplomatic opening
caused by geopolitical change, neither of them created that opening. Similarly,
diplomacy in the Middle East cannot achieve more than the prevailing political
and material conditions allow, and right now, at least among Israelis and
Palestinians, I don't believe that they allow for much.

The conference's organizers appreciated the surrealism of unlimited diplomacy.
"I'm a little worried that the participants are going to sign a thousand
treaties," said Bergman. "They should know that life's not like that. Not all
problems can be solved by negotiation."

The savvier among the participants also seemed aware of this. Tesser, a bright
Jordanian diplomat-in-training, provided the most haunting and prescient comment
of the week. I asked him what policy he thought a hypothetical Jordanian
delegation would pursue at a peace conference. "There are large forces now
working in the region, forces from the east and forces from the west," he said.
"We have to survive them. Countries must know that no matter what they say, the
forces will continue to work in the region. So it is better to stay quiet, not
to talk about little things, to manage the big things as best as one can and to
act when one has to - but always quiet."

I hope that the conference's participants, as well as the democratic panoply
that forms both Israel's and America's real-life diplomatic corps, will heed the
practical conclusions that come from considering Tesser's worldly advice, which
is really no different from the frontier wisdom that Theodore Roosevelt
dispatched more than a century ago: "Speak softly, and carry a big stick; and
you will go far."

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: THE MIDDLE East Student Conference's mock peace negotiations.
True to form, the Palestinians emerged empty- handed. (Credit: Courtesy MESC)

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Letters

BYLINE: Judith Schmell, Seymour Brodsky, Ella and Avraham Berkovits, Antoinette
Hasleton, Hannah Sondhelm, Avigdor Bonchek, Andrew Carew-Morton, Naomi Sandler

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1093 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Whining about (kosher) dining, etc.

Sir, - I was stunned to read about Shmuley Boteach's plight ("Making Jewish life
easier," August 26).

Poor guy: His daughter's sanctuary in Israel has closed; he cannot get enough
donations to subsidize her day school education; he has to help his children
establish themselves (in New Jersey) after they marry; he cannot simply say no
to an extravagant wedding and/or bar mitzva without a rabbi to help him, and he
had to buy an RV to help him travel comfortably!

I cannot fathom why he thinks Israelis would sympathize with his position.

Here we have no post-high school programs. Our children serve in the IDF or do
National Service. We have learned to economize, and most of us are able to trim
the fat off wedding and bar mitzva budgets sans Orthodox leadership or advice.
When our children wed, we are faced with staggering mortgages in no way
comparable to those in the US. (I have been a homeowner in both countries).

In short, we face our own economic problems and most Americans are sensitive
enough to realize that life-styles in the US are far more extravagant than here,
and do not whine about their difficulties to the Israeli population.

JUDITH SCHMELL

Rechovot

Sir, - Shmuley Boteach brought up the many financial and social problems
incurred by raising children in an Orthodox family within the United States -
education, kashrut, social life, travel within the US, etc. He then suggested
four ways to "correct" these problems, none of them practical.

But he did not suggest the one and only solution for the Boteachs and other
families like his: aliya to Israel, which would not only solve their financial,
social, kashrut and travel problems but also fulfill the prayer recited in the
Amidah three times a day - to have God "lead them joyfully back to their land
and be established within its borders."

SEYMOUR BRODSKY

Jerusalem

Sir, - Unfortunately, we cannot offer Shmuley Boteach any Michael Jacksons or
other celebrities with whom to hang out but, as he himself pointed out, one must
make sacrifices for one's beliefs. So he should stop complaining about the
difficulties of Jewish life in America and join the Jewish people where they
belong - in their own land.

And, Shmuley - don't quote Herzl to us. Jewish life in galut is the antithesis
of Herzl's dream.

ELLA AND AVRAHAM BERKOVITS

Haifa

Sir, - I feel for Shmuley Boteach. I remember the difficulties we encountered
when we lived in England. Although we only had two children, every time my
husband received a promotion at work he was required to move to a new area. We
went from Newcastle-on-Tyne to London to the South coast, back to London and
then to Leeds. Somehow we found Jewish communities in every place we went. But
"Jewish areas" tend to be the most expensive, as are Jewish schools.

In the end we solved the problem. We came to Israel!

ANTOINETTE HASLETON

Moshav Sde Nitzan

Goodwill and bad

Sir, - Re "Freed prisoners receive hero's welcome in Ramallah" (August 26):
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: "This is something that matters a lot
to the Palestinian people and is obviously a sign of goodwill." But when will
the Palestinians do something that matters a lot to Israel and is an obvious
sign of goodwill to us?

This release of nearly 200 prisoners has weakened Israel in the eyes of Hamas
and the world. It will not strengthen "moderate" Palestinians. We release
hundreds of Palestinians and they cannot release just one Israeli - Gilad
Schalit.

When will Israel ever learn? Evidently, not during Olmert's administration.

HANNAH SONDHELM

Jerusalem

Wishy-washy

Sir, - In "One for one" (August 20) Hillel Halkin wrote tough about prisoner
exchanges.

Never return a live terrorist for dead soldiers. Never return more than one live
Arab terrorist for one live Israeli soldier. Intelligent advice, most certainly.

Never again... except this time! Halkin wrote: "It is still not too late for
Israel to redraw the lines..." Then, in the same breadth he caved in: "Schalit,
of course, will have to be freed first. Whether 500, or 1,000, or 2,000
Palestinian prisoners will be let go in return, and whether 10 or 200 of them
will have 'blood on their hands,' hardly matters."

How wishy-washy can you get? This is like the alcoholic who vows: "No more
drinking whatsoever, no exceptions - starting after the next drink!"

No, the lines must be redrawn now, even though Schalit is alive in captivity.
Why is his blood redder than the next Israeli victim?

AVIGDOR BONCHEK

Jerusalem

More than misguided

Sir, - Aharon R. Silver is entirely correct in highlighting the unfair
comparison between the UK/IRA and Israel/Palestine, but not for the reasons
stated ("Unfair with the facts..." Letters, August 26). The illegal occupation
and settlement of non-sovereign land in direct contravention of international
law in the late 20th century does not bear credible comparison to historic
events in the 17th century.

Your correspondent is equally at sea in his attempted defense of the
indefensible. To describe the repeated targeting of Palestinian population
centers with tank, helicopter and jet-launched heavy ordnance and anti- personel
weaponry as not being intended to harm innocent Palestinian civilians is not
only naively misguided, but deeply abhorrent.

ANDREW CAREW-MORTON

Edinburgh

If nobody attacks Iran

Sir, - I don't know what Israel should do about Iran, but MJ Rosenberg's
argument against attacking it makes me think we should probably strike without
delay ("Will America pay the price if Israel hits Iran?" August 26).

His main, perhaps only, concern is that a strike on Iran by Israel would
motivate Muslim attacks on American Jews. The logical conclusion of this
argument is that policemen should no longer chase criminals, judges should no
longer sentence them, businessmen should pay "protection" money whenever asked,
and classes in kowtowing should replace instruction in self-defense.

Rosenberg brushes off the contention that Muslims are motivated to attack Jews
and Americans in any case, leading one to understand that if only nobody attacks
Iran, the US can dismantle the Department of Homeland Security and everyone can
get a big tax rebate.

He asserts that most of those advocating a preemptive strike are neo-cons and
that they are "always wrong."

For those of us genuinely trying to figure things out, it's irrelevant whether
some people advocating a particular policy are neo-cons or even ex-cons - what's
important is how convincing their arguments are.

If they're always wrong, does that mean MJ Rosenberg is always right?

NAOMI SANDLER

Jerusalem

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No, no, no, Amy

BYLINE: JUDY MONTAGU

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1194 words

HIGHLIGHT: Why do some people who appear to have it all seem so ready to
squander it all? In My Own Write

'Amy who?" I asked, as a voice like molasses, rich, huge and with an
extraordinary musicality pervaded our living room. I was stretched out on the
floor doing the Alexander Technique - which is, I suppose, as good a way as any
to discover one of the great talents of our time.

"Winehouse," replied the representative of the younger generation who lives in
my house and who has generously opened for me the door to the music
20-somethings listen to.

Some of it is surprisingly enjoyable and relevant even to those on the far side
of the generation gap. Some of it goes beyond New Age to Eeuh Age. Some of it,
I've decided, isn't music at all, more of a total sensory assault that might
well find its true purpose in non-lethal crowd control.

But this Winehouse was something else. This was the sound of the jazz and soul
greats - of legends like Bessie Smith ("Gimme a pig foot and a bottle of beer"),
Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday. Or rather, according to Bill Ashton MBE,
conductor of England's National Youth Jazz Orchestra, "she sang like Billie
Holiday, if Billie's intonation and tuning had been good."

She was, Ashton said, "the best young female singer I've ever seen."

THE JEWISH Winehouse, 24, grew up in North London in a home that resonated with
jazz recordings, where her taxi- driver father, Mitchell, would sing along with
Frank Sinatra.

She got a contract with Island Records at 17 and in 2003 released her first
album, Frank, dedicated to an ex- boyfriend, which was nominated for the Mercury
Music Prize. Her 2006 follow-up album Back to Black - with its lead single, the
defiant, sobriety-shunning "Rehab" - made her the first British singer to win
five Grammys.

By the time Back to Black hit the US last year, Winehouse, who writes most of
her own songs, was being hailed as the future of soul music. The album sold two
million copies in America. The Sunday Times's annual Rich List has estimated her
wealth at $20 million.

But the singer was building a wild reputation, drinking unrestrainedly -
journalist Sophie Heawood recalled seeing her downing "spirit after spirit after
spirit" - and smoking drugs. The tabloid Sun ran a cover photo of her puffing
what they said was crack through a glass pipe.

She missed concerts or showed up unsteady and unkempt, barely staying in key,
yet somehow pulling herself together. It is a tribute to her talent and
personality that fans, initially angered by her unprofessionalism, would be won
over as the concert proceeded.

On June 16, Winehouse fainted at her London home after signing autographs and
was hospitalized for tests. Reports that she would be coming to Ashkelon's
Barzilai Hospital for drug rehabilitation treatment were effectively denied by
the Israeli medical institution.

Around this time, the Daily Mail quoted Winehouse's father as saying she had
early-stage emphysema brought on by smoking crack cocaine and cigarettes. He
later downplayed this statement, insisting she had only "traces" of the disease
that would get worse "if she doesn't quit smoking."

FOR SOME, marriage is a lifesaver. For Winehouse, it has proven the opposite.
Her union in 2007 with Blake Fielder-Civil - a rakish hanger-on whose name she
had tattooed over her chest and with whom she remains besotted - has pushed the
singer further into a shadowy world. He lost little time, it is believed, in
turning his significant other on to heroin, and is currently serving a prison
sentence for assault and perverting the course of justice.

His father, Giles Fielder-Civil, told the Associated Press he thought the couple
were in "abject denial" of their hard drug problem. "Perhaps it's time to stop
buying [her] records," he said, "to send a message."

"This past year," wrote Claire Hoffman on July 10 in Rolling Stone magazine,
Winehouse "has gone from being one of pop music's most ascendant and celebrated
talents to a tragicomic train wreck of epic proportions." In this she joins
other legendary music figures such as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, The Doors'
Jim Morrison and Nirvana's Kurt Cobain.

"She's pushed the self-destruct button," said a British entertainment lawyer who
has spent decades in the music business, adding soberly, "Many people are
questioning whether she'll still be here in five years."

The Internet reportedly - shamefully - boasts a Web site where people try to
guess the date of Winehouse's demise.

WHY DO some people who appear to have it all seem so ready to squander it all?
Conventional wisdom suggests that those who crave fame are, from the start,
different from the rest of us.

Perhaps. And certainly the singlemindedness - obsession, maybe - needed to
achieve stardom might simultaneously manifest itself as a passionate dedication
to less admirable pursuits such as drink and drugs.

But ponder this image: a hand doling out, at birth, a supreme gift like
Winehouse's, then drawing back before it can add a healthy sense of self, and of
perspective, and an ability to accept - yet not be intimidated by - that amazing
gift.

University of British Columbia social psychologist Mark Schaller theorizes: "The
relentless scrutiny of fans and the media leads some celebrities to... develop
'impostor syndrome'... They think to themselves, 'I know that I'm not as great
as they think I am.' The need to escape this agonizing self-awareness may lead
[to] alcoholism, drug abuse or compulsive sexuality."

It's something to reflect on for those who dream of winning American Idol or its
Israeli equivalent, Nolad Lashir.

ANOTHER part of the answer could be a too-literal understanding of the artist's
notion of "giving one's all."

As Jon Pareles noted in the International Herald Tribune, "The deaths of Jim
Morrison and Kurt Cobain were sudden and shocking... [but] they were
pre-Internet stars. Now, there's a sleazy, iconoclastic symbiosis that connects
instantaneous worldwide visibility, publicity, marketing and narcissism...

"Why was Winehouse letting someone shoot video, in a private setting, of her
puffing that pipe in the first place?... She's just supplying material for the
sphere of celebrity interaction that only wants to see idols torn down."

And when those idols are shown to have feet of clay, "it's like a modern
morality play which we can all understand - and all enjoy," adds David Giles,
author of Immortality: A Psychology of Fame and Celebrity.

BBC health reporter Clare Murphy summed it up wryly when she commented that
though we're no longer in the 18th century when "for a penny, you could peer
into the cells at Bedlam and enjoy the inmates' antics," the urge to gawp at
mental deterioration is still with us.

'I TOLD you I was trouble," sings Winehouse in "You Know I'm No Good." Yet that
hasn't stopped her from becoming her generation's pinup.

In an April 2008 poll conducted by Sky News, Winehouse - despite proceeding
unmerrily to a hell one still hopes she can avoid - was named the
second-greatest "ultimate heroine" by the UK population at large. In the
under-25 age group she topped the voting, emerging as the person most girls
would like to be.

One would like to think that was because of her phenomenal musical talent - and
not because she's the ultimate "heroin heroine."

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: WINEHOUSE on stage. She may be a victim of 'impostor syndrome.'
(Credit: AP)

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The ramifications of a Palestinian state

BYLINE: LOUIS RENE BERES

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 775 words

HIGHLIGHT: The openly declared goal of Israel's forcible destruction will have
no legal bearing on whether or not a Palestinian state is created. The writer is
professor of international law at Purdue, and was chairman of Project Daniel,
which presented its final report on Iran to former prime minister Ariel Sharon.

With many issues now surfacing in the US presidential campaign, few are more
important than the next president's position on "Palestine." To date, neither
candidate has been open on this issue. Would one or the other (or both) feel the
current president's commitment to a Palestinian state? Significantly, any such
continuance would enlarge the terror threat to Western democracies in general,
especially to Israel and the United States.

Even before George W. Bush, the formal US mantra had called for a "two-state
solution." Yet the official maps of the Palestinian Authority (an authority with
no proper electoral basis and no clearly fixed territory) still include Israel
only as a part of Palestine.

This inclusion refers to all of Israel proper - not merely to Judea, Samaria and
Gaza.

The so-called road map still favored by President Bush offers a devious and
ironic cartography. Everything about this plan presumes Israel's disappearance.
Not even the irreconcilable and bloody divisions between warring Palestinian
factions has diminished the overriding commitment of all of them to Israel's
demolition. It is notably ironic, therefore, that the current government of
Israel is on record in favor of a Palestinian state. What can Olmert be
thinking? From the Oslo agreements onward, prime ministers from Rabin to Olmert
have failed to understand that the true struggle with Arab enemies is less about
territory than about God.

TODAY, EACH Palestinian faction remains utterly loyal to a strategy for the
"liberation of all Palestinian territory." This "phased plan" was first adopted
by the Palestinian National Council in Cairo in June 1974. Under it, any
Palestinian state would welcome assorted jihadist terror groups, including
al-Qaida. Such cooperation is already on full display in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Israel, of course, would be the primary target. Additionally, a Palestinian
state would aim to undermine the essential security interests of the US. Most
perilous would be the inevitable competition for control of such a fragile and
anarchic state by the various Sunni Arab regimes now being armed by Washington,
and by Shi'ite Iran, being armed by Russia. Candidates McCain and Obama should
be made aware of certain ominous linkages between a Palestinian state and
regional war. Here, together with Israel's prime minister, they should also
consider plausible connections with nuclear war.

A PALESTINIAN state would have no proper authority under international law.
Whatever its mode of self- declaration, any such presumption of Palestinian
sovereignty could not satisfy the authoritative expectations of statehood.
Candidates John McCain and Barack Obama should understand and acknowledge that
every state must satisfy four specific requirements of the 1934 Montevideo
Treaty: (1) a permanent population; (2) a defined territory; (3) a government;
and (4) the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Although the PA could satisfy none of these criteria, it will argue otherwise.
Almost certainly, this will involve incorrect legal references to "fundamental
rights of self-determination and national liberation." The right of statehood
under international law is never contingent upon goodness. For better or worse,
there are no moral or ethical considerations that must be taken into account in
the granting of sovereignty.

This means that the openly declared and indisputable Palestinian goal of
Israel's forcible destruction and America's incremental destabilization will
have no legal bearing on whether or not a Palestinian state is created. Nor will
unending and widespread Palestinian acceptance of violence. International law
does not insist on any standard of decency for aspiring states, not even the
most rudimentary acceptance of peaceful coexistence. While it is true that such
acceptance is required for membership in the UN, the logically prior
expectations of statehood are less stringent.

In law, all that matters in establishing statehood are certain identifiable
demographic, geographic and political facts. It is these particular facts on the
ground, defined at Montevideo - not the codified and far-reaching Palestinian
indifference to comity and civility - that would make any Palestinian
declaration of statehood illegitimate.

A Palestinian state remains contrary to America's strategic interests, and to
the binding claims of both national and international law. Naturally, and
notwithstanding the incomprehensible government stance in Jerusalem, such a
state would be especially dangerous to Israel. It should, therefore, be rejected
by both presidential candidates, and by Israel's next prime minister.

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Which Joe is more in synch with Jewish voters?

BYLINE: DOUGLAS M. BLOOMFIELD

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 839 words

HIGHLIGHT: Biden's strongly held views on church-state separation make him more
appealing to mainstream Jews than Lieberman, who remains popular among fellow
Orthodox Jews. Washington Watch

Now that Barack Obama has anointed Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate, attention
in the veepstakes turns to John McCain, who has promised to reveal his choice on
Friday, his 72nd birthday.

Speculation has grown that he may choose one of two Jewish lawmakers who have
been vetted by his aides recently - little-known Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the
only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives, and Sen. Joseph
Lieberman of Connecticut, arguably the best-known Jewish politician in the
country.

Whether they are tapped or not, McCain will rely on them to woo Jewish voters,
but neither can match the loquacious Irish Catholic Biden on the issues
important to the Jewish community. While Lieberman is a favorite on the single
issue of Israel, the Delaware Democrat is more in synch with Jewish voters on
the broad range of domestic and foreign policy issues.

It is debatable how important running mates are - Lyndon Johnson was critical to
John F. Kennedy's election in 1960, but dim bulbs like Spiro Agnew and Dan
Quayle didn't keep Richard Nixon or George H.W. Bush out of the White House. But
after the Dick Cheney experience, Americans should pay a lot more attention to
them.

ANALYSTS SAY Biden will be especially valuable among older Jews who are
skeptical about Obama. Biden is a seasoned foreign policy expert known and
respected by pro- Israel leaders. He could make Florida, where he enjoys a good
reputation, more competitive for Democrats in a tight race.

Biden, like most Jewish voters, opposes the Iraq war (although he initially
voted for it) and wants to see a greater emphasis on negotiations to prevent a
nuclear Iran, while McCain and Lieberman disdain diplomacy and advocate tougher
confrontation.

The biggest disagreement between Lieberman and Biden over Israel involves
settlements and the peace process. Biden has been highly critical of Israeli
settlement policy and has faulted some Israeli leaders whom he felt were
dragging their feet on the peace process. He faulted Ariel Sharon and George W.
Bush for not doing enough to bolster the new Palestinian leadership after Yasser
Arafat died.

McCain and Lieberman have taken hard-line positions which please the religious
right and Jewish hawks, but they are out of step with the majority of American
Jewish voters who support a two-state solution and a more activist American role
in the peace process.

Biden has a solid 36-year Senate record of pro-Israel leadership. He has called
Israel "the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East" and told an
interviewer last year, "You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist."

A BIG part of Lieberman's popularity among Republicans, beyond his staunch
support for the Iraq war, has been his enthusiasm for attacking Obama and the
Democrats, and it should be on full display Monday when he is scheduled to
address the Republican convention in Minneapolis. But will that be enough for
them to overlook his shortcomings - in GOP eyes - of being pro-choice, pro-
union and pro-affirmative action? And at 66, will he be young enough to assuage
concerns about McCain's age?

The talkative, shoot-from-the-lip Biden is prone to gaffes, and Lieberman has
been criticized, even among friends, for a tendency to be sanctimonious and
preachy.

Biden's strongly held views on church-state separation make him more appealing
to mainstream Jews than Lieberman, who remains popular among fellow Orthodox
Jews. Abe Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, called
Lieberman out in the 2000 campaign for injecting too much religion into his
politics, something that may appeal to the GOP's conservative base but
discomfits most Jews.

Nowhere was that more apparent than in his staunch defense of Pastor John Hagee,
even after McCain returned the evangelical preacher's endorsement upon learning
he had said the Holocaust was God's way of getting the Jews to leave Europe and
build a homeland in Israel. McCain may have found that unacceptable but not
Lieberman, who showed up at a Hagee rally and enthusiastically compared the
controversial pastor to Moses.

That may help explain why Lieberman's standing among American Jews has been
dropping. According to a recent poll by the pro-peace process lobby J Street,
Lieberman's unfavorable ratings are up to 48 percent and his positives are down
to 37%.

The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, reported federal records show Lieberman's
attacks on Obama as dangerous for Israel "have had limited impact" where McCain
has been counting on him - raising money for the GOP ticket among his own
supporters. When Lieberman made a brief run for the presidency four years ago -
as a Democrat - he was reportedly surprised and hurt by the paucity of Jewish
support.

If McCain does tap Lieberman as his running mate, the nachas and kvelling that
permeated the Jewish community eight years ago when he ran with Al Gore will be
gone. Biden's presence on the Democratic ticket will make it tougher for
Republicans to pursue their Jewish strategy: If you can't convince 'em, scare
'em.

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Back to Egypt?

BYLINE: MICHAEL WIDLANSKI

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 621 words

HIGHLIGHT: As disastrous as Rabin's and Sharon's reliance on Arab surrogates was
in 1982 and 1993, introducing Egyptian soldiers into Gaza might be even worse.
The writer, a research fellow at the Shalem Center, was the Schusterman Visiting
Professor at Washington University for 2007-8. He has also served as a special
adviser to Israeli delegations to peace talks in 1991-1992 and as strategic
affairs adviser to the Ministry of Public Security, editing secret PLO archives
captured in Jerusalem.

Egyptians have a saying: "He who drinks from the waters of the Nile will return
to drink her waters yet again." This is a pleasant saying which also dovetails
with another Egyptian aphorism - "Egypt is the mother of the world." But as
someone who lived and studied in Egypt, the waters of the Nile are not always
great for one's health, and the land of the pyramids might not just be the
center of the universe, even for a would-be "master-of-the- universe" like Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert.

Olmert, who once voted against the peace treaty with Egypt, is now seriously
pushing the option of relying on Egypt to police the Gaza Strip. This is a
dramatic change in his view of Egypt, but it also ignores the basic truths about
Egyptian attitudes and policy toward Gaza:

* Gaza was always the preferred invasion route from Egypt into Israel from the
time of the biblical Exodus through the 1948 War of Independence, when King
Farouk's troops attacked in separate thrusts at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem;

* Gamal Abdel Nasser used Gaza as Egypt's main forward base from 1952-1956,
sending in fedayeen to sow terror inside Israel without giving any citizenship
or even basic rights to the people of Gaza;

* From 1993 through 2003, the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak consistently
encouraged Yasser Arafat to take intransigent negotiating positions and even the
use of full-scale warfare in 1996 (as shown by documents captured by Israel at
Orient House in 2002);

* From 2000-2008, the Mubarak government has done little or nothing to stop
terror smuggling into the Gaza Strip from Sinai (its policies stand in stark
contrast to the quiet cooperation Israel enjoys with Jordan in policing
borders). Indeed, conversations with Israeli security officials on the subject
almost always include a long and detailed off-the-record comment describing
evidence that Egyptian officials have sometimes cooperated with terror
smuggling.

THE SIMPLE truth is that Egypt - from Farouk to Nasser and Mubarak - has never
wanted to turn Gaza into a flowering center of Palestinian hi-technology or
civil authority.

It might have been different with Anwar Sadat.

Another simple truth is that Mubarak or his security chief Omar Suleiman will
always find it easier to turn the internal frustrations and religious tensions
of the Hamas- led Gaza Strip against Israel, rather than taming them.

Trying to get Egypt to police a Hamas-led Gaza should remind us of Yitzhak
Rabin's brilliant comment that he would get Arafat's Fatah to fight Hamas
without recourse to the High Court of Justice or B'Tselem. Rabin was wrong on
this point as on so many other strategic points, including his view that
terrorism was not really a strategic danger to Israel.

But he was not alone. In 1982, Ariel Sharon thought he could use the Lebanese
Maronite Christian Phalange militia to police Palestinian refugee camps. The
Maronite militia carried out the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, killing more than
300, which blackened Israel's name.

As disastrous as Rabin's and Sharon's reliance on Arab surrogates was in 1982
and 1993, introducing Egyptian soldiers into Gaza might be even worse. They
would be a human shield against Israeli intervention, or even a kind of trip
wire that unites the entire Arab world against an "aggression" against
Egyptians.

Israeli leaders sometimes like to take what they hope will be cheap shortcuts to
peace and security, but then they get lost and we all end up paying.

Olmert likes to think of himself as the successor of Rabin and Sharon, but that
doesn't mean he has to copy their mistakes. Perhaps he would do better to pay
attention to the Bible's injunction (Deuteronomy 17:16) to leaders of Israel:
"And he shall not lead the nation back to Egypt."

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: PRIME MINISTER Ehud Olmert. Is relying on Egypt to police Gaza
another case of an Israeli leader looking for a cheap shortcut to peace and
security? (Credit: Bloomberg)

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August 26, 2008 Tuesday

'Unparalleled cruelty'

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 742 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

There are an estimated 8,500 Palestinian Arab prisoners from the West Bank and
Gaza in Israeli custody. Over 5,000 of them are serving out sentences; 2,300 are
awaiting trial, the remainder are in administrative detention.

No one would suggest that Israeli prisons are fun places. Each inmate has loved
ones who presumably miss them dearly. That said, the incarcerated are menacing
figures in the Palestinian "resistance," many having planned, executed or
enabled attacks aimed at murdering or maiming Israelis in buses, cafes,
nightclubs and hotel banquet rooms.

Recently, prisoners in a high-security wing of the Sharon penitentiary - killers
mostly - complained to a visiting delegation from the Israel Bar Association of
mistreatment: stuffy rooms, poor lighting and such. A more serious allegation,
which requires a response from Prison Services Commissioner Lt-Gen. Benny
Kaniak, is that members of the elite Nachshon Unit have used dogs to "humiliate"
the inmates.

The lawyers also questioned the continued incarceration of Mahmoud Azan, who
reached Israel from Afghanistan and has been held in administrative detention
for 10 years. Israel is reportedly prepared to deport Azan, but no country will
have him. Bar Association chair Yuri Guy-Ron declared that the lawyers'
subsequent report shows the importance of "having objective professional
representatives of the bar continuing to visit prisons in order to view prison
conditions."

It certainly does. Which is why we are gratified that, on any given day, Israeli
prisons are hosting Red Cross representatives, journalists, lawyers and
prisoners' advocates, as well as family members. Prisoners are even permitted
conjugal visits.

WITH THESE thousands of prisoners in Israeli custody, Palestinian society cannot
fathom - yet is delighted to exploit - Israelis' fretting over Gilad Schalit,
their lone Israeli prisoner, who will mark his third birthday in captivity this
Thursday.

Putting aside the fact that Schalit is not a terrorist but a simple soldier who
was guarding sovereign Israeli soil when he was abducted on June 25, 2006; and
that he had done no Arab any harm, probably never having fired his weapon except
in training, the biggest distinction between him and the thousands of Arab
prisoners Israel holds is that not one of them would want to switch places with
the Israeli captive for even a day.

Why? The IDF soldier - who under international law should be treated as a POW -
is not allowed to see Red Cross representatives or consular officials (Schalit
also holds French citizenship). Hamas boasts that he is not permitted to
exercise in the sunshine. Not only are his parents forbidden to visit him, only
rarely has even a letter or video reached them - and any that did were intended
to serve the enemy propaganda machine.

Insight into the heartless environment in which Schalit is being held can be
gleaned from the popularity of a mock recording of the soldier's mother
addressing her son. Gazans by the thousands have downloaded the sound file onto
mobile phones and computers.

Yesterday, meanwhile, Israel released 198 long-serving Palestinian prisoners,
including several killers, in a misguided gesture intended to boost PA President
Mahmoud Abbas's standing among his people.

Abbas could have used a Ramallah ceremony welcoming the men to talk about
reconciliation; to say that the sooner the 60-year-plus war against the Zionist
enterprise was halted and a two-state solution accepted by the Arabs, the sooner
many more prisoners would be released. He could have mentioned Schalit, if only
on humanitarian grounds.

Instead Abbas told the crowd: "We will not rest until [all] the prisoners are
freed and the jails are empty," specifically citing Marwan Barghouti, serving
five consecutive life terms for murder; Ahmed Saadat, imprisoned for the
assassination of cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi; and Aziz Duaik, a Hamas
politician taken into custody in response to Schalit's abduction.

It is sobering to remind ourselves that Abbas reflects the most moderate of
Palestinian opinion.

Writing in Yediot Aharonot on Monday, novelist and playwright Yoram Kaniuk, a
government critic who has long expressed compassion for Palestinian suffering,
did what Abbas should have done. He urged ordinary Palestinians to call for
better treatment of Schalit, and say: "Keeping a young person imprisoned without
trial, without his parents being able to visit him, is unparalleled cruelty."

It is.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 26, 2008 Tuesday

Letters

BYLINE: Zelda Harris, Ronnie Stekel, Aharon S.R. Silver, Chana Givon, David
Gifford, Peter Wells, Jerusalem Post staff

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1124 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Scream and weep

Sir, - The whole country should be screaming out against the proposed budget
cuts directly affecting the war on road carnage.

People are dying in horrific collisions which could be prevented. Yet the newly
formed National Road Safety Authority (NRSA), which is already implementing
"golden patrols" around schools and productive safety and educational projects,
is to have its budget slashed while vote-hungry politicians squabble.

We have to face the fact that Or Yarok's service ads may be all that remain of
the promises to the public that deaths and serious injuries on our roads will be
reduced by a third in... how many years? Whatever happened to the network of
speed cameras?

Those of us who have dedicated our lives to saving others' may soon have to
throw in the towel too ("Road Safety Authority fights cuts; Ministry calls body
'redundant,'" August 25).

ZELDA HARRIS, PR Director

Chaim B'derech Metuna

Netanya

Giving up

Sir, - The government pulled out of Gaza and got nothing in return, unless you
count the rockets that have been launched against us from the area. It has
released terrorists and got nothing in return, except that some of them have
gone back to shooting at us. It has now released 198 more terrorists, and we
will get nothing good in return.

What does the government propose to give up next? ("'There'll be no peace
without the release of all our prisoners,'" On-Line Edition, August 25.)

RONNIE STEKEL

Jerusalem

Unfair with the facts...

Sir - Thank you for Calev Ben-David's "The 'expert reassurance' of Nicholas
Kristof" (August 7), criticizing the New York Times columnist's "Tough love for
Israel?" It is a shame that Kristof refuses to play fair with the facts in his
analysis.

For example, he belittles Israel's plight by comparing its conduct unfavorably
with Britain's response to IRA terrorism. The two are in no way similar. Ireland
has never denied Britain's right to exist or claimed sovereignty over London;
whereas most Palestinians deny Israel's right to exist and demand sovereignty
over Jerusalem, including Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount.

And peace has come to Ireland without the mass eviction of people of British
ancestry from Northern Ireland; whereas the Palestinians want all Jews expelled
from the West Bank and seek to turn Israel itself into a majority-Arab country.

Kristof also lauds Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as a "reasonable partner."
But in 2000 Abbas stood with Yasser Arafat in rejecting Israel's offer of a
Palestinian state born in peace. And earlier this year, Abbas rejected ever
recognizing Israel as a predominantly Jewish state and said he opposes terrorism
today only for tactical reasons.

Kristof ignores the fact that while the Palestinians have directed hundreds of
bombings and thousands of other attacks specifically and deliberately at Israeli
civilians, Israel has never deliberately carried out an attack for the purpose
of harming an innocent Palestinian civilian.

AHARON S. R. SILVER

San Francisco

...to the point of fiction

Sir, - Far too long have we heard the phrase "peace process" bandied about in
the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. "Process" implies
give and take on both sides until compromise is reached. This has not been the
case in the Middle East.

While Israel has been required to uphold commitments and has forced "painful
concessions" from its citizens, there has been no such demand from the "peace
partner" that has openly refused to disarm and disband its terrorist groups.
Relinquishing territory has only brought the enemy closer to Israel's urban
areas.

It is time to relegate the phrase "peace process" to the category of fiction.

The conflict is not about territory; the demand that Israel relinquish land is
for the purpose of weakening the state in order to destroy it. The enemy does
not hide its true goals; it is we who are not listening!

Secretary of State Rice is arriving for the umpteenth time to force more
concessions from Israel ("Russia and Syria join Palestinians on Rice's agenda,"
August 25). She must be firmly informed by Prime Minister Olmert and Foreign
Minister Livni that "land for peace" is out, and the new slogan is "peace for
peace."

CHANA GIVON, Co-Director

Writing the Wrongs Forum

For Pro-Israel Advocacy

Jerusalem

British Jewry is

anything but smug

Sir, - Re "Die-alog" (Letters, August 5): I find it absolutely amazing that your
correspondent is so misinformed. The British Jewish community has been fully
supportive of engagement and dialogue with the Christian Church for decades.
This dialogue has been at a meaningful and practical level in up to 100
locations across the UK.

As well as informing national religious education in schools and chaplaincy work
in the universities, the British Jewish community has even, through
organizations like the CCJ, made useful, pioneering and valuable contributions
to the theological education of Christian clergy.

Over 65 years ago, the then chief rabbi, along with the archbishop of
Canterbury, was a founding member of the Council of Christians and Jews. The
current chief rabbi and his predecessors have all been active in promoting
dialogue with Christians at the local, regional and national level, on many
issues including the Middle East.

My own experience of the British Jewish community is that it is anything but
smug and self-satisfied, as your correspondent suggests, but rather open and
willing to honestly engage, debate and challenge, as demonstrated by the chief
rabbi's address to the Lambeth Conference.

I, for one, have found this both refreshing and enriching, and I would imagine I
speak for many Christians in the UK today.

DAVID GIFFORD, CEO

Council of Christians and Jews

London

Garden Tomb

Sir, - I was interested in Shelly Paz's news that "Visits to east Jerusalem
sites are up dramatically" (August 20). I was, however, surprised that her
survey did not include the Garden Tomb, probably the most popular site in east
Jerusalem for Protestant or Evangelical Christians.

We have found that our monthly figures very much reflect the 40% increase in
Israel's incoming tourism numbers. During the first seven months of the year we
welcomed 145,049 visitors, an increase of 37% on the same period last year. Our
experience suggests that the marketing strategy of the Tourism Ministry is
proving effective, but our growth is also explained by the increasing number of
locals who now feel it is safe to come into our area.

Israelis don't seem to have a problem in visiting a well-kept Christian site
which has no entry fee!

PETER WELLS, CEO & Director

The Garden Tomb

Jerusalem

CORRECTION

The $100,000 grant referred to in "Georgian olim get grant for basics" (August
25) was given by Keren Hayesod- United Israel Appeal, and not as stated.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 26, 2008 Tuesday

Making Jewish life easier

BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1074 words

HIGHLIGHT: From funding a day school to finding kosher food, why can't we
organize to make things better? The writer is the international best-selling
author of 20 books. His newest work, The Eros Effect, will be released by
HarperCollins in January.

Last year I wrote a series of essays on the need to monitor the students who go
to Israel for a year of study abroad. I noted that while few Jewish experiences
are as inspiring as a year in Israel after high school, nevertheless, it
shouldn't be a free-for-all: there is a need to steer some of the young people
away from the nightlife on Jerusalem's Rehov Ben-Yehuda pedestrian mall and into
social outlets that are more rewarding.

But as my second daughter prepares to go for her year next week, I only wish
that my biggest worry was whether she would be monitored. Unfortunately, just
days before she was due to depart, we received a message from the seminary where
she was registered which informed us that due to financial constraints the
school was closing. We are scrambling to find a replacement.

It's a strange and alarming predicament to be in (and if anyone out there has a
suggestion for a quality alternative that still has room so late in the game,
you know where to find me). It's made me ponder the enormous challenges that
face Orthodox parents as they struggle to raise their kids. Is it really
supposed to be this complicated?

FIRST, THERE is the enormous cost of tuition with which all of us struggle. It's
not farfetched to say that approximately one-third of my income goes to paying
for my kids to attend Jewish schools and universities. For a family with nine
children, the burden is considerable and is made all the more difficult by
America's punitive measure against parents of faith who want to give their
children a values-based education. We pay high property taxes (we live in New
Jersey which is the highest of all), but not one penny is allowed to subsidize
even secular subjects like math at our kids' parochial schools.

Then, there is the cost of Jewish camps, Jewish after- school activities, bar
and bat mitzvas, kosher food, religious celebrations and weddings. I'm not
complaining. I wish the biggest problems in all of our lives were purely
financial. But after a while, you begin to wonder how we are supposed to afford
all of this.

And the challenges are not just monetary. In secular homes, life seems pretty
straightforward. People usually have two to three kids max. They go to school
around the corner, they finish high school, choose a university, graduate, get a
job, date for about eight to 10 years and, after they have some money, settle
down (hopefully) and get married.

In the Orthodox world it's much more complicated. Your kids often go to schools
that are quite a hike from home, which involves logistical nightmares related to
transportation. Suddenly, you're not only a chauffeur, but a management guru
coordinating complicated carpool schedules. And you don't have two or three
kids, you usually have five or six. Then, when your kids finish high school,
it's not simply off to university. You have to help them find the right seminary
or yeshiva in Israel first, with a whole new round of coordination challenges.

When they return and enter university, you are opposed to dating recreationally
(as you should be). Your kids date to marry. And when they marry, young, they
usually have nothing to start life with. So you have to help them get started,
which is a pleasure, of course, but just adds more pressure to your existing
burden.

And these series of complications do not even factor how, when you travel on a
family vacation, you can't even eat at a restaurant. You have to bring pots and
pans (which is why for many years we owned an RV, so we could bring a kitchen
with us) and frozen bread and meat.

And we do this because we believe in it and because we see with our own eyes
how, amid all these complications and colossal expenses, it removes from our
lives far greater complications. Since our kids are raised with real values and
divinely-inspired wisdom, they make healthier and more mature decisions in life
that can usually translate into a more sturdy marriage, a more balanced and
community- centered life, and a more spiritual and less materialistic existence.

LIKE MANY of you reading this article, I wouldn't change it for the world. I
would not only die for my Judaism, I would even live for it. I will accept all
these challenges and break my back to see my commitment through to my very last
breath.

And even so, it should be easier. In our technologically-advanced world in which
everything is being streamlined and communication has become effortless, leading
a religious Jewish life should be just a little less complicated.

The fact that it is not is a testament to the lack of coordination among world
Orthodoxy. If Jewish philanthropists can come together to offer a free trip to
Israel to every Jewish young person, then surely we can make attending Jewish
day schools more affordable and the availability of kosher food more widespread
(which it is, to some extent, due to the miracle of organizations like the OU,
but still not enough).

Here are a couple of suggestions.

1. Orthodox Jewry must team up with our Catholic and evangelical counterparts to
put real pressure on our politicians to make subsidies for parochial schools a
reality. Our tax dollars should be used to pay for our children's secular
education in our private schools, which would pose no threat to the separation
of church and state. It is our money after all and we're not asking them to pay
for Bible studies.

2. A global fund must be created to give every Jewish child $5,000 per year
toward tuition for a Jewish school or university.

3. Orthodox leaders should achieve a consensus on respectable weddings that do
not spill over into the overly elaborate. Not only would this be a reflection of
true Jewish values, it would help parents not feel obligated to mortgage their
homes to keep up with the Schwartzes.

4. In California, which I am currently visiting, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, a
mainstream and highly successful franchise run by my friend Sonny Sassoon, has
made its hundreds of branches entirely kosher. This means that you can find
kosher cakes, sandwiches and bagels all over the West Coast. The American Jewish
community should build on this model and create at least two national
franchises, catering to the mainstream non-Jewish public, which are kosher so
that Jewish families can eat wherever they travel.

None of this is impossible. Creating the State of Israel was a lot more
difficult, and it came about because of one visionary Jew who said, "If you will
it, it is no dream."

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: THE COFFEE BEAN & Tea Leaf. Why should just the West Coast enjoy
a mainstream franchise that's also kosher?

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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809 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 26, 2008 Tuesday

Will America pay the price if Israel hits Iran?

BYLINE: MJ ROSENBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1006 words

HIGHLIGHT: An unprovoked attack will fail and leave the US, Israel and the world
even less secure than before. In Washington. The writer is the director of of
the Israel Policy Forum's Washington Policy Center.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic writer is worried about Iran and Israel. His
worry is not the usual one. Although Goldberg is an American Jew so committed to
Israel that he served in the IDF, he is worried about what an Israeli attack on
Iran would mean for America, specifically for American Jews.

"The problem is simple: Muslim extremists often conflate Israel and the
Diaspora. They do this for two reasons: One, they are anti-Semites, and so tend
to see all Jews, and not merely 'Zionists,' as their enemies; the second is a
practical one - it is easy to strike at soft Jewish targets outside of Israel,
easier, certainly, than executing mass terror attacks against Israeli targets
these days. And so what you have, on occasion, is an attack like the one
directed against the Jewish center in Argentina in 1994, in which 85 people were
murdered," he writes.

In other words, American Jews - comfortable in their homes in New York,
Washington or LA - could pay a very heavy price if Israel attacks Iran.

Goldberg writes that the reason we don't hear much about this issue of
"blowback" is that just raising it challenges the fundamental premise underlying
Zionism. The existence of the State of Israel supposedly makes Jews in the
Diaspora safer. If, on the other hand, actions taken by Israel jeopardize Jews
outside it, then the Zionist concept looks flawed.

Blowback also cuts into the whole idea of Diaspora sympathy for, and
identification with, Israel. If American Jews believe that their own children
and grandchildren here are no more secure than children and grandchildren in
Israel, suddenly the playing field is leveled. Sympathy and concern is no longer
a one-way street. After all, as much as we care about Israel's well-being, we
are more concerned with the well-being of our own families wherever they may
live, and with the well-being of our neighbors and our country. That is as it
should be. After all, no one imagines that Israelis living in Tel Aviv are more
concerned about Jewish kids in Brooklyn than about their own kids. Why would
they be?

The whole question of whether Israel's actions can jeopardize us here is fraught
with troubling questions. But they have to be raised.

AN ISRAELI attack on Iran - absent an imminent threat of attack from Iran - is a
terrible idea for many reasons. It would not succeed in eliminating Iran's
nuclear program but would almost surely prompt Iran to both opt out of the
international inspection regime and redouble its efforts to produce a bomb. It
would unite Arabs and Muslims against the US (they know that Israel could not
attack Iran without implicit or explicit US approval). It would have a
disastrous effect on the American effort next door in Iraq, eliminating recently
made gains and endangering 130,000 American troops (this is why Defense
Secretary Robert Gates so vehemently opposes an Israeli attack). And it would
end the Arab-Israeli peace process, even putting the peace agreements with Egypt
and Jordan at risk. And, no small thing, an attack would lead to a deadly
Hizbullah missile onslaught against Israel, joined no doubt by Hamas in the
south.

Nonetheless, an attack is not out of the question because there are forces in
Israel and here that believe that anything, no matter how dangerous, is better
than either negotiating with Iran or relying on sanctions. These people are as
hell-bent for war with Iran as they were for war with Iraq. Mostly, they are the
same people. Always wrong, always eager for war. (Many of these people
encouraged Georgia to take on Russia, as always disregarding consequences.)

Of course, the last major war they agitated for - the one to depose Saddam - did
not present the same threat of blowback here. Saddam Hussein was a lone wolf.
Despite the now thoroughly discredited propaganda issued by neocons in and out
of the administration, he was not allied with al- Qaida or any other terrorist
group that would seek to avenge him. Iran is.

And Iran, or its proxies such as Hizbullah, no doubt has sleeper cells here
ready to strike following an attack on the Shi'ite motherland.

NOT LONG ago, we Americans could imagine that we were immune to the kind of
terrorism long afflicting Israel and other places. No more. The 9/11 attacks
that took 3,000 lives in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania were the most
deadly attacks anywhere. After 9/11, nobody can tell Americans that we are na·ve
and that if we experienced what the Israelis have, we'd be wiser. We now know
the ways of the world all too well. (My mother's little neighborhood in New York
City lost 75 people on 9/11. My brother-in-law lost 300 "brothers" - fellow
firefighters in New York, by far the largest number of firefighters ever lost).

And it's not like 9/11 is likely to be the last terrorist attack on our shores.
No one in our government believes that. More than a few are surprised that we
have not experienced a second 9/11 already.

There are, of course, those who argue that nothing the US or its allies do have
any connection to attacks here. It is an article of faith for neoconservatives
that "they" hate us for who we are and not for anything we do. But that's
nonsense. They may hate us for who we are, but they often attack us because of
things we have done. The Spanish government tried, after the terrible attack on
Madrid that took 200 lives, to blame Basque terrorists because it did not want
to admit that it was the Spanish government's decision to commit troops to Iraq
that caused the attack. Later the truth came out and the government fell.

In short, actions have consequences. Governments, including the governments of
the US and Israel, should consider them before preemptively attacking another
Muslim state, especially when it is almost certain that an unprovoked attack
will fail and leave the US, Israel and the world even less secure than before.

Jeff Goldberg wonders if we Americans have the right to advise Israel on what it
should or shouldn't do on matters that relate to its security. Of course we do -
when it also affects our own.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: US AIR Force Advanced Contingency Skills Training Course.
Islamist extremists may hate us for who Americans are, but do they attack us
because of things we have done? (Credit: Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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810 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 26, 2008 Tuesday

Obama through Muslim eyes

BYLINE: DANIEL PIPES

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 715 words

HIGHLIGHT: He is seen the world over as either Muslim or ex- Muslim. The writer
is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at
the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

How do Muslims see Barack Obama? They have three choices: either as he presents
himself, as one who has "never been a Muslim" and has "always been a Christian";
or as a fellow Muslim; or as an apostate from Islam.

Reports suggests that while Americans generally view the Democratic candidate
having had no religion before converting at Rev. Jeremiah Wrights's hands at 27,
Muslims the world over rarely see him as Christian but usually as either Muslim
or ex-Muslim.

Lee Smith of the Hudson Institute explains why: "Barack Obama's father was
Muslim and therefore, according to Islamic law, so is the candidate. In spite of
the Koranic verses explaining that there is no compulsion in religion, a Muslim
child takes the religion of his or her father... For Muslims around the world,
non-American Muslims at any rate, they can only ever see Barack Hussein Obama as
a Muslim."

In addition, his school record from Indonesia lists him as a Muslim. Thus, an
Egyptian newspaper, Al-Masri al- Youm, refers to his "Muslim origins." Libyan
ruler Muammar Gaddafi referred to Obama as "a Muslim" and a person with an
"African and Islamic identity." One Al-Jazeera analysis calls him a
"non-Christian man," a second refers to his "Muslim Kenyan" father, and a third,
by Naseem Jamali, notes that "Obama may not want to be counted as a Muslim, but
Muslims are eager to count him as one of their own."

A conversation in Beirut, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, captures the
puzzlement. "He has to be good for Arabs because he is a Muslim," observed a
grocer. "He's not a Muslim, he's a Christian," replied a customer. Retorted the
grocer: "He can't be a Christian. His middle name is Hussein." Arabic
discussions of Obama sometimes mention his middle name as a code, with no
further comment needed.

"The symbolism of a major American presidential candidate with the middle name
of Hussein, who went to elementary school in Indonesia," reports Tamara Cofman
Wittes of the Brookings Institution from a US-Muslim conference in Qatar, "that
certainly speaks to Muslims abroad."

Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times found that Egyptians "don't really
understand Obama's family tree, but what they do know is that if America -
despite being attacked by Muslim militants on 9/11 - were to elect as its
president some guy with the middle name 'Hussein,' it would mark a sea change in
America-Muslim world relations."

Some American Muslim leaders also perceive Obama as Muslim. The president of the
Islamic Society of North America, Sayyid M. Syeed, told Muslims at a conference
in Houston that whether Obama wins or loses, his candidacy will reinforce the
idea that Muslim children can "become the presidents of this country." The
Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan called Obama "the hope of the entire world"
and compared him to his religion's founder, Fard Muhammad.

BUT THIS excitement also has a dark side - suspicions that Obama is a traitor to
his birth religion, an apostate (murtadd) from Islam. Al-Qaida has prominently
featured Obama's statement "I am not a Muslim" and one analyst, Shireen K. Burki
of the University of Mary Washington, sees Obama as "bin Laden's dream
candidate." Should he become US commander-in-chief, she believes, Al-Qaida would
likely "exploit his background to argue that an apostate is leading the global
war on terror... to galvanize sympathizers into action."

Mainstream Muslims tend to tiptoe around this topic. An Egyptian supporter of
Obama, Yasser Khalil, reports that many Muslims react "with bewilderment and
curiosity" when Obama is described as a Muslim apostate; Josie Delap and Robert
Lane Greene of the Economist even claim that the Obama-as-apostate theme "has
been notably absent" among Arabic-language columnists and editorialists.

That latter claim is inaccurate, for the topic is indeed discussed. At least one
Arabic-language newspaper published Burki's article. Kuwait's Al-Watan referred
to Obama as "a born Muslim, an apostate, a convert to Christianity." Writing in
the Arab Times, Syrian liberal Nidal Na'isa repeatedly called Obama an "apostate
Muslim."

In sum, Muslims puzzle over Obama's present religious status. They resist his
self-identification as a Christian, while they assume a baby born to a Muslim
father and named "Hussein" began life a Muslim.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SEN. BARACK OBAMA hugs associate pastor Jennifer Elmquist
attending a Luthern service in Wisconsin on Sunday. If he becomes US
commander-in-chief, would al-Qaida argue that an apostate is leading the global
war on terror? (Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 26, 2008 Tuesday

We must act against the Iranian threat

BYLINE: Harvey Schwartz

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 674 words

HIGHLIGHT: The problem is not non-disclosure of intent; it is the intended
victim's leaden ears. Right of Reply. The writer, a recent oleh from the US, is
the chairman of the American Israeli Action Coalition, a non-partisan NGO formed
to represent the more than 250,000 Americans living here.

In his recent article "Those obscene Holocaust analogies" (August 11), MJ
Rosenberg severely criticized those who support strong action against the
Iranian nuclear threat, calling them 'hysterical." Rosenberg acknowledges that
there is an Iranian threat which "has to be addressed." His solution, safely
ensconced in his ivory tower in far-off Washington, is "diplomacy without
preconditions."

What if that proves to be unsuccessful? Rosenberg seems not to care. He offers
no Plan B. His basis for his position is a novel theory culled from the
Holocaust experience.

Rosenberg posits the breathtakingly naive notion that the reason the Nazis
"total annihilation almost succeeded was because Europe's Jews... had no
weapons." However, he continues, "if the Jews had the power to take the Nazis
down with them, the Final Solution would not have occurred."

The situation with Israel and Iran is much different, continues Rosenberg. Since
Israel "has nuclear weapons" (one wonders how Rosenberg can be so sure of that
since Israel has never conceded that it does), that knowledge itself would
prevent Iran from launching a nuclear attack. As Rosenberg puts it: "I don't
believe that the Iranians would sacrifice Teheran to take out Tel Aviv."

THERE YOU have it. Rosenberg advocates that his non- expert, unverified belief
be trusted, everyone sing "Kumbayah" together and simply love one another.

Would that Rosenberg were correct. Unfortunately, his is a recipe for disaster.
Tyrants throughout the ages have attacked armed adversaries. This is true even
in our own recent history. In World War I, Germany went to war with a well-armed
France and England. In World War II, the Allies and Russia were not without
arms. But that did not prevent Germany from once again attacking them.

Actually, it is Rosenberg's own suggestion of "diplomacy" which is often used by
an aggressor as a means of lulling its unsuspecting target into unpreparedness.
That very approach was utilized by Japan, which was engaged in diplomatic
negotiations with Washington at the time of its sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Is
Rosenberg really suggesting that Israel run the risk of being lulled into
complacency so that it would be vulnerable to an Iranian nuclear attack?

Israel's own experience puts the lie to Rosenberg's foolish assertions. When
Israel took to heart Gamal Abdel Nasser's threats of annihilation and launched a
preemptive attack on the Egyptian armed forces in June 1967, a mortal threat was
overcome and Israel emerged with an earthshaking victory whose fruits it still
enjoys. On the other hand, Israel's failure to use the same tactic in 1973
almost resulted in utter disaster. Israel's preemptive destruction of the Iraqi
atomic reactor in 1983 did the entire world - and the US armed forces in
particular - an enormous favor by ridding the evil Saddam Hussein of his nuclear
capability. The civilized world's failure to prevent North Korea and Pakistan
from acquiring nuclear weapons, on the other hand, has permitted such terrifying
weapons to be placed in the hands of unstable rulers of unstable countries.

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD has stated clearly on numerous occasions that he plans to
destroy the State of Israel and its inhabitants. Tyrants and madmen often
disclose exactly what they intend to do if they get the opportunity. For
example, Adolph Hitler clearly articulated his views on the Jewish people which
he wrote in Mein Kampf and constantly espoused in public speeches. The problem
is not non- disclosure of intent; it is the intended victim's leaden ears.
Rosenberg's ears may be leaden; it is hoped that those of Israel's leaders are
not.

I am not aware of Rosenberg's knowledge of halachic principles, but Halacha has
a clear (and thoroughly rational) directive in the face of mortal danger: "Haba
L'hargecha haskem l'hargo." "When one is coming to slaughter you, kill him
first." This eminently sensible directive has served the Jewish people well over
the ages. It is as applicable today as it has been historically.

HSchwartz@AIACoalition.org

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD has stated clearly on numerous occasions
that he plans to destroy the State of Israel and its inhabitants. (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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All Rights Reserved

812 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 26, 2008 Tuesday

Three guys, a trailer and Israel's survival

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1783 words

HIGHLIGHT: The US will set up an early-warning system in the Negev - and will
continue to back Israel's right to attack Iran. Our World

The Olmert-Livni-Barak government is apparently maneuvering to stand down on
Iran, and they'd like the US to be blamed for their timidity. A careful reading
of a bizarre article in Sunday's edition of Ha'aretz brings this point home
clearly.

The report details Israel's recent agreement with the US to deploy the X-Band
high powered early warning radar system in Israel. The system will be manned by
a team of three US military personnel from a trailer somewhere in the Negev.

The US's willingness to deploy the system is largely the consequence of ardent
lobbying efforts by US Congressman Mark Kirk. Kirk's successful push for the
deployment of the X-Band system in Israel is a great boon for the country's
defensive capabilities. The X-Band system can detect incoming missiles from
500-600 miles. Currently, Israel's early warning system is only able to detect
missiles from 100 miles out. The earlier detection capacity means that in the
event of an Iranian attack, Israel's Arrow missiles will be able to intercept
and destroy incoming missiles before they reach Israeli territory and so even
their debris will fall outside the country.

BUT ACCORDING to unnamed Israeli "defense officials" who spoke with Ha'aretz,
the price that Israel will be forced to pay for this increased defensive
capacity is prohibitive. Those "defense officials" claim that the US forced
Israel to agree that in exchange for the X-Band system, Israel will not attack
Iran either preemptively or retroactively without US permission, because were
Israel to attack Iran, the three American guys and their trailer could become a
target for an Iranian missile.

If Ha'aretz and the "defense officials" are right, then that means that Defense
Minister Ehud Barak - who concluded the deal with US Defense Secretary Robert
Gates during his visit to Washington last month - agreed to concede Israel's
right to take whatever action it deems necessary to prevent its national
destruction. Barak conceded Israel's right to prevent its own annihilation in
exchange for three guys and a trailer and the capacity to live with a greater
sense of security under Iranian nuclear threat. This sense of security will last
for as long as Iran doesn't develop satellite-based warheads or for as long as
Iran doesn't prove the X-Band radar or the Arrow 3 missiles incapable of
actually intercepting incoming nuclear warheads.

Since Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and all their
colleagues in the government have been silent on the deal, it can be assumed
that they back Barak's move. So again, acting on the authority of the entire
Kadima-Labor-Shas government, according to "defense officials," and Ha'aretz,
Barak just agreed to give up Israel's right to attack Iran's nuclear
installations. And the Americans made him do it.

THE HA'ARETZ report did not include any mention of attempts to verify the
"defense officials" claims with the Americans. And in a telephone interview with
The Jerusalem Post on Sunday night, Kirk vociferously denied their allegations.

"There is no quid pro quo," he said.

"You mean that the US did not say that in exchange for deploying the X-Band
system Israel needs to receive US permission to attack Iran?"

"No, the US made no such demand," Kirk said.

"The basic idea is that a US ally getting nuked is a bad thing. The X-Band
system increases the likelihood that such an attack would fail," he continued.

Moreover, far from sending a message that the US would work to block an Israeli
preemptive attack against Iran, Kirk argued that the deployment of the X-Band
system manned by a US crew "will send a message to Iran, that Israel has
powerful political support from its ally against any Iranian threat."

Kirk also argued that the US will support a decision by Israel's government to
attack Iran. As he put it, "If the Israeli government makes the difficult
decision [that it must launch a preemptive attack against Iran], that is when
Israel will need its allies the most. And that is when the US will be called in
to show what it means to have us as an ally."

So if Kirk - the US official most responsible for the X-Band deal - flatly
denies that the US is using the X-Band deployment to prevent Israel from
attacking Iran, what were those unidentified "defense officials" who spoke with
Ha'aretz trying to achieve by making false allegations against the US? And why
did Ha'aretz's reporters not bother to call Kirk or the Pentagon to verify their
amazing claims?

SADLY, THE answer is clear. Those "defense officials" were carrying out what has
become standard practice for Israeli leftists over the past 15 years. They were
working to demoralize the Israeli public into believing that it is inevitable
that we cannot defeat our enemies or take any effective military steps to
protect ourselves from their aggression.

For its part, in its unquestioning reporting of the story, Ha'aretz was doing
what the Israeli media - led by Ha'aretz - has been doing since 1993. It was
helping leftist politicians demoralize the public into believing that we have no
option of defeating our enemies and must therefore simply try to appease them as
best we can, hunker down behind high walls and shields, and hope someone else
will defend us.

Since the Rabin-Peres government reversed what had been Israeli policy since
1967 and in 1993 decided to embrace the PLO - a terrorist organization dedicated
to the destruction of the country - as a peace partner, every single leftist
government has claimed that Israel has no ability to defend itself. In 1993, the
government embraced the radical Left's unsubstantiated claim that it was
Israel's fault the Palestinians wanted to destroy us. And two years after the
IDF ended the Palestinian uprising, the government also claimed that the IDF
couldn't protect us from Palestinian terror and that Yasser Arafat would do a
better job of defending us than our own army.

The media supported their absurd claims and demonized their critics as
warmongers, extremists and enemies of peace.

Then there was Barak's disastrous unilateral withdrawal of IDF forces from south
Lebanon in May 2000. Barak embraced the factitious claims of the radical anti-
Zionist Left that the only reason Hizbullah was attacking Israel was because IDF
forces were deployed in south Lebanon. Like the radical Left, Barak promised
that once Israel withdrew, Hizbullah would disband its army and become just
another peaceful political party in Lebanon.

The media, for their part lobbied obsessively for the withdrawal. All withdrawal
opponents were demonized as warmongers, extremists and enemies of peace.

THEN THERE was the Palestinian terror war which began in September 2000. For a
year and a half, as the Israeli casualty count mounted daily, the Sharon-Peres
government told us that we had no military option to defeat the terrorists. The
US would abandon us if we attacked the Palestinian Authority and anyway, the IDF
was no match for terror cells.

The media for their part pushed the narrative of Israeli helplessness. All
proponents of military victory were demonized as warmongers, extremists and
enemies of peace

Despite the IDF's successful defeat of terror forces in Judea and Samaria during
and subsequent to Operation Defense Shield in April 2002, it took the leftist
politicians and their media flacks no time to reinstate their narrative of
Israeli powerlessness. Within weeks of the defeat of the terror forces in Judea
and Samaria, the Labor Party, the media and later former prime minister Ariel
Sharon argued that Israel could do nothing to defend against Gazan terror and
therefore, should simply withdraw its forces and civilians from the Gaza Strip.

And again, those who pointed out that Israel had never really tried to defeat
the terror networks in Gaza were silenced. Those who warned that Gaza would
become the new south Lebanon were demonized as warmongers and extremists and
enemies of peace.

Hizbullah's offensive against Israel in July 2006 was an unwelcome development
for the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government and the media. It was the war their
opponents had warned would come as a result of ill-conceived Israeli
withdrawals. They wanted that war to go away as quickly as possible.

Refusing to fight the war with any determination, they told the public that we
had no interest in winning. We didn't want to get bogged down again the Lebanese
"mud," they said. There was no "military solution," they pronounced. The US,
they lied, opposed an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon. Only the UN and the
Hizbullah- dominated Lebanese military could defend Israel, they claimed.

So they sued for a cease-fire, which as their critics warned, paved the way for
Hizbullah's takeover of Lebanon. And the media praised their wisdom and silenced
their critics by castigating the latter as warmongers, extremists and enemies of
peace.

THIS THEN is the historical backdrop against which the government's current
attempt to demoralize the public into believing that it is futile to attempt an
attack on Iran's nuclear installations is being carried out. But there is a
qualitative difference between the government's newest attempt to wriggle out of
its responsibility to defend the country and its previous derelictions of duty.

This is the first time that the threat the government seeks to ignore is
actually capable of annihilating the country. By claiming again here that the US
will abandon us if we attack, the government is telling us that we have no
choice other than to live in a world where a regime openly committed to
destroying our country and our people has the means to carry out their designs.
And in its unquestioning parroting of the government's line, the media is
collaborating with this unacceptable state of affairs.

If there was ever a situation requiring the public to take to the streets, this
is it.

Since Israel's founding, there has been an unspoken social compact between the
public and our government. We all understand that existential threats have to be
defeated. We don't discuss these things. We simply trust our governments to
protect us.

The Ha'aretz report signals that the current government is breaching this
compact by preparing its case for inaction. This situation simply cannot be
allowed to stand. And given that we are now in elections season, a public outcry
today has the capacity to force our media to cover this story and so compel our
politicians to either fulfill their part of the bargain or step down.

While the US is happy to augment our defensive capacity, the Pentagon has been
clear that it will not attack Israel's enemies for us. That is our job. And we
the Israeli public must compel our leaders to do their job.

caroline@carolineglick.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: CONGRESSMAN MARK KIRK denies that the US is using the X-Band
deployment to prevent Israel from attacking Iran.

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

813 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 26, 2008 Tuesday

Philanthropy and politics

BYLINE: DAVID ROTH and ARDIE GELDMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 839 words

HIGHLIGHT: Foreign donors can and should fund public policy organizations but
not donate money to politicians. The writers are philanthropic consultants with
Donor Associates in Israel, Ltd.

The Olmert-Talansky affair has placed the interplay between philanthropy and
politics on page one. Several months ago, the prime minister was accused of
accepting a number of envelopes filled with cash from Morris Talansky, a US
fund-raiser, for personal gain and/or political purposes. This was soon followed
by another criminal investigation of Olmert involving the billing of multiple
nonprofit organizations for the same overseas fund-raising trips. While these
scandals have received extraordinary attention because they implicate a sitting
prime minister, there are other examples of interaction between philanthropists
and Israeli politics.

The name that most often comes to mind in this context is Arkadi Gaydamak. The
Russian-born tycoon has donated millions to numerous causes in Israel, yet it is
no secret that he has political ambitions. Last summer a bill was proposed in
the Knesset, commonly known as the Gaydamak law, which would count charitable
donations of more than NIS 1 million a year for the four years preceding an
election as campaign expenses, should a mega-philanthropist choose to enter
politics.

The bill drew attention to the rights and responsibilities of philanthropists in
a civil society. On the one hand, the majority of lawmakers were in favor of
preventing those with a political agenda from "buying votes" by contributing to
numerous charitable causes. On the other, enacting legislation based on a single
case could lead to a decrease in philanthropic giving among the country's
business elites in the event that their actions would be misconstrued as trying
to unfairly obtain power and privilege.

Several recent articles have addressed this issue: Connie Bruck wrote "The brass
ring" about Sheldon Adelson in the June 30 New Yorker. Calev Ben-David wrote a
response in The Jerusalem Post on July 10. Griff Witte wrote "Israeli leaders
find generous donors in US" in The Washington Post on July 26. These articles
provide a broad picture of the influence that foreign donors have had on
Israel's political scene.

ISRAEL'S POLITICAL left-wing has benefited from the Bronfmans and S. Daniel
Abraham, who is also a major backer of the Democratic Party. On Israel's
right-wing, Binyamin Netanyahu has benefited from Australian Chabad donor Joseph
Gutnick, and currently from Adelson, who is also a major funder of the
Republican Party.

In reflecting on this issue, we agree with Ben-David's opening statement: "Every
so often Diaspora Jewish millionaires (or billionaires) get it into their heads
that it's up to them to save Israel from itself and try to use their
considerable wealth to influence policy here." Indeed, we have encountered
several American Jews with considerable wealth who seek to use their assets to
rescue Israeli society from self-destruction.

Given the scope of this phenomenon, the question arises whether such attempts to
influence public policy and the political landscape may be considered legitimate
philanthropy or rather constitute an abuse of power at the expense of the
democratic process.

In the case of Gaydamak, there are many who, according to opinion polls, believe
that his use of philanthropy to further his own political goals is not kosher,
even though he is a citizen. How much more so when foreign philanthropists are
involved? Talansky may or may not have been duped by Olmert. Nonetheless, he is
responsible for his compliance. At best, he raised and donated money to a
politician without having carried out sufficient due diligence. Nor did he
demand accountability that the funds were to be used exclusively for charitable
purposes. At worse, he may have been more deeply involved.

While Adelson's efforts to remove Olmert and affect Israel's public policy have
been criticized, his primary vehicle for doing so has been through a free daily
newspaper - Yisrael Hayom - rather than via donations to philanthropic projects.

IN ALL of these cases the Hebrew expression: ba'al ha'mea, ba'al ha'dea (loosely
translated as "the one with the money calls the shots") comes to mind. We
believe that this philosophy is unjust.

To achieve the spirit of philanthropy, funders and beneficiaries must maintain
mutual respect and trust, using a partnership model rather than an
authoritarian, one-sided model. Philanthropy should strengthen civil society and
the democratic process, not weaken it.

Toward this end, the government might consider enacting legislation to ban
foreign donors from funding political parties and election campaigns - including
party primaries (it is already illegal for overseas donors to fund general
election campaigns). Second, the desire to make a difference and change society
is praiseworthy, but it should be done differently. Foreign donors can and
should feel free to fund advocacy and public policy organizations, along with
other worthy nonprofit entities, yet should not raise or donate money to
politicians.

Democracy is based on one vote per citizen, regardless of the size of his/her
pocket. Philanthropy should stay clear of politics.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: EDGAR M. BRONFMAN with his sons Matthew and Edgar Jr. at a
Hillel gala in his honor in 2005. The family is among the foreign-based backers
of Israel's left wing, while the right benefits from Sheldon Adelson and Joseph
Gutnick. (Credit: Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

814 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 25, 2008 Monday

Tribes and tribulations

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 753 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

What if 300,000 members of a heretofore unknown ethno- European tribe claiming
descent from Jewish ancestors were suddenly discovered? And what if, given the
right circumstances, they were willing to affiliate with Jewish civilization,
learn Hebrew, serve in the IDF and imbue their lives with traditional Jewish
values?

The good news is these potential Jews do not have to be airlifted to Israel -
they are here from the former Soviet Union, under the Law of Return. Moreover,
they serve in the army, pay taxes and have already enriched our society.

The bad news is the state has done precious little to absorb them into the
Jewish people. Once it became clear that this "ethno-European tribe" would not
jump through every hoop demanded by the religious establishment and that most
were unwilling to lead Orthodox lifestyles, Israel's ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist
state rabbinate callously turned its back on them.

Not unlike their African, Indian and South American counterparts, these "lost"
Jews of the former Soviet Union had long been cut off from their heritage. Over
some 70 years, when not overtly oppressed, they were strongly discouraged from
studying Torah and observing the festivals. Rampant intermarriage ensued and, as
a consequence, many are not halachically Jewish.

Successive governments abdicated their responsibility to exhort the rabbinate to
reconnect these newcomers with their Jewish brethren.

To be sure, broadminded, Zionist-oriented, Orthodox rabbis exist who would be
willing to convert potential Jews even if they do not commit to Orthodoxy. But
they are held in disdain by the religious establishment.

IT IS in this context that we must consider efforts to bring to Israel all 7,232
members of the lost tribe of Bnei Menashe from northeastern India. Interior
Minister Meir Sheetrit is not keen on facilitating their aliya, though
consultations are continuing between his ministry, the Prime Minister's Office,
the Absorption Ministry and the Jewish Agency. Officials are also considering
the sensitivities of the Indian government and relations between Jerusalem and
New Delhi.

This newspaper would like to see the Bnei Menashe brought to Israel as swiftly
as possible. We applaud the indefatigable efforts of Post columnist Michael
Freund and his Shavei Israel group, which assists "lost Jews" seeking to return
to the Jewish people. That the Bnei Menashe will have to undergo Orthodox
conversion presents no problem; they will not hesitate to meet whatever
religious demands the rabbinate places on them.

Meanwhile, last week thousands of Ethiopian immigrants demonstrated outside the
Knesset demanding that 8,700 Falash Mura - descendants of the community who
converted under duress to Christianity - be brought to Israel. The official
rabbinate supports their cause and stands ready to convert them because they too
are willing to commit to Orthodoxy.

We concur with the government's approach on the Falash Mura - namely, that
individuals who qualify for aliya under the Law of Return should be brought to
Israel on a case-by- case basis, noting that the 120,000-strong Ethiopian
community itself and a number of its spiritual leaders have reservations about
bringing the Falash Mura over en masse.

The absorption of the Beta Israel has not been an unmitigated success. Some are
college graduates, IDF heroes, even diplomats and Knesset members. Still, there
are serious problems, especially among the youth, with truancy, alcoholism and
drugs. Sixty-five percent of Ethiopian families remain dependent on the welfare
system.

This being the case, we invite the advocacy groups now calling for additional
Ethiopian immigration to commit themselves to a similar passionate involvement
in the community's ongoing absorption. (The same need for an ongoing commitment
applies to the Bnei Menashe too.)

AS A staunchly Zionist newspaper, we want to see ever- increasing numbers of
Jews making Israel their home. Yet it is disingenuous for the Orthodox
establishment to encourage aliya from Africa, Asia and South America because
immigrants from those places are more theologically pliable while tens of
thousands of potential Jews already here from the former Soviet Union get the
rabbinate's cold shoulder.

At the end of the day, all potential Jews need to be given the necessary tools
and encouragement to make an affiliation with Jewish civilization inviting. And
those desirous of making a formal commitment to Judaism need the appropriate
options for conversion - Orthodox, traditional or progressive.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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815 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 25, 2008 Monday

An outbreak of old-fashioned war

BYLINE: NIDRA POLLER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 979 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is a freelance American journalist living in Paris since
1972.

The last time breaking news looked like a movie was 9/11. That should be a
tip-off. The mega-apocalypse World Trade Center film was a real jihad attack on
US soil, and Russian tanks rumbling into Georgia is the intrusion of naked
reality into a presidential campaign that pits a lithe young Democrat floating
on a cloud of mythology against a grizzly veteran whose wings were clipped in a
real war.

The deceptively small-scale Russo-Georgian conflict, supposedly resolved by
exquisite European diplomacy, reminds us that a sudden outburst of military
brutality can threaten the integrity of a sovereign nation in the space of a few
days. It will come as no surprise to learn that near unanimous public opinion in
France blames the uppity Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili for foolishly
provoking a big, strong, heavily armed bully who has no scruples about striking
back 100 to 1.

The French media - customarily hostile to the government - looked on with benign
neutrality as Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner went into peacemaking action,
followed by President Nicolas Sarkozy's one-day negotiation of a theoretical
cease-fire agreement. French officials and commentators studiously refrained
from casting blame on Russia and, paradoxically, dismissed US President George
W. Bush as a lame duck sitting on the sidelines.

Newscasts in the opening days of the conflict were deliberately confusing. Tanks
and soldiers were not identified, burning buildings were not located, early
Russian claims of 2,000 casualties in Southern Ossetia were indiscriminately
relayed, separatist claims of the two disputed regions were taken at face value.
However, as the violence intensifies and Russian forces display utter disregard
for the terms of the cease-fire, reports from French journalists on the ground,
visibly shocked by what they are seeing, have become more precise. Though
Sarkozy intervened in his role as acting president of the EU, the East-West
fissure immediately widened, with former Soviet satellites insisting on
unambiguous recognition of Georgia's territorial integrity.

THE QUESTION is what can Europeans - united or divided - do about it? Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the world can forget about Georgia's
territorial integrity. The French, absorbed by August vacations and inflated
hopes for Olympic medals, would prefer to forget about Georgia altogether.
Scenes of distressed refugees lugging mattresses were upstaged by the tears of
former Olympic swimming champion Laure Manadou - a has-been at 21 - and the joys
of gold medalists Steeve Guenot and Alain Bernard.

Prestigious print media, busy raking "Micha" over the coals for his ill-fated,
impulsive adventure, have shown no interest in geopolitical analysis of the
conflict. There is nothing comparable to Melik Kaylan's incisive expose in The
Wall Street Journal of Georgia's strategic importance as a vital node on the
East-West North-South axis

The outbreak of old-fashioned war, just weeks after Barack Obama made a
whirlwind foreign tour to show he knows his way around, clarifies the hope he
inspires in European voters, who would give him a dictator's +80 percent score.
They are dying to replace the detested Bush with this kinder, more humane,
articulate emblem of diversity who will bring America back into the club of
urbane civilized nations epitomized by Europe.

WHEN KNOW-IT-ALL Europeans are finally called upon to take leadership in dealing
with troubles in their own backyard, all they have to offer is one-size-fits-all
negotiations: Nobody is to blame, both armies should return to their previous
positions, international peacekeepers will move in and hopefully the whole thing
will slip back into the shadows.

This is the kinder more humane approach we are invited to adopt. It is based on
an appealing bookish worldview that arranges messy reality into a static
three-dimensional text in which the outcome of every action is totally obvious
because it can be read on the following page. In the imaginary world of peace
campers, hindsight is foresight. No threat is real unless it has already
materialized - Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 2003, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran today -
and once it does materialize it becomes the fault of George W. Bush and the
Zionists. Bush was supposed to know in advance about 9/11, but no one told us
last month to beware of Russian tanks on the make.

Waving Tibetan flags is a lot easier than getting involved in a mess in the
Caucasus. While Georgian civilians cry their hearts out, the Dalai Lama tours
French pagodas dispensing Buddhist teachings and reminding the world of human
rights violations in Tibet. His visit is exploited by lightweights as a water
pistol to spit in China's eye and a sash to beat the French president. Sarkozy
has been treated as an unscrupulous coward because he didn't boycott the opening
ceremony of the evil Chinese Olympics and now, to avoid offending the
unforgiveable Chinese, he is not meeting with the saintly monk.

Would anyone dream of doing a hatchet job on the old bonze? In Le Monde for
example? Would a snooty journalist ask why the old spiritual pinup is pulling at
the sleeve of China's kimono right smack in the middle of the Beijing Olympics?
What could he expect but more repression? You don't anger the Chinese dragon
unless you've got a magic sword in your belt!

Above and beyond the choice of a president, American voters will be choosing
between the illusion of international harmony - if only we all talk and listen
to each other - and the reality of hostile powers that must be met with military
force. Europe, especially France, has been a standing reproach to the American
use of military might. And the Democratic Party has used this European scolding
as leverage. Today we have a graphic illustration of the world as it is and the
results that can be expected from dreaming it out of reality.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: THE DALAI Lama and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy last Friday. Waving
Tibetan flags is a lot easier than getting involved in a mess in the Caucasus.
(Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

816 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 25, 2008 Monday

Dangerous talks with Syria

BYLINE: UZI DAYAN and JONATHAN SPYER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 885 words

HIGHLIGHT: Our presence in the Golan is both legal and essential. Maj. Gen.
(res.) Uzi Dayan, a former head of the National Security Council, is a Likud
Knesset candidate. Jonathan Spyer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Global
Research in International Affairs Center, IDC, Herzliya.

The current indirect talks between Israel and Syria are highly unlikely to
result in a peace agreement. The talks, far from playing any positive role for
Israel, are mistaken both in terms of our values and in terms of our practical
interest. They are being conducted by an irresponsible government with no public
mandate, and are already causing real harm. We should be working to isolate the
Syrian regime, not rehabilitating it.

From the point of view of values, the government's approach is fundamentally
mistaken. The Golan Heights were taken in a just war in 1967, a war which was
provoked by an extremist and reckless Ba'athist regime in Damascus. Our presence
is both legal and essential. The Golan Heights must be retained under Israeli
sovereignty.

The Syrian regime preached the destruction of Israel, and was directly
responsible for the deterioration which made the 1967 war inevitable. There is
no moral content to the claim by the same regime that its "rights" were violated
by defeat in a war which it had actively sought. Independent Syria controlled
the Golan Heights for exactly 21 years. Its borders are based not on some
ancient patrimony, but rather on the division of the Ottoman Empire by the
Western powers after 1918. Syrian rhetoric regarding its connection to this area
lacks all content.

SINCE THE indirect talks with Syria are taking place in Turkey, it is worthwhile
comparing our willingness to part with the Golan with Turkey's attitude to a
parallel border dispute with Syria. The issue of the Hatay province (or
Alexandretta, as it is known to the Syrians) was a major point of tension
between Damascus and Ankara for the better part of the last half century. This
area was ceded to Turkey by French-controlled Syria in 1938. Syria, since
gaining independence in 1946, demanded its return. Turkey refused to discuss the
matter.

In late 2004, Syria conceded the issue in its entirety, quietly accepting
Turkish sovereignty over the Hatay province. Perhaps the government of Ehud
Olmert might learn something from the approach adopted by the Turks when their
interests are at stake. Syrian demands, backed up by the regime's active support
for organizations engaged in daily acts of violence against Israeli civilians,
lack any basis in any coherent system of rights or justice.

FROM THE point of view of our interests, the talks in Turkey are equally
perplexing. We have taken an active role in ending the isolation of the hostile
regime in Damascus. The price Syria has paid for this assistance has been
minimal. There is no direct negotiation taking place in Turkey. Rather, Turkish
representatives engage in delivering messages between the delegations. This is
to enable Syria to maintain its haughty faade of contemptuously refusing all
open contact with Israelis.

In return for receiving messages in an Istanbul hotel, the Assad regime has
broken out of the isolation that enveloped it following its suspected
involvement in the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in
2005. The Syrian leader and his wife have been feted in France. Their proxies
now hold effective power in Lebanon. Lucrative economic associations with the EU
beckon. All this when Damascus remains a key station on the highway linking
Beirut and Teheran which today represents the key threat to both Western and
Israeli interests in the region. All this when Syrian support for and hosting of
terror groups engaged in violence against Israelis continues apace. All this
when Syria's alliance with Iran remains solid as ever, bolstered by Bashar
Assad's recent visit to Teheran.

The latest announcement by Assad of possible willingness to host Russian
Iskander missiles is a characteristically Syrian response to the lifting of
pressure. Those who believe that offering concessions to Syria will induce
reasonable behavior fail to understand this regime. It has been given room to
maneuver, and it is maneuvering - in a way directly inimical to the interests of
Israel and its Western allies.

IN SEPTEMBER, 2007, Israel succeeded in neutralizing what was apparently a
Syrian plutonium reactor, before it began operating. The evidence of the reactor
offered mute testimony to Syrian defiance of international law and of its own
commitments. However, instead of pursuing this advantage, the government chose
to give Assad the diplomatic equivalent of a "get out of jail free" card - in
return for nothing and with no agreement on the horizon. The government's
actions are devoid of logic.

Commitments to concessions made in Istanbul by an unpopular government without a
mandate will become the starting point for future contacts. This too has the
potential to cause real damage to our future stance.

In short, instead of isolating the dangerous regime in Damascus, we are helping
to rehabilitate it. This is making possible the effective abandonment of the
Hariri tribunal, the strengthening of Hizbullah in Lebanon, the rapid forgetting
and forgiving of an apparent Syrian nuclear program and the latest outrageous
statement by the Syrian leader regarding the possibility of Russian missiles on
Syrian soil. A cynical prime minister who has turned the country's vital
interests into playthings for his personal political legacy is responsible. It
is high time that this dangerous charade be ended.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: THE GOLAN HEIGHTS. Syria controlled it for only 21 years.
(Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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817 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 25, 2008 Monday

Mission accomplished?

BYLINE: DON FUTTERMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 844 words

HIGHLIGHT: There are still 8,700 Falash Mura in Ethiopia waiting to come to
Israel. The writer is program director for Israel of the Moriah Fund, which has
supported both Ethiopian-led organizations in Israel and organizations serving
the Jewish community in Ethiopia for more than 15 years.

When George W. Bush stood on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln five
years ago and prematurely announced the end of military operations in Iraq, it
was impossible to know how tragically inaccurate that declaration would come to
be. Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, prematurely and inaccurately
declared the Ethiopian aliya to be Mission Accomplished, when the Jewish Agency
for Israel (JAFI) welcomed the "final flight" of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants.

The leadership of the United Jewish Communities (UJC) would do well to ignore
the JAFI-Olmert declaration and instead listen closely to what the parties to
this conflict are saying.

Listen to the 3000 Falash Mura immigrants who rallied outside the Prime
Minister's Office during Sunday's cabinet meeting. Days after being told by
Olmert and JAFI that Israel didn't want any more black immigrants, thousands of
Ethiopian men in kippot, elderly women in traditional dress, young mothers with
children in tow, excitable teens, some of whom will soon be serving in the IDF -
all of them, crowded together and yelled, "Anachnu Yehudim!" (We are Jews!).

They carried the photographs of parents they have been separated from for six or
seven years, of children they never watched grow up. For five hours, they
circled the government compound in the August heat. Instead of words of hate or
despair, they cried "Abba! Eema!" They want their parents and they want their
kids. They want their families to be whole again.

If you listen to what Kadima ministers say about ending the Ethiopian
immigration, one might think that Kadima had become the first post-Zionist party
to rule the State of Israel. Construction and Housing Minister Ze'ev Boim, who
provided the sole nay vote on two Knesset bills (42-1 and 43-1) calling to check
the eligibility for immigration of all 8,700 Ethiopian Jews waiting in Gondar,
went so far as calling US Jewish leaders "racist" for encouraging Ethiopians to
make aliya instead of coming to the land of opportunity. While turning the
historic Diaspora-Israel relationship on its head regarding poor black Jewish
immigrants, the government and JAFI showed they have not abandoned the mission
of rescuing Jewish refugees when they organized overnight to help Jews in danger
in Georgia.

KADIMA'S CLINCHER is its whisper campaign that the Falash Mura are not really
Jews. They will tell you they know better than Israel's Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar
and former chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef; than Elie Wiesel and world leaders of the
Reform and Conservative movements and former Supreme Court president Meir
Shamgar, currently chairman of the Public Committee for the Remnant of Ethiopian
Jewry. They will tell you they know better than the 3,000 Falash Mura who tried
to get the government's attention last Sunday.

Kadima cronies ask why the Chief Rabbinate requires a conversion ceremony for
Ethiopian Jews if they are already Jews. This would be a legitimate question, if
it had not already been answered.

Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar wrote to Olmert again this week telling him, "I have
already held in the past that they are completely Jewish." Amar explained that
the modified conversion required of Falash Mura immigrants upon their arrival
was introduced to make absolutely certain that the new immigrants were Jewish,
in case a few Christians or Muslims wrongfully included themselves among the
thousands of Jews returning to Zion. "The inspection process should be resumed
by experts and those who pass inspection should be brought to Israel," he
argued. "This is a great privilege for the people of Israel and for the
government of Israel."

AND WHAT about the isolated voices from within the Ethiopian community who
oppose the Falash Mura immigration? The Falash Mura ancestors converted to
Christianity, and in Ethiopia relations between the Falash Mura and Beta Yisrael
communities were sometimes tense, even while neither group was fully accepted by
other Ethiopians. Resentment lingered after the Falash Mura returned to Judaism
and the Jewish people in the past few decades. These internal tensions should be
considered natural and inevitable, painful as they may be. Not all Ethiopian
immigrants share identical biographies, but since other Israelis do not
distinguish between them, and since there are 40,000 Falash Mura already here,
they are likely to share a common future.

The leaders of the community - its chief rabbi, Rabbi Yosef Hadane, many other
Ethiopian rabbis and the Forum of Ethiopian Jewish Community Organizations, the
umbrella for 18 major Ethiopian non-profits - have all called upon the
government to allow the 8,700 to immigrate.

There are thousands of Jews going hungry and growing hopeless at a Gondar way
station, and American Jewry needs to be true to its legacy of compassion and
leadership, even when, and especially when, Israeli leaders fall short.

Above all, it is time the UJC and the Israeli government to listen to the
Ethiopian Jewish Israelis who spent five hours yelling themselves hoarse, "We
are Jews!" to anyone who would listen this past Sunday.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: FALASH MURA demonstrate for family members to be allowed to make
aliya. (Credit: Avi Masfin, Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews)

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818 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 25, 2008 Monday

Letters

BYLINE: Anne Feigenbaum, Yan Sever, Carol Clapsaddle, Estee Yaari, David Goshen,
Leonard Zurakov, Simon C. Hsieh, Miriam Nathans

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1162 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Case of short-sight...

Sir, - Why, oh why did Israel stop arms exports to Georgia, abandoning it in its
hour of need? Hasn't this happened to Israel? With Russia confidently supplying
nuclear know-how and possibly sophisticated anti-missile systems to Iran,
Georgia could have been the perfect leverage.

How frightfully cowardly and shortsighted! ("Sacrificing an ally to wishful
thinking," Evelyn Gordon, August 21.)

ANNE FEIGENBAUM

London

...or long

Sir, - This is a perfect case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't." The
"don't" situation is described in Ms. Gordon's op-ed. The "do" - supplying the
weapons to Georgia - would be wrong, first because Georgia had no chance in this
war and boosting its fighting ability, or the illusion of it, would mean only
more Georgians killed. Secondly, organizing the weapons supply was impossible in
the few short days of this war.

Ridiculing the attitude of the US toward the war is pointless, comparing it to
the Cuban missile crisis, in which Kennedy's assertiveness both demonstrated
courage and gave results before the fighting stage was entered. Here the war was
already on, and the only consequence of the American action was risking WWIII!

The risk might have been justified had the state in question not foolishly given
the aggressor a pretext to attack it. Any little state could bare its teeth to
the Russian bear, knowing that America would fight for it if those teeth were
knocked out.

YAN SEVER

Kibbutz Moran

Uncharming naivete

Sir, - I am surprised by the naivete of Iran expert Meir Javedanfar when he
states that sooner or later Iran's energy crisis at home will force it to
"markedly improve its relations with the West" ("Power hungry," August 24).

Once Iran has the bomb - or even if the world believes it has the bomb - it can
threaten the West and get it to provide everything Iran wants, including energy,
a la North Korea. Then all the alternative energy the West develops to allow it
to be free of Middle East regimes will count for very little.

CAROL CLAPSADDLE

Jerusalem

Yad Vashem and

the Bergson issue

Sir, - Re "Holocaust scholars in new plea for exhibit on WWII rescue group"
(August 22): It is unfortunate that the article on the Wyman group's petition to
Yad Vashem left out half of Yad Vashem's comment.

As stated to your reporter, Yad Vashem focuses on the Jewish individual's
experience during the Holocaust in Europe, and even as such cannot encompass
everything, but rather presents an overall story of the Holocaust. Context is
essential to the presentation of history.

Yad Vashem is well aware of the important activities of the Bergson Group.
However, inserting a mention about it in the Holocaust History Museum without
the overall context would be misleading.

Since Yad Vashem addresses the activities of the group in its research and
educational activities, in their meeting with Yad Vashem Chief Historian Prof.
Dan Michman last month, Prof. Michman offered the Wyman representatives the
opportunity to suggest other ways of approaching this issue in the many avenues
available at Yad Vashem aside from the Holocaust History Museum. This idea has
been ignored by the Wyman group.

ESTEE YAARI

Foreign Media Liaison

Yad Vashem

Jerusalem

Painful truth

Sir, - Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev is to be highly praised for spelling out
the painful truth which has been long known: that almost all the Jewish
population of Lithuania were killed by local Lithuanian citizens and not "by the
Nazis with the assistance of their local allies" ("Yad Vashem blasts Lithuania
for Holocaust revisionism, anti-Semitism," August 12).

As a first step, this fact should be boldly stated in all the Lithuanian
memorial texts at Yad Vashem so that all visitors, Jews and non-Jews, can learn
without doubt who really liquidated the Jews of Lithuania. The "order police" -
some 23,000 armed Lithuanians and other locals - carried out their task with a
keenness that surprised the Nazis.

At the end of the war the members of the order police, knowing what fate awaited
them at the hands of the advancing Russians, fled to Germany and were recognized
as "displaced persons," aided by the Allies as victims of the Nazis. Many
succeeded in emigrating to the West, so it is not surprising that few were
brought to trial for their crimes.

DAVID GOSHEN

Kiryat Ono

Too easily satisfied

Sir, - I would like to commend Steve Linde on his "Passing the baton at Beijing"
(August 22). It was well- written and very fair. He took no particular stand for
or against any of it. However, I would have liked his reaction to "OCI satisfied
with Israeli performance" (same date).

I certainly am not satisfied, and it seems to me that at the very least,
Israel's Olympic Committee should have said something like "We will work very
hard during the next four years to ensure that we do better in 2012."

LEONARD ZURAKOV

Netanya

Israelis & Taiwanese

in the 2012 Olympics

Sir, - Reading Jeremy Last's "Great success? A bronze medal just isn't enough"
(August 22), led me to reflect: Our Chinese Taipei Team won only four bronze
medals in Beijing, compared with the 2004 Athens Games's two gold medals, two
silver medals and one bronze medal - and that also just isn't enough.

How could we, too, win more medals in the next Olympics? First, by treating our
athletes well, as Mr. Last mentioned, "increasing the amount of money given to
athletes" to let them live better. Secondly, by focusing on the sports most
suitable for our athletes such as sailing, judo, taekwondo, weightlifting,
archery, shooting, artistic gymnastics, diving and those which need skill and
not only body-muscle work.

I believe Israelis and Taiwanese are smart people and that our athletes could be
trained to win medals.

Do you know why African athletes have won most Olympic marathon gold medals, and
not many for swimming? In ancient times, so they say, Africans close to the
river feared the alligator's bite and learned to run fast to escape the lion's
jaws. So their descendants were right to concentrate on this skill.

Thirdly, more money needs to be given to the winners. In Taiwan, we award
US$375,000 for a gold medal, $218,750 for a silver medal, and $156,250 for a
bronze medal. These are real incentives, inspiring all athletes to do their very
best.

Practice makes perfect, and I sincerely wish our two nations' Olympic teams more
medals in the 2012 London Olympics.

SIMON C. HSIEH

Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv

Banking with a smile

Sir, - I agree with the complaint about the extraordinary fees banks are
charging ("Greed you can bank on," Editorial, August 21), but I have only good
things to say about the workers at my branch of Bank Leumi, in Rishon Lezion,
where I have been doing business for more than 30 years. With a few exceptions,
they have been extremely nice and helpful.

Re Aharon Mayne's letter ("High and mighty," August 24), could his complaint of
rudeness and disdain perhaps reflect Jerusalemite behavior in general?

MIRIAM NATHANS , Rishon Lezion

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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819 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 24, 2008 Sunday

Why Shas fails its own constituency

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 690 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

The cabinet is scheduled to vote today on the 2009 budget, and the outcome may
hinge on the issue of child allowances. These monthly stipends the state
provides to families for each child under 18 carry an annual multi-
billion-shekel price-tag.

Shas, the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party, which has 12 Knesset seats and is an
integral component of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's coalition, says it will vote
against the budget if the stipends are not increased. That would leave matters
on hold until after the Kadima primary. But Shas has also made clear that it
will join a post-Olmert Kadima-led government only if the stipends are
increased.

Shas's stance has the potential of forcing new elections sooner rather than
later.

We can understand Shas's insistence. Families with eight or more children are
four times more likely to live under the poverty line. And in 2006 the average
haredi household had 4.1 children, compared to the general population of 2.1. So
a large chunk of Shas's constituency stands to benefit from boosted child
allowances.

Less money for child allowances appears to have had a regrettable, negative
impact on the number of Jewish babies born. The number of children under two
years of age in haredi families is marginally down and the average number of
children has fallen, from 4.3 in 2001 to 4.3 in 2006. In heavily ultra-Orthodox
cities like Beitar and Modi'in Illit, there has been a 10% drop in the birth
rate.

AND YET it would be a mistake to let Shas have its way.

Cuts in the stipends were originally initiated in 2002 during the tenure of
prime minister Ariel Sharon's Likud government, by finance minister Silvan
Shalom, and continued in 2003 by Binyamin Netanyahu. This reduced the monies
channeled to households blessed with children, but it also set in motion a
process nothing short of revolutionary. Haredim, who embrace an insular
lifestyle, were forced to get off the dole and into the labor market.

In 2001, roughly 23 percent of haredi men worked legally; by 2006, the figure
had risen to 28%. Among haredi women the change has been even more dramatic: In
2006, 49% were employed, compared to 42% in 2001. Since many haredim work off
the books, the actual number of those employed is probably higher still.

Meanwhile, in response to the need felt by haredi parents to compensate for
child allowance cuts, a whole network of colleges and job training programs
geared exclusively to the community has sprung up. Thousands of young haredi men
and women are flocking to these institutions to learn skills that can gain them
entry to the labor market.

Even if a significant portion of haredim go out to work, there will remain, we
trust, an elite group of gifted Torah scholars devoting themselves to fulltime
Torah studies, thus keeping the embers of Jewish learning glowing.

Perhaps even more important than the change on the ground, however, is the
change in perspective among haredi spiritual leaders. The rebbe of the Belz
hassidic dynasty, Issachar Dov Rokeach, has called on his followers to find
gainful employment - as a matter of religious obligation. A daughter of Rabbi
Ovadia Yosef, Adina Bar-Shalom, has established a successful job training
program for women.

The Lithuanian yeshiva world, meaning non-hassidic ('mitnaged') Ashkenazi
haredim, remains the primary stronghold of resistance. But this, too, is
changing.

SHAS'S CLAIM that augmented child benefits would save tens of thousands of
children from poverty is simply unconvincing. Who is to say that the stipends -
directly deposited into parents' bank accounts - benefit their children? Better
to earmark such funds for programs aimed directly at children, such as school
hot lunch programs.

Maimonides, in his Mishneh Torah, teaches that the most sublime act of charity
is to give a poor person the means of self-sustenance. Why? Because unlike with
other forms of charity, the recipient is not humbled by the benefactor.

Shas, in short, may be doing itself a political favor by championing increased
child allowances. But it is doing the haredim themselves a disservice, one that
could keep them in a condition of dependency for years to come.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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The Jerusalem Post

August 24, 2008 Sunday

Power hungry

BYLINE: MEIR JAVEDANFAR

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 487 words

HIGHLIGHT: Meir Javedanfar is the coauthor of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran. He recently started the Middle East
Analyst Blog at www.MiddleEastAnalyst.com

Even without tough sanctions, Iran's infrastructure seems to be falling apart.
It's somewhat embarrassing when President Ahmadinejad praises the recent launch
of Iran's satellite as a scientific leap, while his government is doing such a
lousy job of running the country's infrastructure (and, as it later turned out,
with the satellite as well).

The problems with the electricity sector are a major example. Although sanctions
are responsible to a small degree, mismanagement and corruption among Iran's
ruling elite are greater factors. Every day, Teheran is without power for two
hours. Although advance notice is given, a city of 10 million people cannot
suddenly stop functioning without consequences.

As a result, Teheran's economy is taking a major hit. One example is bookings
for dentists, which have gone down because people don't want to go under
sedation only for the dentist to discover that he can't operate his tools.

Traffic is similarly chaotic. Often people wait for a traffic light only to see
it go out in a power cut. Much like drivers in Israel, Iranian drivers have an
obsession about not being seen as suckers. Hundreds of cars all compete to be
the first one out, creating massive gridlock.

According to the Iranian news agency Tabnak, people have stopped using elevators
because so many have been stuck in them due to power outages. There are also
water outages, causing conditions to be yet more unbearable.

ACCORDING TO Advar news, 70 people from a Teheran satellite town near Varamin
demonstrated against the authorities last week. One can safely guess that in
terms of number of people being fed up with the situation, this is just the tip
of the iceberg.

Iran's plans to build extra nuclear power stations would theoretically help, but
not solve all the country's energy problems. For example, when the Bushehr power
plant starts operations, it will only resolve 50% of the shortfall in energy
production. Other power plants are likely to take longer to build, due to
sanctions. Therefore the shortfall will remain for a number of years.

With energy demand growing by 8% a year, Iran needs to import foreign technology
and know-how to run its energy sector; otherwise its economy will most likely
reach crisis point, which might in turn threaten internal stability.

This means that the regime will have to markedly improve its relations with the
West, especially the US - even to the point of full diplomatic relations. It
will have no other choice. It is not a question of if, but when.

The more important question is: will this crisis point arrive before the
administration reaches it nuclear weapons goal or after? If before, then
sanction and diplomacy will have a much better chance. However, with the price
of oil at record highs, enabling the Iranian government to spend its way out of
the crisis for the time being, in all likelihood, rapprochement from Iran will
take place after it has the bomb.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: TRAFFIC JAM in Teheran. Iran's energy demand is growing by 8% a
year while its infrastructure crumbles. (Credit: Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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821 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 24, 2008 Sunday

Misleading platform platitudes

BYLINE: JONATHAN S. TOBIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1158 words

HIGHLIGHT: View From America. The writer is executive editor of the Jewish
Exponent in Philadelphia.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when the conventions of the two major
political parties were more than carefully orchestrated photo opportunities and
pep rallies.

The television networks have long since acceded to their audiences' wishes and
ended the tradition of "gavel- to-gavel" coverage of these political jamborees.
They are right to do so. Once the conventions stopped being news events and
became endless partisan infomercials, there was no reason to treat them as being
any different from any other garden-variety political rally.

But that hasn't stopped the parties from continuing some of the time-honored
traditions of the convention. One of these is drafting the party platform.

No president has ever taken his party's platform seriously as a template for
governing. Nor will many people, even political junkies, bother to read every
stultifying page of either party's manifesto. But interest groups, if only
behind the scenes, still lobby both the Democrats and the Republicans to have
them accommodate their positions. And, as such, what emerges from the process
can be evaluated as reflecting the strength of various ideas and their
supporters within the political establishment.

ON THAT score, the language of the draft that has been released of the 2008
Democratic Party platform on the Middle East speaks volumes.

The document, much like the platforms of both parties for the last half century,
bears witness to a commitment to Israel's security and well-being. Its language
reflects a consensus shared across the political spectrum that is not the work
of some furtive interest group, but the will of the majority of Americans.

Given the length and the detail of the language in the platform, you would think
that all those groups that call themselves "pro-Israel" would be pleased. But
that would be far from true. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, one
"pro-Israel group" is nonplussed.

Why? Because the accompanying language about the peace process that calls for
the US to "take an active role to help secure a lasting settlement of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict" was insufficient to suit the left-wing J Street's
taste.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the director of J Street - the new lobbying group that seeks to
be an alternative to the mainstream American Israel Public Affairs Committee -
said that "it's not enough for the next president to commit again to trying."
For him, the pro forma pledge to "engage" again in hands-on diplomacy alluded to
in the Democratic platform isn't good enough. What he wants is for the next
president "to muster the political will for an intensive effort that brings the
parties together, hammers out their differences and brings about an agreement."

That sounds fair and even high-minded. But a quick translation of that statement
into plain English shows that what he wants is a president who will ignore the
desires of both the people of Israel and the vast majority of Americans and beat
Jerusalem into submission. A study of the history of the last 15 years of the
peace process makes it perfectly clear who it is that will be "hammered" in any
such process and what the outcome of any such effort will be.

SADLY, THE marginal J Street is far from isolated on this issue. Its position
was echoed by an August 18 New York Times editorial that called on President
George W. Bush to engage in just the sort of hands-on pummeling of Israel in
pursuit of appeasement of the Palestinians that J Street seems to think the
Jewish state needs.

Yet since the beginning of the Oslo process in 1993, it has been Israel that has
made concession after concession on territory, settlements and empowerment of
the terrorist groups that the Palestinians have chosen for their leaders. The
response has been a strengthening of the most extreme elements in Palestinian
society. Israel has traded land and legitimacy not for peace, but for more
terror.

The majority of Israelis have shown that they are ready for even more
concessions, but not for more violence. If most think that further pullbacks are
imprudent, it is because they now understand that the recent past has proven
that the result will be more bloodshed.

But, so the conventional wisdom of the day here runs, what is needed to revive a
peace process that was slain by Yasser Arafat's refusal to take "yes" for an
answer at Camp David in 2000 and by the terrorist bombing offensive he launched
in response to Israeli initiatives, is an American president who will "hammer"
the Israeli government and the Palestinians into doing what's right.

This belief is fueled by the fact that for most of the last several years, the
current president refused to engage in the sort of hands-on diplomacy that Bill
Clinton attempted. Bush cut off relations with the PA in 2002 when he belatedly
realized that Arafat was a terrorist, and didn't resume dealing with it until
that criminal was dead and buried. And though Bush has pushed hard for aid to
Mahmoud Abbas, the powerless successor to Arafat, he has refused to deal with
Abbas's Hamas rivals - the true power in Palestinian society today.

Though Bush foolishly restarted the Clintonian style of engagement last fall at
Annapolis, the failure of this doomed gesture was attributed to Bush's late
start, rather than the fact that Israel has no credible peace partner. But since
in contemporary American politics, everything that the unpopular Bush does and
has done is, by definition, wrong, that has led to a near-universal belief that
more "engagement" in the Middle East is what is necessary.

BUT WHATEVER your opinion might be of Bush, this is nonsense.

The peace process has never been about the will of an American president to make
peace. No one wanted an agreement more than Bill Clinton. The Camp David and
Taba talks he engaged in did not fail because of lack of effort, but because the
Americans and the Israelis wanted a Palestinian state more than the
Palestinians.

Had Bush or even Al Gore tried to restart Clinton's track in 2001 or thereafter,
the notion that they would have succeeded with Arafat is farcical. The chances
for real progress have always rested with the Palestinians - and the Arab world
in general - to rise above the political culture of hate for Jews and the Jewish
state that has dominated their existence for a century. With Hamas in control of
Gaza and with a weak PA that is itself unable to give up the conflict with
Israel, a US commitment to intensive talks will only set up the next president
for a failure on the scale of Clinton's Camp David fiasco, which set the stage
for more violence, not peace.

The good news is that there's little doubt that anything that either platform
says about engagement or anything else will be forgotten next year. The bad news
is that the lobby for hammering Israel and its highly placed friends in the
media will remain with us. Let's hope that whoever is elected in November has
the sense to ignore them.

jtobin@jewishexponent.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: BILL CLINTON and Yasser Arafat at Camp David. The talks failed
not for lack of effort, but because the Americans and the Israelis wanted a
Palestinian state more than the Palestinians did. (Credit: Bloomberg)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 24, 2008 Sunday

Letters

BYLINE: Aharon Mayne, Shlomo Sharan, Leo Solomon, Hillel Schwartz, Marcella
Wachtel, Judy Lowy

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 913 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

High and mighty

Sir, - Your August 21 editorial "Greed you can bank on" did an excellent job in
outlining the ridiculous fees charged by Israeli banks for "services" rendered,
even after the recent reforms. However, you failed to mention the
fear-and-loathing experience some staff at local branches impose on their
customers.

I opened an account at a downtown Jerusalem bank branch about a year ago. I
literally have to psych myself up for days before going to the bank for a
transaction or inquiry. That's because no matter how polite I am, trying to
explain what I need, I never know when I will be greeted by one of their
employees with disdain and rudeness. Nearly every friend I speak to has some
story or other about being treated in this way.

And for this we are paying such high fees?

AHARON MAYNE

Jerusalem

Enmeshed...

Sir, - If a newspaper interview is intended to clarify someone's ideas for its
readers, Ruthie Blum's with Avraham Burg left me wondering if he is aware of the
many serious historical and social contradictions in his remarks ("'Let's move
slowly but surely from trauma to trust,'" August 21).

His saying that living in "Jerusalem or Babylon" can be characterized as a
"state of mind" defies all known human understanding: Geography is destiny, and
it has been demonstrated throughout human history, whatever Burg might think. In
his mind, there is no aliya, and no Jewish society - just existence - because
the nation-state is in actuality non-existent.

A statement to the effect that the countries of Europe engaged in killing each
other and so cannot be described as being against Israel is grossly absurd. Are
readers to understand that Holland, Belgium, France and Germany (or, in short,
people like De Gaulle and Hitler) did not hate Jews, Palestine/Israel because
they fought each other?

Whatever is of value in Burg's statements to the Post is not new, and whatever
is new has no value. He is hopelessly enmeshed in his mental labyrinth.

SHLOMO SHARAN

Professor Emeritus

Tel Aviv University

Tel Aviv

...in fantasy

Sir, - Leftists who are both utopian and contrarian hate Israel because
adherents to that philosophy harbor, even into their dotage, adolescent
fantasies of a perfect world that could be achieved if only the stupid others
would put them in charge. These plaster saints look down from their plinths in
judgment on a people whose very survival is in question; which sometimes
necessitates actions these moral puritans find odious.

Some leftists, like Benny Morris, emerge and discover the real world, while
others, snug in their pink comforters, continue to accuse Israel of apartheid,
and, even more absurdly, genocide.

Avrum Burg's grievances with Israel stem mainly from having had his grandiose
political ambitions thwarted by a people who came to despise him.

LEO SOLOMON

Nahariya

'Jewish life,' you said?...

Sir, - Haim M. Lerner is absolutely correct in his condemnation of the
hypocritical "Northeastern American liberals'" opposition to the erection of an
eruv in the Hamptons on the grounds that it "would cause the ghettoization" of
their community, and in his consequent call on his affected "brothers and
sisters" to "come home" to Israel as the only location where "Jewish life can...
be fully appreciated" (Letters, August 21).

But to which country should the families who desire to send their young children
to a kindergarten of their choice in Jerusalem flee in order to enjoy their
"Jewish life"? ("Proposed haredi kindergarten causes stir in J'lem
neighborhood," same date.)

HILLEL SCHWARTZ

Jerusalem

...but let's see both sides

Sir, - In the United States community of Westhampton Beach, residents are
objecting to the eruv for fear that it will transform the neighborhood into an
Orthodox enclave. As a consequence, these residents are being accused of
anti-Semitism.

In Israel, residents are objecting to the new haredi kindergarten slated to be
constructed in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Kiryat Hayovel, and they give the
same reason for their objection.

No anti-Semitism there, right? - just people who don't want to be forced into a
way of life not of their own choosing.

There are no easy solutions, but it would be useful to see both sides.

MARCELLA WACHTEL

Jerusalem

From Gush Katif

to the Golan

Sir, - I was pleased to see Larry Derfner's "Painting the Golan orange" (Cover
story, August 15) about former residents of Gush Katif living in the Golan. As
the executive director of JobKatif, the only organization helping former
residents of Gush Katif and Northern Samaria return to the workforce, I am
intimately familiar with the situation of these people. JobKatif provided much
of the financial support and business mentoring necessary to help the
individuals mentioned in the article return to the workforce.

While Mr. Derfner's article alluded to this fact, I believe it is important to
point out that the employment and economic situation of those former residents
in the Golan is far better than in other areas of the country.

JobKatif has helped in the establishment of over 130 businesses and assisted
over 900 people in reentering the workforce; but as of today there are still
more than 1,000 families who are affected by unemployment or under- employment
and therefore still strongly feeling the aftershocks of the disengagement.

I thank you for highlighting this issue and pray that we will find solutions for
those still suffering more than three years after the disengagement.

JUDY LOWY

Executive Director, JobKatif, Jerusalem

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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The Jerusalem Post

August 24, 2008 Sunday

Talking looted art

BYLINE: MARILYN HENRY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1079 words

HIGHLIGHT: METRO VIEWS

1998 was the Year of Nazi-Looted Art. From beginning to end, the art world was
frantic about claims from Nazi victims.

January 1998 saw Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, detain an
Egon Schiele painting, "Portrait of Wally," after its ownership was disputed by
the heirs of Lea Bondi Jaray, the Viennese Jewish gallery owner from whom it was
taken in 1938. "Wally" was on loan from Austria's Leopold Museum to New York's
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) at the time of its seizure; it is now at the heart
of a federal American court case.

December saw 44 nations meet under the auspices of the US State Department to
discuss the massive scale of losses and theft in Nazi-occupied Europe and
post-war restitution. While much cultural property was recovered, much remains
missing. "It is my belief, because of these large numbers, that every
institution, art museum and private collection has some of these missing works,"
Ronald S. Lauder, then chairman of MoMA, said at the Washington Conference on
Holocaust-Era Assets.

The nations agreed to the "Washington Principles," which call for the location
and restitution of Nazi-era looted artworks, opening archives, a central
registry of information, and means for "just and fair" resolutions of claims. A
decade after the Year of Nazi-Looted Art, three restitution-related conferences
are planned - none of which, despite the vows of 1998, seem especially useful to
Nazi victims or their heirs.

THE FIRST is next month in Paris, hosted by the Musee d'art et d'histoire du
Juda·sme. The second, in December in Berlin, is under the auspices of German
federal cultural offices. Both conferences no doubt will mention the Washington
Principles, which provide the raison d'etre for any restitution activities under
way.

That is well and good; the problem concerns the guest lists. Both conferences
are for museum professionals and auction houses, historians and provenance
researchers, as well as government officials who deal with claims. While it is
not a bad idea to hold conferences, these are not for the people who make
restitution policy or pledges. Those people are invited to the third conference,
in June, hosted by the Czech Republic as the concluding event of its presidency
of the European Union.

The problem with the Czech conference, to be held in Prague and Terezin, is that
there are no incentives for countries to send diplomatic delegations to it. In
fact, countries may find reasons to avoid it.

Russia, for instance, simply cannot be bothered with restitution. It has
traditionally manipulated museums and governments - most recently, Britain - to
provide ironclad guarantees of immunity from seizure if museums want to borrow
Russian museums' artworks. Austria doesn't want to be reminded of its losses. It
is smarting from the legal battles over the Gustav Klimt paintings that were
claimed by the heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. These were finally restituted in
2006, when the iconic portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer quickly was purchased for a
reported $135 million by Lauder, who has an extensive private collection whose
origins are subject to much speculation and whose pockets apparently are deeper
than those of the Austrian Culture Ministry.

The government of Sweden, the proud sponsor of an international conference in
2000 on Holocaust education, would not want to be shamed for the way in which it
avoided contending with its own pledges. When confronted with a claim for an
Emil Nolde painting, the government left the public museum, the Moderna Museet,
to deal with it. The museum, however, seems disinclined to move quickly.

UNLIKE ITS behavior in the later Clinton years, the US hasn't lectured anyone
about restitution under the Bush administration. Nor has it done much. With only
a few federally owned and operated museums, the US government says there is no
specific role for it in the art restitution process. However, the US has
declined to use the leverage it has. For instance, it could compel museums to
conduct provenance research before it provides federal indemnities for borrowing
artworks from abroad, which spares museums hundreds of millions of dollars in
insurance costs.

Museums around the globe have said they lack the funds, time and expertise for
extensive provenance research. Germany recently announced that it will make more
funds available for research, which means German museums cannot plead poverty to
delay restitution research.

If it is daunting for the museums, it is much more so for the victim of art
theft or his heirs, who are unlikely to have the skill or resources to track a
stolen painting and pursue a claim. This point was raised in a lawsuit pending
in a US court, over the ownership of the painting "Two Nudes (Lovers)" by Oskar
Kokoschka, now in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.

The claimant is the heir of Oskar Reichel, who operated an art gallery in
Vienna. The heir is a nurse, not an art collector. She was unaware of the
Reichel paintings until 2003 when the Museums of Vienna contacted her, saying
they intended to return four artworks that had been confiscated from Reichel by
the Nazis. At the time, she had no expertise regarding Nazi art-confiscation
practices, no familiarity with the art market, and no knowledge of what agencies
might help locate other Reichel artworks.

The Washington Principles encouraged Nazi victims to come forward to make
claims, and governments vowed to find "just and fair" solutions for legitimate
ones.

Since the Washington conference, however, only several European countries have
established panels to deal with spoliation claims. Each operates according to
its own rules. In the US, claimants and museums can resort to the courts to try
to establish their rights, but American civil laws were not designed to deal
with World War II-era losses. In addition, there is no consensus on what
constitutes "looted" art. One American court ruled late last year that if an
object was sold under duress during the Nazi era, it was considered "stolen,"
but that court ruling is not binding on any other claim.

The Year of Nazi-Looted Art established some high- minded principles. But unless
governments are prepared to aggressively investigate the provenance of artworks
in public collections, locate owners and heirs, and establish functioning
mechanisms to fairly adjudicate art claims, additional conferences will be
academic exercises of no meaningful value to the Nazi victims the Washington
Principles were intended to aid.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: 'PORTRAIT OF WALLY' was seized in January of 1998 from New
York's Museum of Modern Art, where it was on loan. Unlike in the later Clinton
years, the US hasn't lectured anyone recently about restitution.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

Bienvenido, Presidente Vazquez

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 723 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Some true friendships, between countries as much as between individuals, are no
less charming because they are minor.

This year, Uruguay's President Tabare Vazquez will be celebrating his country's
independence day, August 25, in Israel. Vazquez, an oncologist, has been here
before. He studied for half a year at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, and
visited in 1992 as mayor of Montevideo. But yesterday he arrived for his first
state visit, a five-day trip during which he will meet Prime Minister Olmert,
President Peres, and Foreign Minister Livni.

Elected to a five-year term in 2004, Vazquez is Uruguay's first left-wing
president. His Frente Amplio (Broad Front) government is based on a coalition
that includes Communists, social democrats and former Tupamaro guerrillas. His
country, wedged between Brazil and Argentina, is not large. Slightly smaller
than Oklahoma, its population is half that of New York City.

But it is also South America's most solid democracy - and one that happens to
bear a long and rich relationship with Israel. At the 1920 San Remo conference,
Uruguay strongly supported the Balfour Declaration. Before World War II,
thousands of European Jews - from Germany and Hungary in particular - found
refuge in Uruguay; in 1939 alone, some 2,200 Jews entered the country.

Uruguayans like to tell a self-deprecating joke: If you get diagnosed with a
terminal illness, move to Uruguay - everything there happens 20 years late.
While this might be true in connection with the country's transition from an
interlude of autocracy before its return to full-fledged democracy, it is the
very opposite of the truth with regard to its stance on the Jewish state.

In 1947, Uruguay's pro-Zionist UN delegate, Rodriguez Fabregat, was instrumental
in getting the partition plan passed. Three days before it did, he posed a
question to the General Assembly at Flushing Meadow, New York: "Why is it
necessary that there should be a Jewish State? Precisely to put an end to that
form of discrimination and alienation, [and] persecution of a section of
humanity." The decision to create that state, he said, "will go down to history
as the first great moral victory of the United Nations." The next year, Uruguay
became the first Latin American country to recognize the State of Israel, and it
later became one of the few countries to recognize Jerusalem as the capital.
Uruguay's capital, for its part, boasts a Golda Meir Square.

Since then, however, more than half of Uruguay's 40,000 Jews have emigrated -
10-12,000 of them to Israel, the largest proportion of any Western Jewish
community. Some fled the right-wing military dictatorship that ruled from 1972
to 1985, and that killed, jailed, tortured and exiled many thousands of
Uruguayans. (Earlier this year, a federal appeals court confirmed charges of
multiple murders against former president Juan Mar'a Bordaberry in connection
with the "disappearances" of the 1970s.)

More recently, others were induced to leave by Uruguay's deep recession of 2002
and 2003, which was caused by foot-and-mouth disease (devastating beef exports),
the economic crisis of neighboring Argentina, bank collapses and massive
currency devaluation. According to a Joint Distribution Committee study, 22
percent of the country's adult Jewish population are "poor" and over 40 percent
are "vulnerable."

THESE DAYS, relations between our two countries are broadening. A large part of
that friendship expresses itself in economic terms. Israel imports some $70
million a year from Uruguay. In December, Minister of Industry and Trade Eli
Yishai traveled to Montevideo to sign a free trade agreement with Mercosur, the
trade bloc that comprises Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

According to the agreement - Israel's first in South America - customs duties on
exports from Israel to those countries will be cut by 40 per cent over the next
four years, and in some sectors will be cut entirely within a decade. The trade
accord, ratified three days ago by Uruguay's parliament, "shows how important
the Israeli market has become," said Itzhak Levanon, Israel's representative at
the World Trade Organization.

After his election, Vazquez reiterated that his country's friendship with Israel
stands regardless of which party holds power. Welcome to Israel, Mr. President,
and Happy Independence Day!

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The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Jack Carlin, D. Katcoff, Yitzchak Ben-Shmuel, Yolanda Rodriguez

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 511 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Wondering world

Sir, - "Iran's American protector" (Caroline Glick, August 19) about US Defense
Secretary Robert Gates, neglected to stress the enormous transformation of
Israel under Ehud Olmert, from a once proud and powerful American ally to a
beleaguered liability threatened by mortal dangers that have been allowed to
gather and entrench on our southern and northern borders.

As a new Middle East war looms, it will be the American defense secretary who
will be called upon to decide where to place US military assets. We were once a
reliable and formidable partner. Are we still?

All the world wonders, both friends and enemies.

JACK CARLIN

Jerusalem

Liberals, pessimists...

Sir, - Your editorial "Lessons from Islamabad" (August 20) was one reason I like
The Jerusalem Post. In it, you refuted the canard repeated by Pervez Musharraf
and others that the region's problems stem from the Palestinian problem and
instead cited Islamic extremism.

This makes sense. Most national entities in the region are just a few years old
- Pakistan since 1948 and Palestine since 1967 - whereas the Islamic identity is
much deeper, reaching back over 1,000 years. One should therefore examine Islam,
its texts and tenets and its internal dynamics.

The more liberal writers tend to ignore Islam and concentrate on relatively
tractable national issues, in contrast to the more realistic, and pessimistic,
conservative pundits who correctly put Islam first.

Always follow General Sun Tzu's sage advice: "Know the enemy."

D. KATCOFF

Jericho, Vermont

...& political naivete

Sir, - Lela Gilbert's "Digging out the truth" (August 15) was a devastating
indictment of the nature of Islamic opposition to Jewish or any other religion's
historical attachment to this Land. One can argue for or against the thesis that
this denial is worse than Holocaust denial, but the fundamental fact of Israel's
complacency, stupidity, political naivete and myopia is undeniable.

The same ambivalence that dictates Israel's policy on borders, settlements,
freeing of murderers and politically correct statements of guilt is what guided
Israel to agree to Arab Temple Mount desecrations.

We should not be surprised by the audacity of this new Arab falsification of
history. Muslim fanaticism shows no respect for evidence or facts. To paraphrase
David Ben- Gurion: "It is not important what the goyim say, it is what we Jews
do that is important."

Until Israel can unite behind a government (and a leader) who can stand up to
say and do what needs to be said and done, we will continue, sadly, to spiral
downward to danger and despair.

YITZCHAK BEN-SHMUEL

Modi'in

Rule for survival

Sir, - I must remind Israelis that your nation will survive... provided you
return to the God of the patriarchs. Why? I'm glad you asked. Simply because the
Jews have an everlasting covenant with God and He never breaks a covenant with
His children. The binding agreement is that each Jew must obey and serve God on
His terms.

He is quite able to turn the whole political, economic and social scene around.

YOLANDA RODRIGUEZ, Arlington,Texas

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The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

Dominoes anyone?

BYLINE: Caroline B. Glick

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1951 words

HIGHLIGHT: Column One

Russia's invasion of Georgia is exposing many aspects of the international
system that the US-led West has studiously ignored since the fall of the Soviet
Union. One old truth that deserves attention is that the domino-theory of
international relations remains true. That theory asserts that events in one
arena will foment similar events in other arenas.

Great powers are not the only ones that can cause dominoes to fall. Small states
can as well. Israel's actions make this point clearly.

This week the Olmert-Livni-Barak government voted to release another 199
terrorists from prison. Israel's leaders claimed that after releasing terrorist
murderers to Hizbullah last month, we have no excuse for not releasing terrorist
murderers to Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas now. If Abbas cannot match Hizbullah's
achievements, they argue that he will be discredited.

But as The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh explained Monday, there is
virtually no one in the Palestinian Authority who believes that Israel will be
strengthening pro-peace forces in Palestinian society by releasing Fatah
terrorists from jail. Those terrorists will merely strengthen the more radical
elements in Palestinian society that are generally allied with Hamas and Islamic
Jihad.

Previous Israeli releases of terrorists have shown that untold numbers of
Israelis will pay with our lives for the government's idiocy. But it isn't just
Israel that is impacted by Israel's mistakes. Jordan too is harmed.

Just after the government announced its decision, Jordan announced that it was
releasing four jihadist murderers from its prisons. The four terrorists, who
killed two Israeli soldiers in 1990, had been sentenced to life in prison in
Israel. Last summer, in a "confidence-building- measure" towards King Abdullah,
Israel transferred them to Jordan to complete their prison terms.

If Israel cannot deny to Fatah what it granted to Hizbullah, so Jordan cannot
deny to Hamas what Israel granted to Fatah and Hizbullah. Jordan cannot be
stricter with murderers of Israelis than Israel is.

Jordan's recent rapprochement with Hamas follows the same pattern. According to
the Saudi Al-Watan newspaper, Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal is
scheduled to visit Jordan in the coming days as part of a general Jordanian
policy to rebuild its cooperative ties with the Iranian-controlled jihadist
group. Amman severed those ties in 2006.

There can be no doubt that Hamas and its sister Muslim Brotherhood organization
in Jordan constitute threats to the Hashemite regime. The Jordanian government
would no doubt prefer not to have anything to do with Hamas. Indeed, it would
doubtlessly be pleased if the terror group was destroyed. But Jordan cannot act
against Hamas on its own. Only Israel can do that.

But Israel has refused to take any action against Hamas as it has solidified its
control over Gaza and has increased its influence over Judea and Samaria.
Israel's inaction has compelled Jordan to appease the Iranian- controlled terror
group.

ISRAEL'S REFUSAL to acknowledge the interconnectedness of international events
impacts events throughout the region. The US's strategic myopia affects events
throughout the world. Recent occurrences in Pakistan bear this out.

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks the US has ignored the domestic situation
in Pakistan. First it placed all its faith in Pakistani President Pervez
Musharraf to act as its ally. Washington ignored Musharraf's refusal to purge
the Pakistani military and powerful Inter Service Intelligence agency of its
strong jihadist elements that collaborated with al-Qaida and the Taliban and
provided them safe haven and allowed them to take control over the provinces
bordering Afghanistan.

Then, in an about face, last year Washington attempted to advance its program of
democratization of the Islamic world by pressuring Musharraf to allow open
elections to Pakistan's parliament. Unfortunately, the US failed to notice that
the supposedly democratic contending parties all hate America and oppose taking
any action against the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Now that the anti-Western, "democratic" forces that the US has unleashed have
forced Musharraf from power, the US has no allies at all in Pakistan's political
and military-intelligence power structures with whom to collaborate in fighting
the Taliban and al-Qaida. Even more disturbingly, the US has no one it can trust
to ensure that jihadist forces do not gain access to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

This latter point was made clear on Tuesday when The New York Times quoted a
senior Bush administration official who noted that jihadist agents have made
"steadfast efforts" to infiltrate Pakistan's nuclear laboratories. Beyond that,
even Musharraf never gave the US full assurance that he was securing his
country's nuclear arsenal. Musharraf steadfastly refused to give an accounting
of how he spent much of the $100 million the US transferred to him for the
purpose of securing his 50-100 nuclear warheads.

Although during his first term in office President George W. Bush often warned
of the danger of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction falling
into the hands of terrorist groups or transferred to them by state sponsors,
this issue has been largely ignored in recent years. Administration officials
have downplayed the significance of overt cooperation between the Taliban and
al- Qaida and the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies. And today,
Washington's refusal to contend with that cooperation is coming back to haunt
it. Now the US has no easy options for preventing the rapidly collapsing
nuclear-armed Pakistani governing apparatuses from falling under the influence
of the Taliban and al-Qaida.

A similar situation is playing out in Lebanon. Just as the US ignored the ties
between the Pakistani regime and al-Qaida/Taliban, so it has ignored the
significance of Iran's control of Hizbullah and Hizbullah's control of the
Lebanese government.

Since the Western-allied March 14 movement forced Syria to remove its forces
from Lebanon in 2005, the US has treated its leaders as reliable strategic
allies. As a consequence the US refused to understand that when Lebanese Prime
Minister Fuad Saniora allowed Hizbullah to join his government in 2005, he
effectively placed his government at Hizbullah's mercy and so became a proxy of
Iran.

The US continued to ignore Saniora's subservience to Hizbullah during the
Israel-Hizbullah war in 2006. Hoping to strengthen him, the US barred Israel
from attacking Lebanese infrastructures serving Hizbullah's war machine. That US
decision made it much more difficult for Israel to prevail in the conflict. And
Israel's failure to defeat Hizbullah/Iran in 2006 paved the way for Hizbullah's
seizure of power in May.

Just as the Taliban and al-Qaida have taken advantage of the US's refusal to
acknowledge the significance of their ties to Pakistan's military and
intelligence services, so Hizbullah, Iran and Syria have exploited the US's
refusal to acknowledge their control over Lebanon.

One of the ways Iran, Syria and Hizbullah exploit the US's refusal to come to
terms with their control over Lebanon is by making that control uncontestable.
To this end, Hizbullah has forged alliances with disparate groups in Lebanon and
so further isolated the remaining pro- Western voices in the country.

This week Hizbullah signed a cooperation agreement with Syrian-backed
al-Qaida-linked Salafists in Tripoli. This move has shocked many Western
observers who have insistently argued that an alliance between Shi'ite and Sunni
jihadists is unthinkable. These observers have ignored the fact that Shi'ites
and Sunnis have strategic alliances throughout the region. Iran has a strategic
alliance with Sunni-majority Syria. It controls Hamas. It has hosted al-Qaida
commanders on its soil since at least late 2001.

To a degree, these blind observers' fiction of Sunni- Shi'ite antipathy has been
abetted by the Sunnis and Shi'ites themselves. Understanding the West's interest
in ignoring the threat they pose both separately and together, until this week
they never made their alliances explicit. What Hizbullah's accord with the
al-Qaida-linked Salafists in Tripoli shows is that both forces are now so
convinced of the West's weakness, that they believe they have nothing to fear
from openly collaborating.

UNLIKE EVENTS in Pakistan, which are the consequence of the nature of Pakistani
society and the US's failure to acknowledge the nature of that society, the
latest events in Lebanon are at least in part the consequence of Washington's
impotent response to their ally Russia's invasion of the US's ally Georgia.

It is often argued that Russia fears Islamic domination no less than the West.
And while Russia certainly has good reason to be concerned about jihadist, its
concern has not led it to act as an ally to the West in its fight against the
jihadists. To the contrary, like Iran and Syria and their affiliated terror
groups, Russia views the US as its true enemy. Like them it seeks to exploit US
weaknesses to advance its own position.

Russia understands that Iran's ideological foundations make it impossible for
Teheran to ever reach an accord with the US. And it exploits the situation to
its benefit.

Moscow built Iran a nuclear reactor. It supplies Iran and Syria with advanced
weapons systems. Russia's alliance with Iran and Syria advances its interests in
two ways: It weakens the US and it ensures that Russia will not be the target of
an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Just as the US's failure to back Israel's bid to destroy Hizbullah in Lebanon
two years ago paved the way for this week's Hizbullah-al-Qaida pact, so the US's
weak response to Russia's rape of Georgia has emboldened the Russians, Iranians
and Syrians to expose their long- standing strategic alliance. Wednesday Iran
condemned Georgia as a "Zionist" state due to its close ties with Israel. Russia
returned the favor by defending Iran's satellite launch, and backing Iran's
announced intention to build another six nuclear reactors.

Syrian President Bashar Assad capitalized on Russia's anti-US posture by
visiting Moscow on Wednesday. Russia set the tone of his visit by condemning
Israel for supplying Georgia with military assistance. It then allowed Assad to
announce Moscow's intention to supply Syria with the sophisticated Iskander
theater defense missile system which Syria has long sought.

Russia's exploitation of points of US weakness to advance its own position
leaves the US with two options. Washington can try to give Russia a better offer
than its enemies can. Or the US can work to weaken its enemies by confronting
them while strengthening its allies and so force Russia into a cooperative
posture. Today there is no deal that the US can offer Russia which can compete
with what Russia receives from its alliances with America's enemies. So the
first option is moot.

This brings us to option two which is simply the Cold War model of containment,
based upon the domino theory of world affairs. Seeing as it already worked once,
there is little reason not to return to it now. The US's decision to sign a
strategic alliance with Poland was s first small step in the right direction.
Diplomatic moves against Russia, like ending Moscow's membership in the G-7 and
its association agreement with NATO, should already have been carried out.

But most importantly, looking ahead, both the US and Israel should take a lesson
from their enemies. They must acknowledge that when they are strong and
victorious, their allies are strengthened throughout the world. And when they
are weak and dissolute, their allies also pay the price of their
irresponsibility.

caroline@carolineglick.com

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The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

Capital comparisons

BYLINE: David Horovitz

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1376 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editor's Notes. What Paris can teach Jerusalem

The Adath Israel synagogue, not far from Place de la Bastille in central Paris,
is clearly marked on the city's maps, but hard to physically track down.

That's because the only hint of its presence on the outside of the unremarkable
building that houses it is a tiny name reference in fading brown ink on a
mailbox. Further down the same street, a second synagogue is hidden away with no
outside identification at all.

"Security," shrugs an employee at Adath Israel indifferently. "No need to call
too much attention to ourselves. The Jews know where we are."

The deliberate maintenance of so low a profile, he insists nonetheless, belies
the relative comfort enjoyed by Paris's Jews. "Jewish life here is thriving,"
says the young haredi man, who grew up in Israel and lived in England for a few
years.

You walk around with your kippa on with no fear of attack, I ask him, knowing he
wouldn't do that in non- Jewish neighborhoods of England? "Not just my kippa,"
he replies. "I walk around with these hanging out" - he twirls his tzitzit -
"and nobody says a word. In England, I was shouted at by skinheads, even beaten
up one time. Here, the skinheads wish me 'Good morning.'"

Such a narrative sits oddly with occasional reports of vicious attacks on Jews
in this city by young, disaffected Muslims from immigrant families. It also
conflicts with anecdotes of anti-Semitism from French Jewish immigrants to
Israel. But he is adamant: "There's no trouble here unless you go looking for
it."

Even the substantial Muslim presence in the capital, marked by a prevalent
representation of women with (sometimes elaborate) hair covering, is all to the
good, he claims. "Before, our women may have felt a little uncomfortable to be
walking around with their heads covered," he says. "Nowadays, all these other
women are doing it too. It's great."

It's hard to gauge the accuracy of this insistently rosy assessment on the basis
of a brief visit to the city, though other members of the Jewish community
profess to share it. The Rue des Rosiers traditional Jewish area may have moved
upmarket and feature fewer overtly Jewish shops than it did just a few years ago
- about 20 have closed down in the last five years, including the landmark
Goldenberg's restaurant - but word is that many of the classy new establishments
are also Jewish-owned. And the remaining kosher bakeries and restaurants here
are doing a roaring trade, with plenty of Hebrew spoken, as is the local "Do you
want to put on tefillin?" Chabad establishment.

BUT ONE aspect of Paris that does allow for a snap assessment - and a sorry
comparison to our capital - is the degree to which the city is making the most
of what it has to offer, to its locals and to visitors alike.

The French capital is, of course, staggeringly blessed - with historic sites and
astounding museums and glorious parklands and groundbreaking architecture and a
variety of diverse and fascinating neighborhoods.

But rather than bask in its glories, it continuously improves them, with the
transformation of the Eiffel Tower in recent years - from familiar, hackneyed
tourist draw, into a dazzlingly lit, after-dark highlight - only the tallest
case in point.

The parks are wonderful - two lungs of endless green in the Bois de Vincennes
and the Bois de Boulogne on either side of the city, and hundreds upon hundreds
of immaculately maintained smaller clearings of clean-aired tranquil green in
every district.

Even seemingly insurmountable deficiencies, such as the indisputable absence of
a beach, have been conquered. For several years now, the indefatigable city
planners have cleared that little obstacle by transporting sand to the banks of
the Seine for the benefit of those Parisians who can't get to the coast for
their summer holidays, transforming the riverside into a veritable beach resort,
complete with deck chairs, sun umbrellas, fitness area, even a swimming pool to
cool off.

But one of the French capital's finest achievements - and here the comparison to
Jerusalem is pointed and bitter indeed - concerns its accessibility. The Metro
is magnificent - clean, safe, fast, ubiquitous. (Never mind the museums. Some of
the platform art is gallery standard.) But it has lately been supplemented by
another form of public transport, the bicycle.

Throughout Paris, the city has set up bicycle stands - cheap and simple-to-use
rental hubs. You pick up a bike at the start of your journey, pedal safely along
designated cycle routes through the heart of the city to your destination, and
give the bike back at a similar stand at the end. At a stroke, Paris has reduced
traffic congestion, cut back on air pollution and gotten its people into shape.

AND THEN we have Jerusalem, a city with millennia of history coursing through
its golden veins, the center of the world's great religions, the awed focus of
uncountable numbers of passionate admirers worldwide, divinely blessed with
unique beauty - and nowadays dirty, impoverished and, increasingly, impassable.

The city Israel has battled to keep and to liberate, the city whose future
status is endlessly debated here and worldwide, the city of uniquely elevated
symbolism, is, on the ground, at its most basic level, for the people who
actually live here, grinding to a halt. While the spiritual Jerusalem may soar
in prayer, the earthly Jerusalem is too expensive for most young families to
make a home in, fails to attract sufficient employers for its current populace,
and each year drives away 10,000-20,000 of those residents with the option to
move, through a combination of high city taxes, inadequate education frameworks
and intermittent haredi muscle-flexing.

Currently, it seems intent on expediting that deterioration via the light rail
project from hell - a well-intentioned rapid transport relief system that was
plainly insufficiently researched, is being abysmally executed (laying the wrong
tracks in one early section?!) and has long since spiraled beyond all control.
It features a grandiose bridge to nowhere at the city's entrance and, deeper
into town, the devastation of the road system in neighborhood after
neighborhood.

Far behind schedule, vastly over budget, it has seen the center of Jerusalem
rendered inaccessible to the public as streets are systematically closed off to
private vehicles, as though the light rail, rather than years from introduction,
were up and running as a slick and speedy alternative.

To walk along the central Jaffa Road artery and its environs, as the bulldozers
batter ponderously, the traffic steams and the shopkeepers despair, is to
witness a capital offense unfolding in pitiful slow-motion. "This morning they
destroyed us," one downtown store owner, Shimon Malka, told Israel Radio on the
morning the bulldozers arrived earlier this month. "There is nothing left for us
to do here but pack up and go."

One by one, stores along the city's main street are closing down. The buses
cannot get through, and surrounding streets are hopelessly blocked by the
overspill. And as the bulldozers encroach ever further, there is insufficient
room even for pedestrians to make their way through our city center.

It's hard to conceive how a deliberate attempt to bring Jerusalem to its knees
could have achieved more devastation. And coming home after a few days in Paris,
it's hard to imagine a greater contrast in city management.

Perhaps the French capital will yet provide inspiration to ours, encouraging the
effective governance of our extraordinary Jerusalem. But would that it were
sooner rather than later. For who knows how many Jerusalemites will have left
before intelligent oversight regenerates the capital? Who knows how many city
center businesses will have foundered?

Still, if biking is less practical in our hilly environs than in flattish Paris,
and we lack a river to which to bring a beach, let's hope the light rail will
yet reward its adherents. Let's press the planners to insist on widening our
green spaces. Let's champion leaders who can attract investment, encourage
employment and allocate resources effectively.

Restoring the earthly Jerusalem will be an uphill, protracted battle. But as the
French playwright and statesman Victor Hugo famously observed, the "secret of
all triumphs" is "perseverance."

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The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

A pause we cannot afford

BYLINE: DAVID KIMCHE

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1084 words

Is it the summer heat that makes us yawn when we read about the goings-on of our
politicians? Or could it be that we are just simply not impressed by the
blustering of Ehud Barak or the mediocrity of Shaul Mofaz, while the prime
minister himself has become irrelevant as a has-been? Or perhaps we are yearning
for the strong hand of a true leader, a Ben-Gurion, a Begin, or even, whether we
liked him or not, a Sharon.

Anwar Sadat was such a leader. His bold visit to Jerusalem fired the imagination
of every Israeli, from the Left and from the Right. He set his sights on
retrieving Egyptian land occupied by Israel in exchange for peace, and the
peoples of Israel and of Egypt were overwhelmingly in favor of that equation -
land for peace, peace for land.

The same would have happened today if Israeli and Palestinian leaders - or
Israeli and Syrian leaders for that matter - would have brought before their
people a viable peace agreement. Despite all the anti-peace rhetoric that we
hear day and night, the people of our region - Israeli, Palestinian, Syrian -
would welcome a reasonable and just peace agreement with open arms if only our
leaders could clinch such a deal.

The irony and the tragedy of the present situation is that we have never had
more favorable circumstances for reaching peace, yet it has never seemed to be
further from our grasp. We have, perhaps for the first time, a Palestinian
leadership that is for peace and against violence. The Syrians, too, show signs
of wanting to reach an agreement with us.

The Arab Peace Initiative, as the Saudi proposal was called, is still on the
table. It offers full peace and normalization between the Arab world and Israel
in exchange for the land occupied by Israel in 1967, as a basis for negotiations
which would, of course, allow flexibility such as, for example, keeping the
settlement blocs in exchange for other land. Cognizant of the wall-to-wall
opposition in Israel to the "right of return" formula for solving the refugee
question, the Arab peace initiative calls for "an agreed solution" to the
refugee question, which in effect nulls the right of return, as obviously Israel
would never agree to it.

SO, ON the face of it, the chances for peace have never been better. If we had a
Ben-Gurion in the prime minister's residence the chances are that he would have
reacted favorably to the Arab League's peace initiative, accepted the League's
outstretched hand, and begun negotiations with it to achieve the best possible
results for Israel. Instead, we at first ignored the initiative and finally
reacted to it in a half-hearted manner.

But, of course, we don't have a Ben-Gurion in Balfour Street, and Sharon is
still lying in a coma in his hospital bed. There is no one of the stature of
Ben-Gurion, Begin or even Sharon on the Israeli horizon (though Tzipi Livni
could yet surprise us). Moreover, we are now living in an interregnum, in a
period of waiting, waiting for new leaders to walk onto the stage, and in such a
period common belief is that nothing much can happen.

It is not only a question of who will replace Ehud Olmert as leader of Kadima
and who will become our next prime minister in the forthcoming elections. In
truth, the curtain is coming down not only for Prime Minister Olmert but also
for others who are at the head of the political pyramid of their countries in
the Middle East.

President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly said that he will not seek reelection and
it is by no means clear who will replace him. Two of the principal leaders in
our region have passed the 80 mark (one of them is 84, and I don't mean
President Shimon Peres). Both President Mubarak of Egypt and the Saudi King
Abdullah have proved to be reliable and well tested leaders, yet no leader, able
as he or she may be, is immune to the laws of biology.

Perhaps for that reason the political clout that Egypt once wielded in the
Middle East has weakened. I once heard President Sadat say to Prime Minister
Begin "the Arab world needs Egypt much more than Egypt needs the Arab world." I
am not sure to what extent that is true today.

The interregnum that we are living in is, however, marked first and foremost by
the twilight casting its ever- lengthening shadow in the White House. Not much
can seemingly happen when we have three lame ducks ruling over what will be and
what will not be in our region.

President Bush, President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert have that in common -
their days as rulers are numbered.

Who will take their place? No one can predict whether Barack Obama or John
McCain will win the race for the White House. From our point of view the big
question is which one of them will better absorb the lessons of the mistakes
that preceding presidents made when tackling the Arab-Israeli conflict, which
one will be quicker off the mark in an effort to reach an agreement and save the
two-state solution.

To the joy of those of us who fail to understand the disastrous consequences for
Israel of the collapse of the two-state solution, and to the dismay of those who
do understand it, that solution is in danger of being removed as a viable
option. More and more Palestinians are calling for a new strategy: the
disbandment of the PA so that Israel would once more become responsible for the
well- being of the Palestinian population, and the demand for citizenship and
eventual voting rights for Palestinians in a one-state solution.

We have heard recent declarations to that effect from Abu Ala, the former prime
minister and head of the Palestinian negotiating team, from the head of al-Quds
University Sari Nusseibeh, who is considered to be a leading dove on the
Palestinian scene, and from many others.

For former minister and vice-president of Bir Zeit University Ghassan Khatib,
writing on the Bitterlemons Web site, the alternatives are clear: either a move
forward to a two-state solution, or a renewal of the conflict.

So on the one hand we are living through a political intermission, an
interregnum waiting for a new leadership to take over from the old, but on the
other hand the facts on the ground are dictating their own timetable. We may not
be able to wait for the new prime minister to

take over in Jerusalem, or for the next president in Washington to activate a
new Middle Eastern policy. So we may be yawning through these hot summer months,
but even lame ducks may sometimes be forced to take fateful decisions that will
affect our future, and that is what we may be seeing in the coming weeks and
months.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Yitzhak Berman, Dr. Igor Kogan, Marina Kontsevaya, Svetlana Shenbrunn

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 193 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

DIRECT, AND TO THE POINT

Contributing to the traffic jams in the center of Jerusalem as the light rail is
being laid on Jaffa Road are the two to three police (wo)men at each crossroad
("Life in the fast lane," August 8). What is delaying traffic is that the police
(wo)men need to coordinate among themselves their instructions to the driving
public. I long for the days when one Irish policeman directed traffic, whistling
through two fingers at the crossroad of 5th Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan.

Yitzhak Berman

Beit El

A SPECIAL PLACE

We, activists of the Jerusalem Russian Library, are writing to express our deep
gratitude for publishing the cover story "How the Russian library was saved" by
David Stromberg (August 8).

It gave us great pleasure to see how Stromberg explained the essence of the
problem. He presented the history of the library, and showed the place the
library occupies in the life of Russian-speaking Jerusalemites - and not only
them.

It was an excellent article, deeper and more interesting than many publications
about the library that have appeared in the Russian media.

Dr. Igor Kogan

Marina Kontsevaya

Svetlana Shenbrunn, Eli Luxemburg

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The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: D. Meyer, Nachman Shenker, Kenneth Besig, Fran Goldstein, Ella
Berkovits, Jack Davis, Jonathan Shaked

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1226 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Learned nothing

Sir, - The sentiment expressed by the "settlers" making their homes on the Golan
- we won't forgive and we won't forget - brings to mind the characterization of
the Bourbons, who "forgot nothing and learned nothing" ("Painting the Golan
orange," August 15).

The disengagement from Gaza was, when all is said and done, not a
"hole-and-corner" decision by a small group of people against the will of the
majority, but a step by a legitimate government, proposed and voted on by the
Knesset and supported by a large majority of Israelis.

These people apparently, have neither the strength to accept what cannot be
changed nor the wisdom to differentiate between the reversible and the
irreversible. I do not think that they are doing their children a favor by
encouraging this attitude and supporting all kinds of intransigence, and it is
quite possible that a day will come when their children won't thank them for not
setting their feet on a more positive path.

D. MEYER

Haifa

Rosenblum is right

Sir, - There must be something about Jonathan Rosenblum's writing that raises
the hackles of of the members of "The Love to Hate Jonathan Fan Club." I suspect
it is his erudition and ability to present the haredi case with style and logic.
("There's the rub," Letters, August 15).

If your readers had taken the trouble to carefully read his August 8 column
("Israel's greatest untapped source of brainpower"), they would have been
surprised to learn that it was a paean of praise for Education Minister Yuli
Tamir, who can hardly be accused of being an admirer of the haredi lifestyle but
who is the only cabinet member who runs her office without regard to her
political advancement. The bottom line is that Rosenblum supported her decision
not to try to force the haredi public to accept a change in its ways. The Greeks
found out about 2,500 years ago that it wouldn't work.

Both of your letter writers voice their agreement with the accepted canard that
haredim live off the labors of the rest of the population. All one needs to do
is take a walk in Jerusalem and see the magnificent institutions built by
contributions from haredi supporters and hear the foreign languages spoken by
thousands of haredi students studying here, to be convinced that haredi
(irrespective of their garb) money more than compensates for the burden on the
Israeli taxpayer. As for army service, a walk on Rehov Sheinkin in Tel Aviv
could be very educational.

NACHMAN SHENKER

Jerusalem

Not as good as Golda

Sir, - In his review ("Good as Golda?" August 15), Calev Ben-David compares
Golda Meir with her heir apparent Tzipi Livni and, at least in terms of
political and oratorical skills, our present foreign minister comes up short.

I would go considerably further in my comparison of the two, and in a far more
important way. For example, I doubt that moral and plainspoken Golda, unlike
Livni, would even have considered expelling Jews from their homes, destroying
their lives and livelihoods and disrupting their families, while euphemistically
calling it "disengagement."

I also doubt very much that Golda Meir, again unlike Tzipi Livni, would have set
up internment camps to illegally imprison those who opposed the expulsion or,
worse, would have threatened to forcibly remove the expellees' children from
their homes and place them in state institutions or would have threatened to
confiscate the expellees' property as a punishment for opposing their expulsion.

No, for all these reasons and the ones cited by Ben- David, Tzipi Livni is
definitely not as good as Golda.

KENNETH BESIG

Kiryat Arba

Kudos and boos

Sir, - For once, I am in agreement with David Forman ("Where are our leaders?,"
August 15). He couldn't have made the point better.

But I would like to remind him that the Israeli people did not elect Ehud
Olmert. They did elect Ariel Sharon, who turned his back on his supporters and
expelled the Jewish population from Gush Katif.

As for hundreds of thousands taking to the streets in protest, they were out
there before the expulsion and were rewarded with police violence, media bias
and interference with their right to demonstrate. When it comes using mass
protests to change the status quo, entrenched institutions and old fashioned
ideas, its no wonder that people say "no thanks."

FRAN GOLDSTEIN

Ginot Shomron

Sir, - I agree wholeheartedly with David Forman's description of our abysmal
political scene and our penchant for "recycling failed leaders." However, I must
take exception to his besmirching the good name of Benny Begin, a true man of
integrity, by including it with those of Avraham Burg and Tzipi Livni in the
same parenthesis.

How can anyone seriously consider Avraham Burg a man of integrity? In the words
of Eli Kavon in the same issue ("Both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem"), he "wants to
abolish Israel's identity as a Jewish state" and urges Israelis to acquire
foreign passports.

As for Tzipi Livni, once an articulate spokesperson for the Likud, now espousing
diametrically opposed views, I venture to speculate that neither her father not
the father of Avraham Burg would consider integrity a quality by which to
describe their opportunistic offspring.

ELLA BERKOVITS

Haifa

Sir, - I enjoyed David Forman's article with reservation.

It provides a humorous but outlandish solution to a dire situation. One must
become depressed with the chaotic, self-serving political and justice systems.
It is indicative of the morality and integrity of our leaders and complacent
mentality of the electorate which I consider threatens our survival.

Without at least constituency representation and accountability to the
electorate, an aggrieved or concerned citizen can be talking to the wall.

We live in a tough and evil neighborhood, surrounded by enemies. Where is the
social protest and political activism of the electorate that is needed to change
a weak and archaic system? Unless citizens become involved and concerned about
affairs that govern their way of life, work to reform the defective electoral
system by improving the ability and caliber of our leaders, I believe we could
lose the democratic freedoms that many here take for granted but are denied to
many in the world.

JACK DAVIS

Jerusalem

For mixed marriages

Sir, - I can identify with Judy Siegel-Itzkovich's alien feeling when abroad
("California, here I come - back to my home in Israel," August 15); however, I
see things differently. Is assimilation really such a terrible thing? Marriages
between Jews and non-Jews have produced some great people; it seems to work.
Mixed marriages mean that non-Jews have Jewish relatives.

I am also an Israeli since 1973 and see the growing materialism and
meaninglessness of the Israelis; acquiring the latest gadgets seems to be an
Israeli obsession. The Anglos have a dish - or cables - that pipes in TV
programs from their native country. The divorce rate is extremely high, and
there is intermarriage between Jew and Arab; I live in a poor area where my
neighbors' children are the product of these mixed marriages. Israelis eat in
the abundance of non-kosher restaurants.

A president accused of rape, ministers convicted of sexual misconduct,
corruption and fraud. No leaders - and those who lead give the country away.

I say we need Jews in the Diaspora and their "non- Jewish" offspring until we in
Israel can set a good example.

JONATHAN SHAKED, Beit Shemesh

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The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

Putin's unwinnable war

BYLINE: AMOTZ ASA-EL

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1121 words

HIGHLIGHT: Middle Israel

Last week's hostilities in the Caucasus have left some decrying Georgia's
adventurism, others the West's anemia and practically everyone Russia's
brutality. While all valid, these charges still neglect the most striking aspect
of this drama, which lies neither in the geographic scope nor in the
humanitarian costs of Russia's new imperialism, but in its strategic folly.

True, America's failure to do more for an ally that had risked thousands of
troops in Iraq made Washington look impotent at best, disloyal at worst. And
Georgia's failure to display the preparedness, poise and bravery that the fight
it had picked with the Red Army so patently demanded made its leaders seem like
statecraft cadets.

The Georgians' lack of strategic sobriety has indeed been striking. It's not
enough to know what you want, which in their case means that much land and this
much independence. Before provoking an enemy as armed, trained and ruthless as
Russia, one must have for an army more than seven fighter planes and several
armored brigades, and for a strategy a lot more than naked exposure and chaotic
flight. Had it had a David Ben-Gurion, Georgia would have avoided starting the
war, and at the same time hid its army deep in its tall mountains, and from
there maneuvered the Russians into the kind of guerrilla war that defeated them
in Afghanistan.

Even more perplexing was Tbilisi's misinterpretation of the West's warmth to its
cause. One can understand Georgia's quest to arrive as deeply in the West's
bosom as Romania, Poland or Hungary, all of which have joined NATO and the
European Union in recent years. Still, unpleasant as it may sound from the
Georgian viewpoint, its situation is inferior compared with other parts of the
former East Bloc.

The EU's and NATO's post-communist members don't border on Russia except two of
the Baltic republics, but the Baltics were independent until World War II and
are seen in Europe as an extension of Scandinavia. Georgia borders Russia, and
though Christian it is seen in Europe as more Asian and Turkic than European and
white. This is of course rude and appalling, not to say racist, but it is also a
fact of Georgia's situation. Had Tbilisi sought the advice of any Israeli beside
the frustrated IDF generals it hired as military advisers, it would have known
all along to expect from the West no more than it had granted Hungary in '56 and
Czechoslovakia in '68.

For now, Georgia must concede that it is for Putin what Cuba was for Kennedy.
Faced with that, it is better off eyeing the kind of foreign policy Finland
conducted toward the Soviet Union.

The Finns had also been invaded by Moscow, and unlike the Georgians they gave
the Russians a fight they will never forget. Though it ended in their surrender,
that war lasted a whole winter and cost the Soviets 200,000 men, 1,100 tanks and
684 aircraft. Eventually, the Finns retained their independence but at the same
time remained neutral throughout the Cold War, and only joined the EU last
decade. As for NATO, even today they have yet to join. The Georgian display of a
diplomatic appetite that is so much greater than Finland's, coupled with a
military performance that is so much less impressive than the Finns', only makes
the Russians disparage them.

And yet Russia's tunnel vision is even more ominous than Georgia's.

THE RUSSIANS' first mistake was in marketing. Bizarre as it may sound, they
actually hoped to appear in this conflict as the innocently attacked party.

Never mind right now that the sparsely settled provinces that rebelled
"spontaneously" against Georgia are all manipulated by former KGB agents; any
first-year MBA student could have told Putin that any tears he would shed, as he
did in live broadcast while lamenting the suffering of fellow Russians, would
come across as crocodile tears, just like any Russian invasion of a small, weak
and democratic neighbor will make the whole world - except Belarus, Libya, North
Korea and Cuba - hate, suspect and besmirch Russia.

Had he been prudent, Putin would have figured that all this is bad for business
- even the business of imperialism. But Putin is not prudent, certainly not when
it comes to business. That is why he has been conducting a spigot diplomacy
whereby he habitually toys with his assorted neighbors' energy supplies
according to the morning's political forecast, besides of course jailing
opinionated entrepreneurs and allegedly whacking spies abroad and journalists at
home.

In seeking imperial sway Russia is not different than the US, China or the EU.
Where it parts ways with them is on business. Russia's real casus belli, an oil
pipeline from Baku to the Black Sea that would cross Georgia and bypass Russia,
is but a continuation of its economic policy, which combines addiction to oil
with submission to organized crime. In shackling itself to the commodity
markets' whims, Russia is emulating deformed economies like Venezuela's,
Nigeria's and Libya's, and in sucking other people's pipes it is behaving in the
oil market the way Al Capone did in the bootlegging industry.

CURIOUSLY ENOUGH, all this has arrived, of all places, at the oil fields of
Baku, Azerbaijan, into which Moscow wants to tap the way Tony Soprano would
extort a trucking company.

Baku had once been the focus of someone's imperial folly - Hitler's. It was the
quest for its oil fields that made the fuehrer split the forces he had sent to
Stalingrad, thus fatefully weakening the Sixth Army, whose subsequent surrender
marked the beginning of the Third Reich's demise.

Post-communist Russia is not Nazi Germany. It is religiously tolerant, and with
all its political flaws is still an improvement over what preceded it. However,
in foreign affairs its thinking is much like Nazi Germany's and Imperial
Japan's, where economics meant possessing oil fields and diplomacy meant
conquering them.

Wartime Germany and Japan learned their lesson amid great devastation. Russia's
lesson might come less violently, as oil's already sharp depreciation hopefully
accelerates and traps Putin behind the labyrinthine pipelines within which he is
caging his country's economy.

Because once oil plunges, Russia's economy will shrink, and its people will
start asking the tough questions its media find increasingly difficult to raise,
questions like: How is it that from Latvia and Poland to Ukraine and Georgia
everyone hates Russia? Do Russians really deserve to be so hated? Is this hatred
incurable, and don't Russians stand to suffer from it, in the long run, more
than they will ever gain? And this oil boom they once had, what was in it for
Ivan? And oil's subsequent collapse, how come Vladimir Putin prepared for it the
way Georgia prepared for the Red Army's invasion?

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: Carnage in South Ossetia. Inset: Ambushing the Red Army,
Finland, 1940. Georgian soldiers delivered a lot less than the Finns, but their
diplomats expect more. (Credit: AP. www.uralica.com)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

832 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

Why Kook is out

BYLINE: YEHUDA BAUER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1119 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is the director of the International Center for Holocaust
Studies at Yad Vashem.

On July 8, The Jerusalem Post published an article by Isi Leibler, a Jewish
leader of importance and a friend. Leibler attacked Yad Vashem's refusal to
incorporate into its Holocaust History Museum an exhibit relating to efforts by
Hillel Kook to persuade the US government to rescue the Jews of Europe.
Originally an emissary of the Irgun Zva'i Leumi in the US, Kook and his team
later became independent actors.

Leibler also attacked the then leading personality of US Jewry, Rabbi Stephen S.
Wise, not only for hampering Kook's efforts to bring the tragedy of European
Jewry to the attention of the American people, but also for not making public
the famous cable of August 8, 1942, of Dr. Gerhardt Riegner, the secretary of
the Geneva office of the World Jewish Congress, who tried to alert the WJC in
London and New York to the danger of a mass annihilation of 3.5 million-4
million Jews in the coming fall.

Leibler says that Wise finally asked president Franklin D. Roosevelt to
intervene, and that Roosevelt said: "Tell your Jewish associates to keep quiet."
But Roosevelt did not speak with Wise between August and December 1942, so this
is an error. Leibler says that Wise's non-action was "the most shameful failure
of Jewish leadership in the 20th century." Unfair, and inaccurate.

IN THE summer of 1942, the Germans were racing toward Stalingrad. They were at
El Alamein, and the danger to Palestine was obvious; the US had just barely
managed to repulse the Japanese navy at Midway. The Germans were sinking more
Allied ships in the Atlantic than the shipyards delivered replacements. Public
opinion in the US, as Gallup polls showed, was increasingly anti-Semitic. This
was the scene when Riegner's cable was received. It ended with the words: "We
transmit information with all necessary reservation as exactitude cannot be
confirmed. Informant stated to have close connection with highest German
authorities and his reports generally speaking reliable." Riegner's cable thus
cast doubt on the accuracy of its own information.

Sumner Welles, the State Department undersecretary, asked Wise not to make the
cable public because the information had to be verified, as the cable itself had
implied. In any event, in the summer of 1942 there was no Allied army anywhere
near the Jews, and the Allied air forces were incapable of reaching the Polish
extermination sites. No one could have prevented the mass murder at that point.
The situation changed in November 1943 - after that the Western Allies could
have bombed the extermination sites, but refused to do so. In 1942 the Americans
could not have rescued the Jews even if they had wanted to; in addition, they
feared the accusation that they were fighting the war for the Jews.

Was Wise right in yielding to Welles, when the cable itself cast doubt on its
own contents? As historians David S. Wyman and Raphael Medoff write (A Race
Against Death, 2002, page 8): "Wise believed he had no realistic choice but to
comply, for he could not risk alienating the one government department whose
cooperation was most needed in the effort to help the European Jews." He did
inform Henry Morgenthau, the secretary of the Treasury, and Supreme Court
justice Felix Frankfurter, in the hope that they would reach the president. He
informed his colleagues, and then he waited for confirmation, which arrived in
November, from the American representative in Switzerland. He then arranged for
a press conference to make the information public, and it was reported in The
New York Times, on an inside page.

Wise's fault? Should all this contradictory and controversial story, without any
background and context, be shrunk into a panel in the Yad Vashem Museum?

Hillel Kook was a young activist, and he did great work in trying to mobilize
American opinion to influence the US administration to do something to save the
Jews. He was hampered and attacked by the Jewish establishment of the day, with
Wise at its head. Did he influence public opinion? Leibler mentions the big
demonstration of supposedly 400 Orthodox rabbis in front of the White House on
October 6, 1943, as proof of his effectiveness.

It was indeed impressive, although Orthodoxy was then a small minority among
American Jews, and its influence was minimal. The rabbis did not see Roosevelt,
of course, but they were received on Capitol Hill by the vice president and some
senators. Their demonstration was reported in The New York Times, and that was
it. The media did not mention it afterward, and the effect on American public
opinion is very doubtful. American anti-Semitism was to reach a peak in 1944,
with 48 percent of the population expressing anti- Jewish views.

Among members of Congress, the mood began to change later, in 1943, and part of
that was no doubt due to the efforts of the Kook group; it was also partly the
influence of Wise and his official Zionist group, which made contact with
Morgenthau. Yet it was some intrepid non-Jewish Treasury staffers who persuaded
Morgenthau to press the president, who then established the War Refugee Board.

Leibler claims, wrongly, that the WRB was initiated exclusively by Kook, and
rescued 200,000 Hungarian Jews (Wyman and Medoff say that 120,000 were rescued
in Budapest). This is demonstrably wrong: The rescue of the remnant of Hungarian
Jews was the result of an interplay of many factors, only one of which was the
WRB, which financed, for instance, Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest, but with money
from the Joint Distribution Committee - opponents of Kook, and the heart of the
non-Zionist Jewish establishment.

Leibler is right. Kook should be given an honorable mention, along with other
Jews outside of Europe. But for that we need a different museum, as this one is
devoted, by design, to what happened to the Jews of Europe, in Europe. The
visitor will not find anything about efforts by world Jewry, or the lack of
them, except for a comment by Jan Karski about his mission to the West. There is
nothing there about the Yishuv, except for the parachutists; there is nothing
there about the organization of Soviet Jews to support the Soviet war effort,
almost nothing about Jews serving in Allied armies. Nor about Kook. Or Wise. Or
David Ben-Gurion. Or Menachem Begin.

Yad Vashem's Museum presents the story of the Holocaust - in detail. That is
what people come to learn. Much even about what happened to the Jews in Europe
had to be left out. If it introduced the story of world Jewish action and
inaction during the Holocaust, and expanded on the attitude of the Allies and
the neutrals, what does Leibler suggest should be kept out? Treblinka?
Resistance? Judenrats?

Isi Leibler's heart is in the right place. It is his analysis that is wrong.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Hillel Kook in the '70s. His attempts to alert the world about
the continuing annihilation of the Jews was attacked by the US Jewish
establishment. (Credit: Rachel Hirsch)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

833 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

Academic harassment

BYLINE: NAOMI CHAZAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 1232 words

HIGHLIGHT: Critical Currents

The lazy, hazy days of August have bypassed institutions of higher education
this year. The police investigation of Hebrew University Prof. Eyal Ben-Ari on
charges of sexual harassment of students under his direct supervision has opened
a veritable Pandora's box. All of a sudden a flood of similar allegations has
surfaced, not only in the sociology department on Mount Scopus, but throughout
the network of universities and colleges in the country. The hyperactivity on
academic list servers, blogs and chats is unprecedented: No subject has been
debated more intensely in the local academic world in recent memory.

This discussion is long overdue, as skillfully noted in this paper's editorial
just a few days ago ("Sexual harassment taints campus life"). For a full 10
years, since the Knesset's adoption of the Law for the Prevention of Sexual
Harassment in 1998, scholarly institutions, while formalistically adhering to
its provisions, have in fact systematically avoided grappling with its true
meaning. It is high time that a precise, detailed, ethical code of conduct be
formulated to break the resounding silence and to establish binding norms of
gender relations in the apparently not-so-rarified atmosphere of the ivory
tower.

The legislation classifies a series of acts as falling within the definition of
sexual harassment, including not only sexual blackmail and assault, but also
unwanted persistent sexual suggestions, sexual innuendos and improper approaches
to individuals on the basis of their sex or sexual orientation. Tellingly, the
law states explicitly that any behavior of this sort - even when not
specifically rejected - is illegal if it involves minors or persons in
situations of dependency in the workplace, medical establishments, schools,
rehabilitation centers and, yes, also (albeit rather belatedly) in institutions
of higher learning.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT is a criminal and civil offense punishable by law. Employers,
professional organizations and educational institutions are required to make
every reasonable effort to prevent sexual harassment, to design procedures for
dealing with complaints and to efficiently handle cases brought to their
attention. They are also bound to devise relevant guidelines and to ensure that
they are disseminated widely.

All universities and colleges have ostensibly complied with the letter of the
law. But with nary an exception, they have not upheld its spirit. No attempt has
been made to translate the basic categories of sexual harassment into clear
regulations for gender relations within the admittedly complicated context of
academe.

Institutions of higher education, especially here where the ultra-hierarchic
Germanic model still reigns supreme, are paradigmatic examples of structured
dependencies. Undergraduates are inextricably reliant on their instructors,
junior lecturers on their tenured seniors, professors on their chairs and deans
on their rector and president. Success, promotion and status are everywhere
linked to the decisions (and frequently the whims) of one's superiors.

These unequal relations are undeniably gendered. The domination of males on
Israeli campuses is overwhelming, despite the fact that women constitute well
over 50 percent of bachelors, masters and doctorate degree graduates. Only 11%
of full professors are female; 89% of those at the top of the stratification
ladder are men. This situation is an open invitation to gender discrimination,
not to mention sexual abuse.

The nonchalant attitude of academic authorities to date can only be understood
within this context. Clearly the long-standing claim that they are working
according to the book on sexual harassment can no longer be sustained as the
evidence of laxness and concealment mounts. A letter promulgated last week by
the president and rector of the Hebrew University admits as much. They state
unequivocally that the university "will not countenance any breach of trust and
will not treat such violations lightly." They go on to promise "to expand and
refine the rules governing sexual harassment and delineate what is permissible
and what is absolutely forbidden in the relations between students and faculty."

The question is why they, and their counterparts on other campuses, have not
done so before. The learned exchanges of the past weeks present two facile
reasons. The first is that the victims of sexual harassment have rarely filed
charges, and when they have mustered the courage to do so, have refrained from
identifying themselves (the initial accusations against Ben-Ari were circulated
anonymously). Falling back on blaming the victim totally disregards the power
discrepancies prevalent on campuses and ignores their adverse,
career-threatening implications. It is the job of these institutions to provide
a protective environment for all their students, not to expect them to carry
this onus themselves.

The second - all too easy - explanation relates ironically to the complexity of
student-teacher interactions on campus. Consenting adults, it is suggested,
should not be stymied in the mature university setting. This argument, too,
completely ignores the innate inequality which is the stuff of campus life.

BEHIND THIS simplistic rhetoric lies the root cause of inaction: a visceral fear
of upsetting the structures that have served the powers-that-be in the academy
for so long. The fallacious presumption that recognition of sexual misconduct
within their hallowed halls would undermine their standing and severely blot
their reputation helps to account for the propensity to both hide allegations
behind a thick cloak of secrecy and to avoid any serious confrontation with
their consequences.

This clandestine bond has now, mercifully, been broken. The vibrant discussions
currently taking place have raised the consciousness of even the most reluctant.
Nobody questions the need to draw up detailed guidelines for behavior and to
vigorously enforce these codes of conduct, although, as Prof. Rachel Elior, the
chair of the Hebrew University's Commission on the Status of Women, stated upon
the collective resignation of her committee, many doubt "that there is any way
to alter the situation of gender discrimination in the university."

The political science department at the Hebrew University has nevertheless made
a first stab at drafting a proposal which prohibits any sexual contact between
lecturers and their students and safeguards student rights should these lines be
crossed. The Israel Association for Feminist and Gender Studies is initiating a
national code of ethics for all institutions of higher learning. Twenty- two
women's organizations led by MK Zehava Gal-On have appealed to Education
Minister Yuli Tamir to ensure that this happens.

No effort should be spared in bringing these initiatives to fruition. A clear
code of conduct is crucial to assure the human dignity of Israeli women. It is
essential for the entrenchment of fundamental human rights and gender equality
in the country. And, needless to say, it is critical for moving the country's
still cumbersome academic institutions into the 21st century. No system of
higher education can survive, let alone thrive, in the intellectually
stultifying and personally threatening climate generated by male-dominated
hierarchical hegemonies. Only a safe and open setting, free of harassment, can
nurture true scholarly innovation.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Hebrew University campus. In Israeli academe, the
ultra-hierarchic Germanic model still reigns. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

834 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

Museum of the extinct race

BYLINE: DANIEL GORDIS

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1190 words

HIGHLIGHT: Essay. The writer is senior vice president of the Shalem Center in
Jerusalem. His next book, Saving Israel: How the Jewish State Can Win a War That
May Never End, will be published by Wiley in March.

I didn't want to go to Theresienstadt, I told my wife. We would have only a few
days in Prague and, for once, I wanted to walk the streets and see the museums
without that seemingly inevitable dose of Jewish death that every visit to
Europe seems to mandate. To my amazement, she agreed. We'd obviously see the
Jewish Quarter, with its famous cemetery, the Alt-Neu Shul and more, but we
could let Theresienstadt pass this time.

Yet, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Mine
started unraveling on Tisha Be'av. For years, we've been hearing the Book of
Lamentations in our local synagogue. This year, though, we finally decided to
join our friends who've been reading Eicha at the Sherover Promenade,
overlooking the Old City and the Temple Mount. If you live in Jerusalem, why sit
in a small synagogue when you can be outside, gazing at the very site that
you're mourning?

There were hundreds of people on the promenade, and the view of the Temple Mount
was as stunning as always. But at the same time, you also couldn't help but
notice the new, rebuilt city of Jerusalem, as well. The hotels, the YMCA tower -
all the famous landmarks of modern Jerusalem - were fully in view, lit so
brightly that it was impossible not to dwell on them, too. And I wondered - is
this the way to commemorate Tisha Be'av? If we're mourning the loss of
Jerusalem, does it really make sense to sit where you can't help but see that
while the Temple is gone, Jerusalem has been rebuilt?

Somehow, the Temple Mount and the rebuilt city in one shared view didn't seem to
fit the tenor of the evening. Next Tisha Be'av, I decided, I'll skip the
promenade, and just head back to shul.

WHEN TISHA Be'av ended, we flew to Prague. We "did" the Charles Bridge, Prague
Castle, Old Town. Then we began to explore the Jewish Quarter, or, more
accurately, the quarter which had been the Jewish ghetto before it was
destroyed. Shul after shul, filled with tourists, but empty of worshipers. The
cemetery, also filled with hundreds of people filing by the tombstones. But did
they know anything about the Maharal's world, other than whatever they'd gleamed
about the golem from Let's Go Prague? Jewish life - erased but still a curiosity
- had become a "must do" tourist venue, a vestige of the past worth half a day
of audio-guides and a few dozen photographs.

You couldn't feel any real sense of loss among the tourists, no anguish. The
Jews were like the Mayan Indians, it seemed. Gone, but still interesting. Life
goes on. I couldn't help but recall the refrains of Bialik's poem "In the City
of Slaughter," when he bemoans the fact that despite the horror of what
transpired in Kishinev, life continued apace, as if there were nothing that
needed to be remembered: "The matter ends, and nothing more. And all is as it
was before."

After the cemetery, it was time for Mincha. We'd been told that there was a
minyan in the High Shul, so we found the entrance, at which a gigantic
blond-haired, blue-eyed "bouncer" asked us why we wanted to enter, examined our
ID and grilled us before allowing us in to pray. There was something so
unsettling about having to virtually beg this Aryan fellow for permission to
pray (though, yes, I understood that it was for our own safety) that even before
we got into the shul, I knew what we had to do: We were going to go to
Theresienstadt.

I'd never known that Mincha could be depressing. There were perhaps 15 men and
two women, all but four or five of them clearly tourists. Without the tourists,
there would have been no minyan. The glory days of the High Shul were long gone.
The parochet, the cloth cover on the ark, was gorgeous - a collage of old prayer
shawls, atop of which there was a Hebrew phrase, calligraphed as if it were a
biblical verse: "And the sacred vestments shall return to their place." Yes, I
thought, looking at the cut up tallitot that now made up the parochet, the
vestments have indeed returned to their place. But only the vestments, not the
people. And in pieces, as a wall hanging.

THE NEXT day, we headed for Theresienstadt. Terezin, an army encampment long
before the Nazis turned it into the transit camp (destination usually
Auschwitz), is a functioning city once again. Little did Bialik know.

In today's Terezin, hungry tourists can eat in the "Memorial Restaurant." The
building which SS officers used as a high-brow bordello, to which they whisked
the Jewish women who'd caught their fancy, is still a functioning pension, with
a picture of a bed and silverware outside. Outside the gate of the Small
Fortress, there was a canteen for the SS officers. Today, it is still a canteen.
We watched the people there, laughing and drinking beer, Arbeit Macht Frei
clearly in their view.

I asked our guide how people in the town felt about living in a place that just
decades ago had been the site of such unmitigated horror. "They're mostly just
annoyed that so many tourists come by," she said.

Bialik, again.

There was a small synagogue in Theresienstadt. It's now abandoned, except for
tourists, just like those synagogues in Prague. There are two murals on the
walls, one with the phrase from the liturgy that reads: "We beg You, turn back
from Your anger and have mercy on the treasured nation that You have chosen."
The other reads: "May our eyes behold Your return to Zion in compassion." The
irony, given what probably happened to the people who so lovingly painted them,
was unspeakable.

We spotted a small guest book, so we went to sign our names. Previous visitors
had written messages, and we leafed through a few pages. A group from Canada had
visited a few weeks earlier, and had written, "We are a group of 17 Jews from
[Canada], proof of the Jews' victory over Hitler."

I was so stunned that I had to read it again. A Jewish quarter in Prague that's
virtually the "Museum of an Extinct Race" that Hitler is said to have planned to
create there. A city called Terezin with its former SS brothel still housing
guests, its Memorial Restaurant, it citizens annoyed by the tourists. Empty
synagogues throughout Prague and in Terezin. What Jewish victory over Hitler?!

IT WAS too much to bear. It wasn't just the horrible suffering that had unfolded
there. It wasn't the crematoria. It was the fact that the flowers still bloom,
that smiling Terezin mothers push their babies in strollers by what were the
barracks in which thousands died of typhoid, and people still drink beer in what
was the SS canteen.

Bialik was prophetic. It would be almost impossible, he understood, to preserve
the searing pain of Jewish loss. Life would just go on. Europe has endured the
devastation, but it can't sustain the sense of loss. America hasn't (yet?)
weathered the destruction.

There's only once place, I realized, where we've learned the almost impossible
balance, where there was devastation, but where there is also rebirth, and
where, despite the renaissance, the anguish over what we lost remains. There's
one place where what Bialik sought has been realized. It's the place we call
home.

Next year, I already know, I'm heading back to the promenade to read
Lamentations.

www.danielgordis.org

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Prague's Charles Bridge at dawn. The city's many synagogues are
full of tourists but empty of worshipers. (Credit: Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

835 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

Lessons from the grave

BYLINE: JONATHAN ROSENBLUM

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1178 words

HIGHLIGHT: Think Again

Never have the boundaries between the private and public been so blurred.
Agonizing deaths from cancer used to occur off-stage. No longer.

In some cases, at least, that blurring of lines has been salutary. Three million
viewers have watched Randy Pausch's appropriately named, The Last Lecture
delivered to a packed auditorium at Carnegie-Mellon University, after the
47-year-old professor (and everyone in the audience) knew that he had only a few
months to live. One watches transfixed by the knowledge that someone so alive,
so exuberant will soon be dead. Not once in the nearly hour and a half lecture
does he lapse, even momentarily, into anything resembling self-pity.

He convinces us that he would not trade his life, no matter how truncated, for
any other. With the exception of playing in the NFL, he has realized every one
of his childhood dreams - winning lots of stuffed animals in amusement parks,
meeting Captain Kirk of Star Trek, being an Imagineer at Disney World. (After
The Last Lecture became famous, he even got to scrimmage with the Pittsburgh
Steelers.) He will not live to see his greatest contribution to mankind -
software programs that will allow millions to learn difficult material in such a
fun manner that they will not even know they they are learning - in mass
production. But he is cool with that: Like Moses, he offers, he can see the
promised land, even if he will not enter it.

In the Jewish tradition, we wish ourselves and others "length of days and
years." The former refers to the amount of living packed into each day. And by
that standard, Randy Pausch lived a very long life.

Religious faith is one of the subjects that Pausch explicitly excluded from The
Last Lecture. The only deathbed conversion to which he would admit was to
Macintosh. Much of what he has to impart, of course, would make good sermon
material. The biggest thrill of a popular 10-year course, in which student teams
create virtual realities, was helping students experience the joy of making
others happy. If he could give one piece of advice, it would be: "Tell the truth
- at all times." His summary of his life lessons: If you do the right thing,
good things have a way of happening (though not necessarily in the way you
expect).

UNLIKE PAUSCH, Tony Snow Jr., US President George W. Bush's former press
secretary, who passed away recently from colon cancer at 53, left no final
speech. But he did address the "unique gift" of a life-threatening illness
several times in his syndicated column - and from the point of view of a man of
faith.

Winston Churchill once observed that there is nothing that quite sharpens one's
perceptions so much as being shot at without effect. The heightened perception
of a bullet whizzing past one's head is momentary; that of cancer, however,
lasts at least five years until remission is assured. In the meantime, Snow
wrote, "The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every
happiness more luminous and intense." He relished the clarity he had been
granted, "the field of vision others don't have [about] the mystical power of
love... the gravitational pull of faith... the power of hope and limits of fear,
[and] a firm set of convictions about what really matters and what does not." He
came to see the prospect of death as an opportunity to "fight for the things
that give life its richness, meaning and joy."

As they confronted death, Pausch and Snow both felt a strong need to share some
of the lessons they had gleaned from the process of dying. Pausch confided that
the theme of his talk - "realizing your dreams" - was really an example of what
he called "head fake" learning. His real subject: How to live your life. For his
part, Snow rejoiced in the "street credibility" he had gained when it comes to
counseling cancer patients. He wrote of his obligation to share the insights he
had gained with others, "the most important of which is: There are things far
worse than illness - for instance, soullessness."

While the approach of death might be expected to increase self-involvement, the
lesson both men drew was the opposite. "Focus on others," said Pausch. "Life
does not revolve around us. It envelopes us," wrote Snow. They were clear about
the immense amount of good that lies within most people. Snow discovered in
sickness how much "people want to do good for others; they just need excuses."
And one of Pausch's cardinal rules was: "Wait long enough, and people will both
surprise and impress you."

Both achieved much in the short span of years allotted to them, but in the end
it was the relationships made that counted most - friends, mentors and, above
all, family. Pausch concluded his lecture by revealing his second "head fake" -
"This wasn't for you; it was for my kids" - as the names of his three children
appeared on a blackened overhead screen.

"We count our hardships, but not our blessings, Snow wrote in one column. And
chief among those was the love of his wife and children.

I FIRST ENCOUNTERED Tony Snow's reflections on dying through William Kristol's
eulogy in The New York Times. The Christian Snow had caused the Jewish Kristol
to question his lifetime assumption that melancholy and existential angst are
the hallmarks of intellectual depth. "Could it be that a stance of faith-based
optimism is in fact superior to one of worldly pessimism or sophisticated
fatalism?" Kristol wondered.

And I wondered, with sadness, whether Kristol had ever been exposed to the
riches of his own tradition on the challenges faced by Randy Pausch and Tony
Snow - what the rabbis called "accepting afflictions with love." Has he read
Making Sense of Suffering, a book version of classes given by Rabbi Yitzchak
Kirzner, after he had "earned" the right to speak on the subject by being
diagnosed with terminal cancer in his early 40s? Could he imagine a young woman
who did not even know she was Jewish until her early 20s, but who as she lay
dying, surrounded by her husband and young children, less than 20 years later,
could say, "I really have to work on my fear of God because I'm so overwhelmed
by His love?" Has he witnessed the quiet strength of someone stricken with the
dread disease still struggling to make it to the early morning minyan on time,
while hiding his plight from others?

A woman once told Rabbi Noach Weinberg, the founder of Aish Hatorah, about a new
group for strengthening the family. One of their main ideas was a day every
week, in which the family spent time together, cut off from external
distractions like TV, cellphones and Internet. Another was regular periods of
sexual abstinence between husbands and wives to keep the fires of passion
stoked, while forcing the couple to relate on other levels as well. "Why
couldn't Judaism have something like that?" she asked the dumbfounded rabbi.

We owe Randy Pausch and Tony Snow an immense debt of gratitude for their
courage, eloquence and examples of how living well is the best preparation for
death. The debt will be even greater if they spur Jews to examine their own
tradition concerning death and dying.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Tony Snow's last day on the job: 'There are things far worse
than illness - for instance, soullessness.' (Credit: Bloomberg)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 22, 2008 Friday

My people love to have it so

BYLINE: SARAH HONIG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 1230 words

HIGHLIGHT: Another Tack

I am convinced from the depth of my heart and to the best of my understanding
that this disengagement will strengthen Israel in its hold of the areas
essential to our existence and will earn us the blessings and esteem of those
near and far, will lessen hate, will break boycotts and blockades and will move
us forward on the road to peace with the Palestinians and the rest of our
neighbors.

- Ariel Sharon, October 25, 2004

This rosy prognosis - indeed this prophecy of peace and bliss - was delivered
from the Knesset podium in that fateful plenum session in which the then-prime
minister, having deviated 180 degrees from the platform on which he was elected
and having cynically ignored the party referendum he insisted upon, formally
sought parliamentary approval to uproot all 21 Gaza Strip settlements and four
in northern Samaria as well.

The latter handful were an arbitrary afterthought, decided upon without any
consultation or deliberation and without any perceptible purpose (their land is
still under Israeli control), except to signal that nothing is sacrosanct, that
the fate imposed on the Gaza settlements is contemplated for their Judea and
Samaria counterparts. So much for the spurious notion that Gush Katif was being
sacrificed for the sake of territories adjacent to the state's densely-populated
soft underbelly.

On this date three sad years ago, the last brave Gaza settlement - Netzarim -
was cleansed of its Jews. The next day Samaria's Ganim, Kadim, Sa-Nur and Homesh
were all emptied out as well. Sharon was the expulsion's formidable driving
force, but his gall and guile wouldn't have sufficed without the connivance of
his willing enablers. None of Sharon's self-serving sidekicks had the intestinal
fortitude then to dissent and none has since beaten his breast in contrition.
They sat, saw, nodded, propagandized for the boss and were duly rewarded with
political promotion.

They heard Sharon's declaration of intent on December 18, 2003 at the Herzliya
Conference, where he unveiled and rationalized his unilateral retreat scheme:
"The purpose of the disengagement plan is to reduce terror as much as possible,
and grant Israeli citizens the maximum level of security." They helped peddle
palliatives to the anxious populace, guaranteeing that "after disengagement the
world will appreciate our goodwill and support us"; "after disengagement all kid
gloves will be off"; "after disengagement no terror would be tolerated;" "after
disengagement our artillery will pound them for every terrorist mortar shell";
"after disengagement we will have no more obligations to their welfare"; "after
disengagement it will be another game with other rules."

ENOUGH TIME has elapsed to evaluate the prophetic assurances tendered so
confidently and authoritatively by Sharon and his coterie of unrepentant
accomplices, led by flunky Ehud Olmert and his current would-be successor, the
holier-than-thou Tzipi Livni. We now know for sure that not one upbeat
prediction materialized.

No real surprise here. Enough among us warned in real time of the inevitable
catastrophe, but the tendentious press derided us. Though any levelheaded person
should have sensibly shared our eminently reasonable doubts, most of the media
cheered the disengagement con - some because it suited their agenda and others
because of downright cowardice.

Bottom line: Three years on, no sound individual can claim our "hold on vital
territory" was strengthened - indeed our very right to exist is challenged as
never before. Far from having earned "the blessings and esteem of those near and
far," Israel is more of an international pariah than prior to the disengagement,
which undercut its claim to any of the Jewish heartland liberated in the 1967
war of self-defense. No boycotts and blockades were lifted, no hate lessened and
no peace furthered.

Neither are we even a negligible smidgen more secure. Quite the contrary. Sharon
and crew managed to magnify Ehud Barak's Lebanese folly and demonstrate again
that whatever terrain Israel relinquishes is destined to become a terror
breeding ground. Just as Hizbullah was invigorated and reinforced in the north,
so was Hamas in the south. Having learned that terror pays off, Gazans
established Hamastan. The same is only a matter of time in Mahmoud Abbas's
residue Ramallah-centered bailiwick.

Instead of encouraging moderation, disengagement emboldened fanatic extremists
and they arm themselves to the teeth. Not only is Sderot intimidated by Kassams,
but Ashkelon has been attacked by Grads and urban centers like Ashdod grow
chillingly vulnerable. With this kind of peace, who needs war?

MKs recently voted to commemorate the heritage of the 25 razed settlements and,
with the avid endorsement of the state comptroller, the Knesset State Control
Committee voted to set up a state commission of inquiry into the scandalous fact
that most of the 10,000 expellees are still in a very sorry state. But their
plight is certainly not the result of shortcomings in the welfare and social
work sphere. They are the direct victims of a much deeper malaise which affects
not only them. It imperils each and every Israeli.

INSTEAD OF focusing on the failure to resettle the evicted settlers, there
should be a state inquiry into the process that allowed the disastrous
disengagement to ever be marketed and foisted on the gullible citizenry. If the
malfeasance isn't exposed, we're liable for more of the awful same.
Disengagement's central deception cost the entire Israeli collective the
strategic deterrent indispensable to its survival, and it chipped away at the
state's Zionist ideological underpinnings. It substantially and indisputably
weakened the country.

To avoid sequel grandiose diversions from and cover- ups of personal/political
corruption, there must be no suppression of what spurred disengagement, of how
policy- makers fell down on the job, how the judiciary rubber- stamped injustice
and countenanced special semi-martial night courts which jailed demonstrating
juveniles with outrageous disproportionality, of how democracy's watchdogs and
civil libertarians stayed dutifully silent. It would be enlightening to discover
how the IDF, police and intelligence services were suborned into submission and
collusion in a mass demonization campaign against the political opposition (to
the point of disseminating calumnies about plotted coups d'etat).

But perhaps the reluctance to delve into dereliction/delinquency inestimably
greater and more fundamental than that of the Second Lebanon War resides deeper
in our psyche. By now, most Israelis, including plenty who compulsively persist
in deluding themselves, sense that any probe into the fiasco that was
disengagement will show that the electorate was hoodwinked by the latter- day
likes of biblical fraudsters. Jeremiah (6:14) decried those "who facilely heal
the shattering wounds of my people, saying 'peace, peace,' and there is no
peace."

But the fault isn't only in disengagement's false prophets but also their
credulous clientele - in those who uncritically imbibe lies that are easier to
stomach than unpleasant truths and grim killjoy conclusions. "The prophets
prophesy falsely and the priests bear rule by their means," Jeremiah reminds us
(5:31), but "my people love to have it so." Which leads him painfully to the
rhetorical question of "what will you do afterward?"

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The Jerusalem Post

August 21, 2008 Thursday

Greed you can bank on

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 663 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

The latest Cost of Living Index underscores what most Israelis intuitively know
- prices are going up and inflation is back. We are paying roughly 5 percent
more for purchases, so far this year, than we did in 2007.

The slowdown in Israel's economic growth is also getting worse. The Integrated
Index published yesterday by the Bank of Israel to measure economic activity
dropped in July by a significant 0.3 percent.

ECONOMICS has been called the dismal science, but nothing is more dispiriting
than an economic reform gone awry. The Knesset empowered regulators at the Bank
of Israel to encourage the banks to modify their ubiquitous fees. This the banks
did last month.

In a very few weeks these reforms have managed to make a bad situation worse,
driving up bank fees by a whopping 16.2%.

The original idea was to scrap the fees on scores of routine transactions,
saving households and small businesses from being "nickled and dimed" to the
tune of millions of shekels. By some reckonings, 180 fees out of a total of 305
were done away with; others calculate that of the 198 most frequently charged
fees, only 72 now remain. Consumers looked forward to a lightening of their
ridiculous, irritating fee burden.

The banks, however, outsmarted the regulatory authority. Anticipating a
reduction in the number and variety of imposed bank fees, they substantially
hiked those fees they were entitled to collect, raising them for the most
commonly used services.

It now costs as much as five times more to have a salary or pension deposited in
one's account; to deposit or cash a check, withdraw money or use bank cards.

Most conspicuous is the teller fee. Any time clients show up in their branch,
stand on line and seek to involve the bank's personnel in the most routine of
tasks, they are essentially fined for not resorting to automated alternatives.
Such fees range between NIS 5.5 to NIS 7 per transaction, depending on a given
bank's whims.

Some banks are cheaper, but before you rush to switch - still not a simple
transition in Israel - take into account that while given banks charge a
fraction less for some fees, they are costlier on others.

Predictably, the expense is borne chiefly by the less affluent or elderly, who
are leery of impersonal banking or unable to do their banking on-line or
electronically. Anyway, even using an ATM has become pricier. Some banks now
charge NIS 2.50 per ATM transaction.

Bank of Israel supervisors say they will only be able to evaluate the impact of
the fee reforms when the October data comes in. But it's already obvious to many
of us that we are paying more, particularly if we do our banking at the local
branch.

BANKS are not known for their magnanimity to customers. They make their services
more expensive to their smallest clients because they can.

Four years ago, the Israel Antitrust Authority launched an ongoing investigation
into suspicions that banks were coordinating their fees, making it impossible
for their clientele to shop around.

Those of us who pay exorbitant interest when we borrow, but get risible rates on
our savings; who read about soaring salaries bank chiefs award themselves even
when the banks are not doing all that well, inevitably conclude that we are
being fleeced.

Free enterprise isn't synonymous with anything goes. Excessive regulatory
control may be unhealthy, but so are monopolies. Both sap capitalist initiative
and obstruct competition, the market's life-blood.

We do not begrudge banks making their money. What we object to is blatant
profiteering - which can contribute to inflation; and to the breaking of
antitrust laws by fixing charges for fees and services, as the banks have been
accused of doing. Their actions could destabilize the economy.

The banks need to rein themselves in, otherwise their greed and insensitivity
will trigger legislation authorizing tighter controls. Should that happen, they
will have no one to blame but themselves - because they didn't know when enough
is enough.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 21, 2008 Thursday

Letters

BYLINE: Haim M. Lerner, Miriam L. Gavarin, James Adler, Kenneth Abramowitz, Isi
Leibler, A.K. Ness, Harvey Schwartz, Tova Landau

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1192 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Home's where the eruv is

Sir, - Within the center of Northeastern American liberalism, hypocrisy rears
its ugly head. To strew the town's streets with Christmas decorations and lights
is acceptable, but to erect an almost invisible eruv is anathema and "would
cause the ghettoization" of the Hamptons.

Once again this proves that Jewish life can only be fully appreciated in the
Jewish land of Israel. Therefore, brothers and sisters, come home!("Eruv battle
in NY's Hamptons turns ugly," August 20.)

HAIM M. LERNER

Ganei Tikva

Brutish vs brainy

Sir, - Re "One for one" (August 20): To paraphrase George Orwell, "All ones are
equal, but some ones are more equal than others."

With all due respect to Hillel Halkin, Samir Kuntar is a different kind of
murderer than Marwan Barghouti. Kuntar is brutish rank-and-file; Barghouti is a
brainy PA terrorist leader. His credentials are impeccable. He is the glue
needed for Hamas to join solidly with the PA.

To free our "one" hostage, Gilad Schalit, it will be necessary to release
terrorist prisoners; but not ever Barghouti. It needs to be made abundantly
clear that high- ranking terrorist leaders are infinitely more dangerous than
their foot-soldiers.

MIRIAM L. GAVARIN

Jerusalem

Let us praise Darwish

Sir, - So far I have not read one word of praise in The Jerusalem Post for the
poet Mahmoud Darwish ("An uncompromising voice for Israel's transience. Darwish
expressed a fundamental tenet of Palestinian nationalism - the absence of any
moral content whatsoever to Israel's claim to existence," Analysis, Jonathan
Spyer, August 14).

I am going to be blunt. I have read only out-of- context mutilations of isolated
lines, mixed with a politically polemical desire to destroy something the
literate and educated world would find impossible to destroy - Darwish's
reputation.

I would recommend to all English-speaking readers his The Adam of Two Edens,
(Syracuse University Press, 2000), Unfortunately It Was Paradise, (University of
California Press, 2003) and The Butterfly's Burden (Copper Canyon Press, 2006).

Darwish was a spiritual poet. He also sang of his people's exile and freedom and
reality - and the higher reality above us all. What kind of poet would not sing
these refrains about his people? What poet who did not sing this way would be
recognized by any people? What poet of Palestine would not sing these songs and
remain Palestinian?

Darwish loved the greatest Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, and Amichai would be
distraught over the crudity of the denunciations, reminiscent of Stalin's
denunciation of poets.

This has nothing to do with politics. I cherish both Amichai and Darwish and
painfully feel that on this one matter of cultural integrity Israel cannot be
said to represent a light unto the nations.

Let us love the Israeli Amichai and give ourselves the opportunity to love
Darwish as well.

Politics can often divide us, but please let us allow poetry at the height of
Amichai and Darwish to unite us.

JAMES ADLER

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Status quo is best

Sir, - "Boundaries for Israel" (August 15) highlighted the enormous gap between
most Israelis, who want a two- state solution, and the PA, which has never
really accepted such a solution. In spite of this unbridgeable gap, your
editorial emphasized that the "status quo is untenable."

Given this contradiction, it will become increasingly self-evident over time
that the status quo is, in reality, the best outcome Israel can realistically
hope for. Every major deviation from it will be unacceptable/too risky for
Israel, or insufficient for the PA.

Therefore, the two sides should stop wasting their time on an unachievable
political settlement and, instead, focus on a far more realistic economic
settlement that will mutually benefit both populations.

KENNETH ABRAMOWITZ

New York

Precisely what he said

Sir, - World Jewish Congress Secretary-General Michael Schneider apparently now
belatedly recognizes that groveling and showering accolades on Venezuelan anti-
Semitic tyrant Hugo Chavez was an affront to Jewish dignity and
counterproductive in terms of Jewish diplomacy. It would therefore have been
commendable for him to concede that remarks made to the media were an
unfortunate lapseand unintended.

But to resolve his blunder by denying the veracity of those remarks is simply
unconscionable. My quotations from Schneider and his colleagues were precise and
in no way distorted. Space precludes me from elaborating, but Schneider
explicitly told the Associated Press that "on the question of anti-Semitism,
Chavez and I are on the same page." His Latin American chairman went further,
stating that "a new era has begun" and Chavez was now "a good friend."

I challenge Schneider to back up his allegation that I misrepresented him in any
way ("Misrepresenting comments,"Letters, August 20).

ISI LEIBLER

Jerusalem

Timely read

Sir, - "Neo-coms are the threat" by Michael Widlanski (August 19) was an
excellent article, and very timely. I wish millions of people could read it.

A.K. NESS

Norway

It's the issues that matter

Sir, - I would like to clarify one misconception in the otherwise thoughtful
"Right-leaning Anglo organization calls for elections, unity gov't" (August 19).

It is incorrect to describe the American Israeli Action Coalition (AIAC) as
"Right-leaning." "Right" and "Left" are political terms; AIAC, on the other
hand, is a non-political, non-partisan, issue-oriented NGO whose purpose is to
represent the voice of the more than 250,000 Americans living in Israel on
issues of significance to Israel and the Jewish people as a whole, no matter
where on the political spectrum they may fall.

It is the issues which are important, not any particular political
characterization.

HARVEY SCHWARTZ, Chairman

American Israeli Action Coalition

Jerusalem

Caring solutions

Sir - Re the American Consulate's refusal to issue a visa to the Filipino
caregiver of Harriet Weitz, it would appear that Israel has a much more liberal
approach than the Americans ("Filipino caregiver of octogenarian American
immigrant denied US visa," August 20).

Some years ago, the Filipina caregiver of another US immigrant wanted her
husband to vacation in Israel to see what life was like here and secured a
letter from her employer testifying that he was coming for a brief period and
would be a guest in her home.

Even though he arrived with several thousand dollars in his pocket, he was
detained by the immigration authorities at Ben-Gurion Airport and risked
deportation. The daughter of the caregiver's employer sped to the airport and
deposited a check for a sum in excess of NIS 30,000 with the immigration
authorities as a guarantee that the man would leave Israel by a certain date. As
a rule these authorities do not accept checks, but they accepted the check on
condition she return with cash the next day, which she did.

It was an unnerving experience for the caregiver's husband, but it proved there
is a solution to everything if people make the effort.

I have no idea whether the US Consulate in Jerusalem would be prepared to accept
a similar security to guarantee that Weitz's caregiver will return to Israel -
but it's worth a try.

TOVA LANDAU

Jerusalem

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August 21, 2008 Thursday

God is like democracy

BYLINE: DAVID BENKOF

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 638 words

HIGHLIGHT: For some, it's as hard to doubt that the One exists as that the other
is the best political system. The writer is a Ph.D. student in American Jewish
history at New York University.

I recently had lunch with a friend who is a serious Reform Jew. She's been
thinking a lot about God lately, and since I'm Orthodox, she figured I was the
right person to demonstrate to her that God exists.

"But I hardly ever think about whether God exists. I just know that He does.
It's how I grew up. I can recommend some books and Web sites tailored to people
with doubts about God. But personally, it's not a question I struggle with."

She was unsatisfied. She wanted to know, specifically, how I could personally
justify God's existence. At what age, for example, did I first doubt that the
universe had a creator?

"Well, when did you first doubt whether democracy was a good system?" I asked.

I meant the analogy precisely. Throughout my childhood, all my teachers, parents
and rabbis behaved as if God certainly existed. I later learned that some of
them weren't really believers, and I am eternally grateful they didn't share
their doubts with me. Looking at the wondrousness of the world we live in, it
has just seemed obvious to me that there's a creator.

Similarly, she grew up watching her parents debate political issues and
candidates and vote. From the time she was a small child, she learned about how
the inhabitants of America once had a king, but that it's not good to have a
king, no taxation without representation and all, and she has literally always
believed in democracy, without ever seriously considering that any other system
might be better. If she had been born in Moscow, it's entirely possible she
would have grown up without ever seriously considering the possibility that
democracy is good.

But it's interesting that given that I'm her Orthodox friend, she feels that I
need to prove God's existence to her - even though it has never been an issue in
my life.

SIMILARLY, I recently met with a friend who is a Holocaust professional. He
knows that in my career as a modern Jewish historian I have studied, written and
taught extensively about the murder of 6 million Jews. And yet I'm a ba'al
teshuva (returnee to Orthodox Judaism), he pointed out. How do I reconcile the
whole bad-things-happen-to- good-people problem?

The answer, again, is I don't think about it much. Mostly, I think, because I
have a historical mind, and so the many concerns I have about the Nazi era tend
to relate to historical questions rather than theological ones. But Dennis
Prager once said beautifully that believers have to explain unjust suffering,
and nonbelievers have to explain everything else. I am aware that this issue -
theodicy - is a serious theological problem, and I have heard the various
explanations believers propose and find none wholly satisfying. But the solution
that God doesn't exist creates so many other huge problems that I don't even
consider it.

With the success of the kiruv (Jewish outreach) movement, there's a perception
among many Orthodox Jews - and many non-Orthodox as well - that all Orthodox
Jews are on some level expected to be kiruv professionals. Now, certainly, we're
all responsible for our own behavior and it would be wrong to model observant
life in a way that reflects poorly on Torah Judaism. But nobody appointed me a
kiruv professional. I do, however, know the books, organizations and Web sites I
can point people to if they want a slick sales pitch on why there's a God and
how we know that He wrote the Torah.

But it's not fair for non-Orthodox Jews to demand that I, a non-rabbi,
demonstrate to them that God exists while they stand on one foot. The question,
however genuine, is also a little hostile. If a Chinese person asked them to
explain why democracy was better than the Chinese system, they'd surely be
unprepared to give a persuasive answer. I don't see how the challenge that I
justify the divine presence in the universe is any different.

DavidBenkof@aol.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: STICKING A note in the Western Wall. Unfair to demand that
believers provide a quick demonstration that God exists? (Credit: Ariel
Jerozolimski)

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August 21, 2008 Thursday

Israel brings home gold from China

BYLINE: DOUGLAS BLOOMFIELD

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 873 words

HIGHLIGHT: The twisted tale of Israel-Chinese trade. Washington Watch

Israel is bringing home the gold from China. Israeli business is the big medal
winner, that is, not its Olympic athletes.

China is Israel's top Asian trading partner, something that often gives
Washington major heartburn. Pursuit of the gold has at times blinded Israeli
leaders to the larger implications of their actions, especially when selling
weapons.

Israel has been forced to give up billions in sales to China, a loss that has to
be weighed against the value of the relationship with the United States.

Those deals - Phalcon early warning aircraft in 2000 and the upgrading of Harpy
drones in 2004 - were quashed because Washington feared the technology Israel
was selling to China might some day be turned against American forces. But other
sales have been blocked because American industry saw them as competition and
got its friends in the White House and Pentagon to run interference.

On another occasion, the US and Israeli governments colluded behind the backs of
the Jewish community and Israel's friends on Capitol Hill.

When the pro-Israel lobby (I was then the legislative director of the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee) and the Congress mobilized in 1981 to stop the
sale of AWACS early warning aircraft and F-15 enhancements to Saudi Arabia, we
thought we had the Israeli government's tacit backing.

What we didn't know was that while we were insisting the sale was bad for
Israel, some of that equipment was actually being built at Israel Aircraft
Industry's factory near Tel Aviv, profiting the Jewish state. I later saw it in
crates addressed to the Royal Saudi Air Force and bearing a return address of
Tulsa, Oklahoma. I don't know if the Saudis were aware that their F-15 add-ons
were made in Israel.

Nearby, Israel was also producing gun barrels for Chinese tanks, although the
two countries would not establish formal relations for another 11 years.

Actually, China and Israel had been doing military business since 1972,
encouraged by Washington as a gambit in the standoff with Moscow. But with the
end of the Cold War, Washington began looking at China increasingly as a
potential adversary, particularly under the current Bush administration.

THE ISRAELIS seemed oblivious to the change in attitude in Washington,
particularly at the Pentagon where officials have long harbored suspicion that
Israel illegally sells US technology to third countries, particularly China.

In late 2004, the feud got to the point that a top Israeli defense official was
accused of lying about sharing technology, and a senior Pentagon official
demanded he be fired. The Israeli official "retired" and Israel signed an
agreement to clear future military sales with Washington in advance.

Unfortunately, Israel has no similar leverage over the US, which has shared
Israeli military secrets with third countries, secrets that eventually wound up
in the hands of Israel's enemies.

Israel's coziness with China alienates many of its natural allies, including
human rights advocates, arms producers, democracy advocates, religious groups
and folks who fear China's strategic and economic growth, said an Israeli
diplomat and Washington veteran.

Israel made a mistake in the Phalcon case by assuming that since Congress is so
friendly, it would overlook its qualms and help salve administration objections,
the diplomat said.

If Israel's arms sales to China give Washington heartburn, the Chinese are
returning the favor, especially when it comes to Iran. Israel has no control
over with whom Beijing, like Washington, shares Israeli technology.

It has been reported that China plans to sell Iran its F-10 fighter, which bears
an uncanny resemblance to the Israeli Lavi, which was developed with US
financing and technology but never put into production.

BEIJING, ALONG with Moscow, has been protecting Iran from the intense
international pressure Israel considers essential to persuading the ayatollahs
to abandon any plans to become a nuclear weapons power.

China and Russia have undermined US-led efforts to win UN Security Council
approval of stiff sanctions, insisting that while they don't want to see a
nuclear Iran, they feel negotiations can produce a peaceful resolution. The real
reason may be that sanctions are bad for business. Both have signed major energy
and arms deals with Iran at the expense of the Americans and Europeans who
support the trade restrictions. Other factors may be their rivalries with the US
and their concerns that Iran may stir up Islamist movements inside their
borders.

The early clandestine trade between Israel and China led to political,
diplomatic and commercial relations. Israeli companies doing business in China
include agriculture, environment, electronics, software, medical, security,
water treatment and consumer products.

In Israel, state-owned Chinese corporations are involved in building tunnels,
rail lines, bridges and other major infrastructure projects.

Since 1992, when China granted Israel most favored nation status, Israeli
businesses have been bringing home the gold. Trade has soared from $500 million
to more than $5 billion and continues expanding.

The growing relationship may be good for business, but its impact on Israel's
most vital alliance - with the US - is far from clear.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: CHINA IS reportedly planning to sell its F-10 fighter planes -
which bear an uncanny resemblance to the Israeli Lavi - to Iran.

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August 21, 2008 Thursday

Sacrificing an ally to wishful thinking

BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1051 words

HIGHLIGHT: Russia made it clear that it would continue its hostile policies
regardless of Israel's relations with Georgia. Civil Fights

You have to give Kadima credit for loyalty: As the Bush administration was
destroying any remaining credibility, and undermining its country's interests,
by abandoning a loyal and strategically important ally to Russia's tender
mercies, Israel's ruling party decided it could not allow its American friends
to shoulder the disgrace alone; it, too, should betray Georgia at the expense of
its country's interests. So the minute Russia invaded - just when Georgia needed
arms most - Israel, which had hitherto been a prominent Georgian supplier,
halted all arms shipments.

One might legitimately ask how this undermined the national interest. After all,
Israel desperately needs Russian help on several crucial issues, ranging from
Iran's nuclear program to Hizbullah's rearmament, and Israel needs Georgian help
not at all. Moreover, Russia has made its unhappiness with arms sales to Georgia
clear. Thus Kadima seemingly made the correct realpolitik choice.

The problem is that, according to government officials themselves, not only did
the country receive no quid pro quo for halting the shipments, but Russia has
repeatedly and explicitly declared that it will continue its anti- Israel
policies regardless of whether or not Jerusalem sells arms to Georgia. Thus
Israel gained nothing by betraying Georgia, while undermining two secondary but
still significant interests.

RUSSIA IS currently harming vital Israeli interests in at least four ways.
First, it is the main opponent of significant diplomatic sanctions against
Iran's nuclear program. It has used its Security Council veto to ensure that all
sanctions approved to date are too toothless to affect Iran's behavior, thereby
bringing Israel ever closer to an unpalatable choice between a nuclear Iran and
a military strike of uncertain benefit but certain costs.

Second, Russia has actively facilitated Iran's nuclear program by building and
supplying fuel for the reactor in Bushehr. Third, it is planning to supply
advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, which would make any Israeli
military strike far more dangerous. And finally, it is already supplying
advanced weaponry to Syria, which Damascus is sharing with Hizbullah. Thus
anything that could alter Russia's behavior on any of these four points would
clearly be worth Israel's while.

However, government officials told the local media last week that while Russia
has repeatedly complained about arms sales to Georgia in response to Israeli
complaints on these issues, it has also refused to make a deal. On the contrary:
It has consistently declared its current policies nonnegotiable.

Nevertheless, the government decided to unilaterally halt arms shipments to
Georgia in the hopes that, despite Moscow's repeated declarations to the
contrary, it might still change its mind. As one official put it, "The day we
want to prevent a future deal with Iran, our hands must be clean." In other
words, it sacrificed concrete assets on the altar of wishful thinking.

But given that Georgia has nothing Israel really needs, what assets did the
country sacrifice? The answer to that is twofold.

First, betraying an ally in its hour of greatest need always entails a price: It
deters potential future allies, by showing that allying with Israel does not
pay. And the effect is compounded when the betrayal is in favor of a party that,
like Vladimir Putin's Russia, has been consistently hostile to Israel's
interests: This shows that not only does befriending Israel not pay, but working
against it does, because it will then seek to appease you.

GRANTED, ISRAEL has already betrayed allies in favor of enemies so many times
that one might think one more example could make no difference. Just consider,
for example, its abandonment of the South Lebanon Army to Hizbullah; its ongoing
budgetary neglect of loyal Druse communities even as it allocates extra funds to
Arab communities that reject the Jewish state's very existence; or its
willingness to release hundreds of prisoners to Hizbullah and Hamas while
refusing to release a paltry two dozen to our most reliable regional ally,
Jordan.

Yet like any bad habit, each repetition only makes the habit harder to kick -
and any attempt to kick it has to start somewhere. A decision to stand by
Georgia despite Russia's displeasure might have signaled players closer to home
that this country was starting to rethink this destructive pattern of behavior.
And precisely because Russia made it clear that it would continue its hostile
policies regardless of Israel's relations with Georgia - meaning that supporting
this particular ally entailed no costs - this would have been a uniquely easy
place to start.

THE SECOND asset Israel sacrificed is its reputation as a credible arms
supplier. After all, who would want to buy arms from a country that will suspend
shipments just when you need them most? And given the importance of the local
arms industry to national security, this is nontrivial.

Israel originally developed an arms industry because other countries routinely
suspended shipments to it when it was most in need. Over the last four decades,
it has largely replaced the doctrine of self-sufficiency with dependence on
American arms, but it still relies on its own industry both for solutions to
problems ignored by American companies - Israel, for instance, began developing
specialized urban counterterrorism equipment long before the US did - and for
equipment that Washington refuses to sell it.

However, the IDF is not a big enough client to support a sophisticated arms
industry on its own. Thus to be financially viable, the industry must export.
And that will not be possible if it develops a reputation for cutting off
supplies just when the client needs them most.

Had Russia been willing to accommodate Israel on any of its main concerns, one
could have argued that the benefits of sacrificing Georgia outweighed the costs.
But to incur the costs without gaining anything in exchange, merely in the
delusional hope that Russia might then be grateful enough to sacrifice what it
views as its own strategic interests for our benefit, is sheer folly.

But then, what else would you expect from a government that has built its
foreign policy largely on the hope that throwing steaks to tigers will
eventually turn them into vegetarians?

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: FUNERAL OF Georgian soldiers. Would a decision to stand by
Georgia have signaled players closer to home that Israel was rethinking its
pattern of turning its back on friends? (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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842 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 21, 2008 Thursday

The lack of an 'ethnic demon' in the Kadima race

BYLINE: ASHLEY PERRY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 986 words

HIGHLIGHT: From its outset, the party has sought to attract members from across
the ethnic, religious and political spectrum. The writer is an editor at the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs for the Middle East Strategic Information
project. This article first appeared in JPost.com's "Sephardi Perspective" blog.

'This is the moment we bury the ethnic demon in Israel," Amir Peretz declared in
his victory speech after winning the Labor Party leadership race in November
2005. However, he was soon to find out that his heritage remained an issue
throughout his relatively short tenure as Labor leader and failed defense
minister.

With Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz putting his hat in the ring for the
post of Kadima leader, Sephardim are the closest they have ever been to
representation atop the political ladder.

Iranian-born Mofaz could become the first prime minister who doesn't have a
European heritage. No Sephardi has ever had such a realistic hope of attaining
the premiership.

Mofaz has an impressive resume and has succeeded in many positions usually
reserved for Ashkenazim. He became only the second non-European chief of General
Staff, the first being Moshe Levy in 1983, a full 35 years after the founding of
the state.

Unlike many prominent Sephardi politicians, such as Peretz, David Levy and Aryeh
Deri, Mofaz is not known for being concerned with social and economic affairs.
He has only held the Transportation and Defense portfolios. As a result,
although considered hawkish, Mofaz has not become identified with "Sephardi
politics."

We are not witnessing any backlash and cries of discrimination when Mofaz is
attacked in the press and by fellow politicians the way we witnessed when
Binyamin Ben- Eliezer and Amir Peretz ran for leadership of the Labor Party.

Indeed, the "ethnic demon" has been the decisive factor in almost every election
- from the riots in Haifa's Wadi Salib in the 1950s, the Black Panthers of the
1970s, and Dudu Topaz's "chachchachim" of the 1980s.

Apart from receiving the blessing of Shas spiritual mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef,
which is given to all who seek it, Mofaz has not sought, nor received much of
the Sephardi vote. This is largely because Kadima members, who will decide the
outcome of the race, do not appear to have much of an obvious Sephardi agenda.

THE KADIMA race is being compared to the recent race for the Democratic
presidential nomination, with Tzipi Livni as Hilary Clinton and Mofaz as Barack
Obama.

In the US campaign, Obama's campaign was clouded with references to his color.
Whether wielding it as a weapon or a deflective measure, Obama has related to
his ethnicity constantly on the campaign trail. In contrast, Mofaz's ethnicity
has hardly been alluded to. There could be many factors for this.

The simplest explanation could be that Israeli society has matured and is ready
for an ethnic prime minister. However, recent barbs at Peretz and Ben-Eliezer
prove that this is far from true.

Ben-Eliezer was frequently pejoratively referred to as "Fuad," similar to those
who include the middle-name Hussein when referring to Obama, suggesting to the
listener or reader that the candidate is an outsider and casting aspersions on
whether he is fit for such a high office.

Recently, a television program aimed at dispelling the myth of ethnic equality
in Israeli society. Don't Call Me Black recounted a history of discrimination
against Sephardim and conducted various experiments to determine whether it
still existed. Identical resumes were sent to potential employers, one with an
Ashkenazi sounding name and the other with a distinctly Sephardi sounding name.
Suffice to say the Ashkenazi was in far greater demand.

The show's producers then conducted a similar experiment with Sephardi- and
Ashkenazi-looking people trying to hitch a ride, enter a nightclub and similar
situations. In all the scenarios, the Ashkenazi took precedence over the
Sephardi. The nightclub scenario was actually replicated in reality when a
dark-skinned lady was barred from entering a party while the lighter skinned
freely entered.

It seems that somewhere in the Israeli psyche, darker skin still connotes
inferiority.

But Mofaz appears not to have suffered thus far for his ethnicity or his skin
tone. This may have more to do with the nature of Kadima than anything else.
When Kadima was formed, the leadership learned the lesson of the almost
exclusively secular, Ashkenazi Shinui, which lasted only one election. From the
outset, Kadima attempted to be inclusive and attracted members from across
ethnic, religious and political divides.

Kadima's first Knesset list featured 11 women, 11 Sephardi candidates, six
former generals, six immigrants from the former Soviet Union, four Orthodox
candidates, seven academics and two residents of Judea and Samaria.

However, in becoming the party for everyone, it became the party of no one.
Kadima became a party without a well formulated identity. Its voters would be
hard pressed to explain exactly what the party stands for, and although there
may be many Sephardi Kadima members, they tend not to be from the lower
socio-economic classes.

Possibly the antagonism directed toward the likes of Peretz or Ben-Eliezer was
because of the feeling that the Labor movement was formed and largely populated
by Ashkenazim. Or because mistrust of the left wing is seen as a protest vote by
Sephardim settling accounts, election after election, for the humiliation and
insult they and their parents and their parent's parents suffered. Either way
the history of the Labor Party has an effect on its current perceived identity.

Mofaz is part of what researchers Michal Shamir and Asher Arian call the
"dealignment" of the party system. This describes a general loosening of the
ties between society and political society in response to social and political
modernization. Thus, Kadima is at the forefront of a shift away from ethnic or
identity politics that characterized much of the first few decades of the state.

The Kadima member or supporter has sought this party because it is an attempt at
a new way. Perhaps this clean slate has allowed a non-European like Mofaz to
ascend to the top of the party and possibly the pinnacle of Israeli politics.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SHAUL MOFAZ. His ethnicity has hardly been alluded to in the
campaign. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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843 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

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August 21, 2008 Thursday

Missile defense for the Gaza periphery

BYLINE: JEFF DAUBE

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1028 words

HIGHLIGHT: Why hasn't the government purchased the Nautilus/SkyGuard laser
system yet? The writer, previously a pro-Israel advocate on Capitol Hill, is now
the director of the Zionist Organization of America's Israel Office.

I am an inveterate Middle East news junkie. As such, I have spent at least four
to five hours a day on the Internet and e-mail trying to make sense of the
overabundance of often confusing news that this troubled region generates daily.

In particular, one human interest item caught my eye last December. A mother in
Kibbutz Nir Am, which lies between Gaza and Sderot, could not locate two of her
young children when the Tzeva Adom (Color Red) alert went off, signaling the
launching of a Kassam rocket by Palestinian terrorists. A few seconds later she
heard a thump, and when she raced to her backyard, she found her two boys there,
meters from an unexploded Kassam. It only failed to detonate because it had
landed in very muddy ground thanks to earlier downpours.

Since this near-tragedy occurred on the second day of Hanukka, she called this
her family's personal miracle of Hanukka.

I was so intrigued by the story that I decided to contact the mother to find out
why we do not hear more about some of the communities in the Gaza periphery that
get hit with rockets and mortars on a regular basis. She told me that the
communities "only" have a few thousand residents in total and therefore do not
seem to warrant coverage. But her community of Nir Am, alone, has absorbed more
than 750 Kassam hits!

A FEW days later I made aliya and decided to take a number of trips to Sderot
and its environs in my new position as director of the Zionist Organization of
America's Israel office. I quickly learned that often the open area in which a
Kassam is reported to have fallen is actually a community; replete with homes,
kindergartens and, yes, people - people who suffer all the symptoms of post
trauma stress disorder, injuries and deaths that you would expect them to
suffer, under the circumstances.

I opened a part-time ZOA office in the Gaza Periphery community of Netiv
Ha'asara in the hopes of drawing more media and government attention to the
plight of the Gaza periphery communities. Soon after I was invited to attend a
meeting at Nir Am where two highly placed security officials, Yossi Arazi and
Oded Amichai, gave a compelling presentation about the Nautilus/SkyGuard laser
system.

Without getting too technical (due to space considerations, I have omitted a
host of Nautilus/SkyGuard advantages), Nautilus employs a high energy laser that
focuses on the incoming projectile - whether it be a mortar, artillery shell,
Kassam or Katyusha - and destroys it long before it reaches its target.

Nautilus has been successfully tested at White Sands, New Mexico and was found
to have a 100 percent kill rate when 46 projectiles were fired. Under actual
battle conditions, it is expected to achieve a similar success rate.

The unfounded concerns regarding Nautilus - such as reload capacity and chemical
toxicity - have been debunked beyond question. At a subsequent meeting in Tel
Aviv, Yossi, Oded and an additional expert, Ofer Lavie, patiently explained to
me why the new Northrop Grumman SkyGuard, an upgrade of the original Nautilus
prototype, is the system of choice hands down. The most obvious reason is that
it is fully developed (having cost 400 million US taxpayer dollars) and is ready
to be deployed; it can be operational shortly after authorities give the green
light.

YET THE prototype is sitting in plastic in New Mexico even as I write this. Last
time I checked, Pancho Villa's progeny were not about to threaten the residents
of New Mexico with rocket attacks. The Nautilus could be sitting in the Gaza
periphery, just as well, protecting innocent citizens who are under threat.

Other systems currently under consideration are beset by schedule, cost and
range problems. For example, the Iron Dome system, which uses missiles to shoot
down rockets, won't be ready until 2011 at the earliest and costs approximately
$100,000 per threat destruction, as opposed to the $1,000-$2,000 of
SkyGuard/Nautilus. This does not even take into account that Iron Dome's threat
destruction probability is less than SkyGuard's, so it could take multiple shots
to destroy one $500 Kassam. Add to that R&D, operational costs, current need for
fortification and damages, and we end up with a system that is prohibitively
expensive and does not even offer the same level of protection - not from
Kassams fired in the typical four km. to six km. range; nor from mortars, which
have already taken three lives; nor from artillery shells.

Similarly, the solid state laser system called LADS, as well as the Phalanx
rapid fire systems, are short-range solutions that simply do not provide the
coverage needed.

I AM no expert in anti-missile technology, but I do know that the first priority
of any government is the safety and security of its citizens. We are not sure
how long the current period of relative calm will last - perhaps as long as it
takes Hamas to rearm and ready itself for the next round. Based on the latest
intelligence reports, Hamas continues to smuggle and arm itself at a steady
pace. Most Israeli residents in the area are resigned to the fact that it is not
a question of "if" but "when" this calm will end.

From my comfortable Jerusalem apartment 20/20 hindsight is easy, but I cannot
help but wonder how radically different the home front picture might have looked
in the North during the Second Lebanon War had the Skyguard/Nautilus systems
been in place. This time Hizbullah is said to be armed with 40,000 - compared to
12,000 - rockets. I shudder to think what Iran's proxies might be called upon to
do should their Iranian patrons want to divert attention in order to relieve
pressure on their nuclear weapons programs.

Not a single one of the experts I have spoken to can understand why the Defense
Ministry is ignoring Northrop- Grumman's formal January 2007 proposal to deploy
Skyguard/Nautilus systems in the Gaza periphery.

I am calling upon the government to explain why we cannot, at the very least,
take the one Nautilus system sitting in the New Mexico desert and place it in
the Sderot/Gaza periphery region. After all its wonderful people have been
through the past seven years, don't they deserve a little piece of mind?

It only makes sense.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SDEROT RESIDENTS protest. The first priority of any government
is the safety and security of its citizens. (Credit: Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

844 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 20, 2008 Wednesday

Lessons from Islamabad

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 740 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

When Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf shook hands with prime minister Ariel
Sharon at the UN General Assembly in September 2005, Israelis hoped they were
witnessing the dawn of a new era in relations between the second most populous
Muslim state and the world's only Jewish one.

There remain Israelis who think Musharraf's resignation on Monday "was a major
loss." Others believe Musharraf simply wanted to capitalize on that handshake,
along with an unprecedented address to American Jewish leaders in order to
bolster his image in Washington as a Muslim moderate.

He never even came close to establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. He
did, however, let it be known that the Palestinian problem "lies at the heart of
terrorism in the Middle East and beyond."

Musharraf's analysis demands a high degree of gullibility. One would have to
believe that a car bombing at an Algerian police academy which took 43 lives;
the deaths of 10 French NATO soldiers at the hands Taliban guerrillas near
Kabul; and a suicide bombing outside a hospital in northwest Pakistan which
claimed 25 lives - all incidents that took place yesterday - were somehow
attributable to the Palestinian problem.

Of course, what more accurately "lies at the heart of terrorism" worldwide is
the convulsive struggle now taking place within Islam itself, pitting those who
want accommodation with Hindu, Christian, Jewish and other civilizations,
against fanatics who demand total capitulation from the "infidels."

MUSHARRAF'S departure after nine years in power contributes to an atmosphere of
uncertainty. Who will replace him? What of the war on terror? Most critically,
who will control Pakistan's nuclear arsenal?

Pakistan is a failed state. It cannot provide for its 165 million people, 32
percent of whom live in abject poverty. The regime does not exercise control
over large swaths of its territory. Washington, which has funneled $10 billion
in military assistance to Islamabad only to discover that much of it was
misdirected, would like to believe that Pakistan will "remain" an ally against
the Islamists. It hopes bickering Pakistani politicians led by Asia Ali Zardari
(the assassinated Benazir Bhutto's widower) and Nawaz Sharif will agree on a
presidential successor. And it prays that the 18-member National Command
Authority, mostly military types, will keep a tight rein on Pakistan's 150
nuclear warheads.

Musharraf claimed that A. Q. Khan, the scientist who proliferated nuclear
know-how to Iran, was a rogue actor, and Washington found it expedient to accept
this explanation. Now there is talk that not only will Khan be fully
rehabilitated, but he just might become the country's new president.

Pakistan's military is now led by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. He presumably also
oversees the powerful Inter- Services Intelligence Agency (which he headed from
2004- 2007). The ISA has a murky history of divided loyalties.

In a match made in hell, it was Pakistani intelligence that first brought
together Osama bin Laden and the Taliban's Muhammad Omar.

Events in Pakistan are not easy to gauge and often seem incoherent. Western
analysts surmise the army does not want to fight radical Muslims, preferring to
save its powder for use against India. Yet in the past 11 days, not a few
Pakistani soldiers have been killed fighting pro- Taliban gunmen. Meanwhile, the
head of Afghanistan's domestic intelligence agency insists that Pakistan is
supporting the Taliban insurgency. US intelligence officials are reportedly
convinced that Pakistan helped plan the July 7 bombing of India's embassy in
Kabul that killed 41 people. And the main suspects in the assassination of
Bhutto are Islamist warlords with ties to the ISI.

SHORTLY AFTER 9/11, then-US secretary of state Colin Powell gave Musharraf an
ultimatum: "You are either with us or against us." Pakistan's leadership opted
to cooperate with the West, champion moderate Islam and appease Islamist forces
within the country.

In a sense, Pakistan has been "with us and against us."

Western observers can draw at least two lessons from the Pakistani experience.
First, instability in Pakistan and Afghanistan is mostly endemic; if the
Arab-Israel conflict were solved tomorrow - in its entirety - the impact on
south Asia would be marginal. And second, Western leaders should stop deluding
themselves about the utility of working with Muslim counterparts who cannot - or
will not - deliver on their promises.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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August 20, 2008 Wednesday

Germany's special relationship - with Iran

BYLINE: JONATHAN WECKERLE

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 708 words

HIGHLIGHT: A nuclear Iran that is one of Europe's main energy suppliers would
raise appeasement policy to a new level. The writer is a co-founder of the
Mideast Freedom Forum Berlin, an NGO with German and exile-Iranian members
(www.mideastfreedomforum.org).

For the last three weeks the German government has been inundated with criticism
for doing business with the world champion of anti-Semitism, approving as "no
cause for concern" the delivery to Iran of three gas liquefaction units
manufactured by Steiner-Prematechnik- Gastec (SPG), based in Siegen.

Hartmut Schauerte, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and MP for
her Christian Democratic Union, played a vital role in pushing through the 100
million euro deal, for which he never heard a word of criticism from her. What
cannot be overlooked, however, is this blatant contradiction of Merkel's deeming
Israel part of Germany's national security interests during her Knesset speech
last March. Although Merkel stated then that Israel's security is
"non-negotiable," her government is facilitating a deal that strengthens
Israel's number one enemy.

Iran, on its way to becoming a nuclear power, continually threatens the Jewish
state with annihilation, while supporting anti-Semitic terrorist groups such as
Hamas and Hizbullah - not to mention brutal disregarding basic freedoms and
rights for its own people.

The deal with SPG has made it clear that commitment and a sense of
responsibility are lacking in regards to Germany's declared national objective
of preserving the existence of the Jewish state. Existing sanctions and export
restrictions have proved completely insufficient.

Sanctions that are limited to "dangerous" dual-use goods are na·ve in the
context of a regime that uses construction cranes for gallows. Sanctions alone
can no longer stop Iran's nuclear buildup. Its recent rocket test launches and
the ongoing enrichment of uranium demonstrate there is no reason to believe that
Teheran lacks the resources to go nuclear.

THE ONE remaining alternative to military scenarios has not been genuinely
attempted: targeting the regime with the most painful economic and political
sanctions possible. It is not going to be possible to enforce sanctions quickly
enough or hard enough through the United Nations. But that can't serve as an
excuse, especially not for Germany.

Germany is Iran's most important trade partner in the West and an irreplaceable
supplier of its technology. In fact, 2008 could be a record year. Export volume
grew by 13.6 percent in the first quarter; 1,926 business deals with Iran were
reported to the relevant authorities by the end of July, 63 percent more than in
2007.

Gas liquefaction units for fuel production are one example of how German exports
directly support the regime. Despite its wealth of raw materials, Iran has to
import 40% of its fuel. Its infrastructure for the extraction and production of
oil and gas needs to be modernized and expanded. Gas rationing was the cause of
social unrest, including riots, that broke out in Iran last summer.

If Germany does not have the legal grounds to stop these exports, such measures
must be passed as quickly as possible. For now, the only thing we hear from the
Chancellor's Office is that it will be "talking" with SPG, and that there are
"moral" and "ethical" obligations. In short, German business should be more
"sensitive" regarding Iranian deals - i.e., simply not publicize its commercial
activity with Iran. Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Mehdi Safari told Financial
Times Deutschland that German-Iranian business should be conducted outside of
the public spotlight, noting that German companies "can make a commercial deal
without publicity."

This certainly does not sound like the beginning of a determined and responsible
Iran policy. And it looks to get worse: There are signs that the German energy
company RWE will join Austrian OMV and Swiss' EGL to sign a gas deal with Iran.
Gas could be supplied through the Nabucco- pipeline beginning in 2013, a project
that RWE joined in February. The German goal is to decrease energy-dependence on
Russia by becoming more dependent on Iran.

A nuclear Iran that is one of Germany's - and Europe's -Êmain energy suppliers
would raise appeasement policy to a new level. There is still time to prevent
such a scenario. But if Germany continues its irresponsible business as usual,
it is clear who will pay the price: the Iranian people, who suffer under a
brutal regime, and, of course, Israel.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: ANGELA MERKEL said in her Knesset speech that Germany will never
forget its 'historic responsibility' toward the Jewish state. But she allows the
deals with Iran to continue. (Credit: Bloomberg)

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August 20, 2008 Wednesday

In the year 2050

BYLINE: ELLIOT JAGER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1097 words

HIGHLIGHT: Does it matter that white people will become a minority in the United
States? POWER & POLITICS

When the film 2001: A Space Odyssey made its first appearance in 1968, I was
just starting high school and the 21st century seemed pretty intangible.

Nowadays, when I hear about something that's supposed to happen in 2050, it's
not hard for me to get my head around the chronology of it. We're talking 42
years from now, when, with considerable luck, I'll still be bearing down on
Methuselah.

What got me thinking about the future was a striking demographic forecast issued
by the US Census Bureau: America is set to evolve from being a mostly Caucasian
country whose ethnic stock and cultural ties are largely rooted in Europe to one
that will be predominantly Hispanic and Asian. The African American proportion
of the population is to remain roughly static at 14 percent to 15%.

Minorities, now roughly 33% of the population, are projected to become 54% in
2050. The tipping point will actually come in 2042, when the combined non-white
population will outnumber whites.

The white population is projected to be only slightly larger in 2050 than it is
today, while the Hispanic population - regardless of color - is expected to
practically triple, so that nearly one in three US residents will be Hispanic.

The Asian population is predicted to rise from 5.1% to 9.2%. And the number of
people who identify themselves as being of two or more races is projected to
more than triple, from 5.2 million to 16.2 million.

Two other highlights: In 2050, 62% of America's children will be of non-European
stock, compared to 44% today. And the working-age population is projected to
become 55% "minority" by 2050 (up from 34% in 2008).

THE MAIN news in all this is that the transformation is taking place at a rate
faster than was projected just a few years ago; the reason being higher
birthrates among non-whites and laissez-faire immigration policies. Texas and
California are today already majority "minority."

And so, in a space of about 100 years, the United States will have gone from a
country that was something like 90% white to one where Americans of European
stock will be the minority population. The census folks also estimate that by
2050 there will be 439 million Americans, compared to around 300 million today.

THIS TREND has long preoccupied America's radical right. In State of Emergency,
Pat Buchanan's latest book, the ultra-conservative firebrand warned: "If we do
not solve our civilizational crisis - a disintegrating culture, dying
populations, and invasions unresisted - the children born [today] will witness
in their lifetimes the death of the West. In our hearts we know what must be
done. We must stop the invasion. But do our leaders have the vision and will to
do it?"

Buchanan is too shrewd a polemicist to oppose the tinting of America purely on
the basis of race. He argues instead, and not unpersuasively, that what is at
stake is America's civilization; that the coming new majority will fail to
embrace the values that made America the greatest nation on earth.

Laissez-faire conservatives like The Wall Street Journal crowd basically side
with liberals in arguing that, overall, immigrants contribute more to America
than they extract in public benefits.

But as the Journal has argued, the Left does the cause of immigration no service
when it pushes for multiculturalism, bilingualism and racial quotas. For the
best way to ensure the survival of American civilization - and with it,
pluralism, respect for minority opinion, economic bounty and social tolerance -
is if today's heterogeneous minorities are successfully co-opted into both the
political system and the sociological melting pot.

An America where people of color outnumber white people is neither a good or bad
thing. A negative outcome would be if an American majority were to abandon the
values we've come to associate with the US. If American liberals, Jews included,
want to prove Buchanan wrong, they should work to jettison multiculturalism,
which fosters the Balkanization of America. Of all people, Jews can appreciate
the benefits of acculturation over multiculturalism. Where would we be today if
places like the Henry Street Settlement and the Educational Alliance had been
unavailable to our grandparents and great- grandparents?

POLITICAL SCIENTIST Samuel P. Huntington, writing in Who Are We? The Challenges
to America's National Identity, warns that Latino immigrants to the US are not
embracing the American creed.

Huntington - like Buchanan - warns that the inflow of Hispanic immigrants to the
US is different from previous migrations because rather than join the melting
pot, they reject the Anglo-Protestant ideas which mobilized the American dream.
Instead, they maintain their own parochial political and linguistic values.

Liberal writers, such as Post contributor Samuel G. Freedman, argue that Latinos
are expedient targets for "bigotry under the guise of opposing illegal
immigration." Fears that "the most recent arrivals have neither the will nor the
skill to Americanize" are "a passionate delusion." Hispanic, Asian and African
immigrants will no doubt turn out to be as genuinely faithful to America as were
the progeny of late 19th- and early 20th-century Jewish immigrants, says
Freedman.

I HAVE no way of judging which prognostication will prove the most prescient.

Previous American generations could be reasonably optimistic that their
children's future would be part of a continuum of progress, enlightenment,
prosperity and values. Liberals and, I suppose, free-market conservatives too,
still seem to hold fast to such optimism.

From 6,000 miles away, it's hard to see where this optimism is rooted. America's
coming majority needs to be socialized to embrace the American ethos. The
argument that this socialization is already taking place is unconvincing.

Perhaps the greater challenge - putting aside the demographic issue - is how to
foster the American Idea when modernity and technology actively discourage
individuals from thinking about a broader collective.

The future, therefore, may be more like the one visualized by Atlantic magazine
writer Robert D. Kaplan. In An Empire Wilderness, he imagines "isolated suburban
pods and enclaves of races and classes unrelated to each other" in which bright,
analytically literate people around the globe reside in autonomous "city-states"
and are more connected with each other than with folks just outside their gated
communities.

It should be interesting to see how things play out - assuming I remain, in the
words of HAL from 2001, "completely operational and all my circuits are
functioning properly."

jager@jpost.com

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August 20, 2008 Wednesday

Letters

BYLINE: Michael Schneider, Moshe Mordechai Van Zuiden, Nathan Lewin, A.I.
Goldberg, Joseph Feld, Aryeh Green, Sara Shaw, Jerusalem Post staff

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1172 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Misrepresenting

comments

Sir, - Isi Leibler has harsh words to say about the recent World Jewish Congress
meeting with Hugo Chavez in Caracas ("WJC embraces an anti-Semite," August 19).
For that visit, we confined our agenda to three specific goals: We came to show
solidarity with an anxious Jewish community wishing to establish an official
line to the Venezuelan government; to press Chavez to denounce anti-Semitism;
and to urge him to upgrade his diplomatic relations with Israel.

Leibler says that I claimed that Chavez was not an anti-Semite. In that he is
misrepresenting my comments. I reported that Chavez, rather than I, had declared
that he was not an anti-Semite. Within the limits of our modest aims I believe
that the meeting was successful.

MICHAEL SCHNEIDER

Secretary-General

World Jewish Congress

New York

Exercise in futility

Sir, - "Palestinian who killed student to be released" (August 19) explains very
well and thoroughly what an exercise in futility the release of these 199
convicted prisoners is.

Played out Ehud Olmert also doesn't need to please played out George Bush
(Condoleezza Rice) or played out Mahmoud Abbas. Even something that is absent
can draw attention. So therefore the question is why is this being done?

Let's look for the most plausible answer. This whole giveaway is being done for
the sole purpose to set these two murderers free as a precedent to release
Marwan Barghuti for Gilad Schalit. The release of the other 197 is just
camouflage.

And this not even for Schalit's sake. For politicians, Barghuti is not a
murderer - he's a colleague. They are all in the same game and often help each
other.

This is my guess. Any better hunch?

MOSHE-MORDECHAI VAN ZUIDEN

Jerusalem

Wait a minute

Sir, - In his op-ed plea for holiness in eating (Every breath we take, every
bite we eat...," August 18), Andrew Silow-Carroll takes me to task, accusing me
of engaging in an "odd gambit." He charges that I imply "that if the principle
of judging a factory's kashrut according to the treatment of its workers was not
established by a 19th- century rabbi, it can't possibly be an operable
criterion."

Hold it one minute! It was Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, not I, who invoked the
19th-century rabbi, Reb Yisroel Salanter, as a "precedent" - a gambit that The
New York Times found quaint enough to accord his piece the scarce space of its
Op-Ed page. I only burst Herzfeld's bubble by noting that he has no respectable
source for his Salanter story, and that scholars who have studied Salanter's
life have never heard of his "precedent."

And it's too bad that Silow-Carroll stopped reading my response to Herzfeld
(which was neither imitated nor suggested by my client) after its Salanter
section. I also demonstrated that Herzfeld (for whom I otherwise have affection
and admiration) deceived his readers with two other justifications he cited for
distrusting the kashrut of Agriprocessors' product.

NATHAN LEWIN

Washington

Kashrut supervision

Sir, - Columnists, reporters and rabbis are up in arms about the Agriprocessors
scandal in Postville, Iowa.

Every commentator is busy pontificating about how Orthodox Jews should consider
health and labor standards when checking on the kashrut of a food product.

Lip service is given to the argument that health and labor standards are the
prerogative of governmental agencies. Nobody seems to realize that if a
supervisor (person or agency) is involved in something other than checking if a
product is kosher, he could be (and would be) sued for overstepping the
separation of church and state provisions of the US Constitution. Also, as a
private company, a kosher supervision authority has no right or authority to act
as a law enforcement agency.

The only place where this "separation" may not be relevant is in Israel because
the religious (Orthodox) establishment is a public and semi-governmental body.
Even here, though, the civil authorities and non-Orthodox organizations have
fought kashrut certification that includes standards of behavior not directly
connected to the production of food.

A.I. GOLDBERG

Hatzor Haglilit

Consistency

Sir, - A generation ago many of us bought clothes with a garment workers union
label in the USA or a "made in the UK" label in Britain. We wanted to protect
workers who were paid properly and worked to a high standard.

Today some of the same people rush to discount stores whose goods are made by
children in Third World countries who are paid a dollar a week. We are proud of
our savings, yet when a kosher plant breaks the same rules of proper employees
paid a proper salary, we rush to condemn it. If we really believe in fair pay
for a fair day's work, we must apply our belief consistently.

JOSEPH FELD

London

Disturbing eulogy

Sir, - I found it fascinating, and seriously disturbing, to read Mahmoud Abbas
eulogize Mahmoud Darwish with the words "you represent everything that unites
us" ("PA holds state funeral for poet Darwish," August 14), while in the next
column Jonathan Spyer quotes a Darwish poem: "Take your portion from our blood
and just leave... because we have in this land what you do not have - a
motherland" ("An uncompromising voice for Israel's transience").

As Spyer notes, this rejection of any legitimate claim by the Jews to this land
suffuses Palestinian leaders' mind-set; in fact, it permeates Palestinian
culture - via music videos, TV, radio, sports events, summer camps and
throughout the educational system - with no distinction between Fatah and Hamas.

The absurdity of our looking to this leadership as partners in any sort of peace
was driven home by Abbas himself, when in calling Jerusalem the "eternal capital
of our Palestinian state" in the same eulogy, he expressed hope that the
Palestinian flag would "hover high over the minarets, churches and walls" of the
city... as if the many and ancient synagogues there simply do not exist.

There are some Palestinian leaders - few and courageous advocates of civil
society and of coexistence with Jews and Israel, like PA foreign minister Riad
Malki and Prof. Muhammad Dajani of the "Wasatia" moderate Islamic Palestinian
party - who reject the kind of "unity" promoted by the two Mahmouds. They - and
only they - need and deserve our support, encouragement and partnership; it's
time for their voice, poetry and speeches to unify the Palestinians.

Only when Palestinian leaders believe - and state categorically and teach their
children - that Israel has a legitimate, historical, moral and legal right to
exist in this land as Jewish state will we be able to achieve any real peace
between us.

ARYEH GREEN

Beit Shemesh

Great coverage

Sir, -With all the bad news everywhere I would like to say how much I am
enjoying the coverage of the Olympics on Channel 1. The introductory graphics
are beautiful. Congratulations to those involved

SARA SHAW

Kfar Saba

Correction

In the article "Families of Munich 11 appeal for permanent commemoration"
(August 19), Ankie Spitzer, the widow of Andre Spitzer, was incorrectly
identified as the widow of Yakov Springer. We regret the error.

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August 20, 2008 Wednesday

China and the West revisited

BYLINE: ASSAF LICHTASH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 841 words

HIGHLIGHT: Calls for boycotts and other forms of delegitimization only deepen
the Chinese public's traditional suspicion of foreigners. The writer is a
graduate of the departments of international relations and East Asian studies at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in Chinese studies.

The politics surrounding Beijing's hosting the Olympic Games have exposed two
interrelated phenomena: the wounds and self-consciousness of the Chinese, and
the extent to which the West misunderstands them. But they also represent a
significant opportunity to better understand a country that will play a more
influential role this century than previously.

For several thousand years, China existed as a regional hegemony. Its soft power
extended to the far reaches of East Asia, and its riches drew bold explorers
from the West. China's very name - the "Middle Kingdom" - indicates it has long
viewed itself as a leader, and was indeed long regarded as such. Yet by the
middle of the 19th century, China had become a vastly different place. Foreign
invasions and occupations devastated China's national pride. The most traumatic
of these were the British Opium Wars of the 1860s and Japan's brutal occupation
prior and during World War II. For a nation that had traditionally dominated its
region, the slicing and dicing of the homeland by foreigners constituted a
profound humiliation from which the Chinese are still recovering.

The years following the war saw a beleaguered China emerge unified, thanks to
Mao Zedong. While his rise to power and solidification of communist rule
featured extraordinary brutality - including the political persecution of
hundreds of thousands - Mao ushered in a period of massive transformation and an
invigoration of Chinese national pride. His exclamation on independence in 1949
that "the Chinese people are back on their feet" still reverberates in China.
Like Russia's current image of Stalin, the Chinese (many of whom did not live
under Mao) see his legacy as the man who unified China against all odds and
reclaimed its dignity. Such is the power of a national symbol in China.

For the Chinese, Beijing's hosting of the Olympics is yet another national
symbol, a step in reclaiming the national pride stripped away 150 years ago. In
this regard, the discourse headed by prominent Western leaders such as Angela
Merkel of Germany and Gordon Brown of the UK prior to the Games on targeting the
opening ceremony for boycott is indicative of how misunderstood China is, and
the extent to which such threats could backfire.

CRITICS RIGHTFULLY point out China's myriad political shortcomings and problems.
China's violence toward the Tibetan minority and its own citizens, its support
of Sudan's genocidal regime, and its harmful environmental policies are surely
unacceptable. We must demand of China that it assume the role of global
leadership more responsibly. Nevertheless, the attempt to bully it into changing
its policies through a symbolic Olympic boycott only exacerbated these problems.

The core of the problem is a failure to adequately distinguish between the
policies and shortcomings of the Chinese government and the views and
aspirations of the Chinese people. The threat of an Olympic boycott embarrassed
the latter, while doing little to sway the behavior of the former.

Despite China's rapid ascendancy, we must remember that the Chinese people are
deeply suspicious of the intentions of foreigners; at the same time, they
desperately wish to be included in the global community. Calls for boycotts and
other forms of delegitimization, rather than encouraging China to change, have
deepened these public feelings of suspicion. Overall, they have made it less
likely China will respond positively to the goading of Western democratic
powers.

Even those Chinese who oppose the policies of the Communist Party of China have
rallied around it when they felt their national identity under attack. Continued
threats to delegitimize China will push the Chinese people further into this
defensive posture. If we truly want to positively impact China, our engagement
has to be constructive and carefully weighed. Gradual engagement, rather than
rhetoric of shaming China, should be our modus operandi, if we wish to avoid
alienating the Chinese people. After all, it is the will of the Chinese people,
rather than any one particular policy of the communist party, that represents
the best long-term hope of greater democratization and political freedom taking
hold.

PAYING HOMAGE to China's rich history and culture at the Olympics is a good
starting point. This should be concomitant, though, with calls on China to
improve itself on various issues. Criticism must be aimed squarely at the CCP
while keeping China's national pride intact, as US President George W. Bush
wisely chose to administer in Bangkok on his way to the opening ceremony.

Western governments should enrich relations between the Chinese community and
their own by means of cultural exchange and cooperative projects. The message
needs to be unequivocal: We respect China and celebrate its culture, but demand
responsibility on China's part. Mismanagement of foreign policy, including
decisions by Western leaders to pursue delegitimizing actions such as cultural
boycotts, will create greater distrust bereft of constructive policy impact.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: GOLD WINNER. For the Chinese, Beijing's hosting of the Olympics
is a step in reclaiming the national pride stripped away 150 years ago. (Credit:
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August 20, 2008 Wednesday

How do you say hasbara in Spanish?

BYLINE: MICHAEL FREUND

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 810 words

HIGHLIGHT: According to the new US Census Bureau projections, within a
generation nearly one in every three Americans will be of Hispanic origin.
Fundamentally Freund

The United States Census Bureau caused a stir last week when it released
projections indicating that whites will no longer constitute a majority of the
American population, possibly as soon as 2042.

Editorial pages and news sections throughout the country were filled with
reports and commentary about the shifting demographics of American society and
the stark transformation that lies ahead, as the very nature of what it means to
be American will be undergoing vast changes.

Perhaps the most salient example of this lies in the expected growth of the
Hispanic population, which currently makes up about 15 percent of the US.

By 2050, according to the Census Bureau, its numbers will nearly triple, from
46.7 million to 132.8 million, which will account for 30% of the population.

That means that within a generation, nearly one in every three Americans will be
of Hispanic origin.

While all this might seem to be little more than an interesting curiosity to
those of us living in the Jewish state, it would be a grave mistake to overlook
its enormous impact and significance. Indeed, it is time for Israel and the
American Jewish community to undertake a concerted effort to reach out to US
Hispanics and actively cultivate their support.

HISPANIC-AMERICANS ARE making their presence felt in virtually all sectors of
American life, and it is only a matter of time before their political clout
matches their demographic status. So to ensure continued strong US backing for
Israel, it is essential that more be done to educate Hispanic-Americans about
the Jewish state and the challenges it faces.

From the Census Bureau report, it is clear that Hispanics are the nation's
largest and fastest growing minority group. From the economy to the ballot box,
Latinos are taking on an increasingly central role.

In the economic realm, a study by the University of Georgia found that by 2011,
Hispanic buying power will reach almost $1.2 trillion, six times what it was in
1990. And, as Michael Barrera of the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce pointed out
to CNN in October, "The Hispanic consumer market here in the US is actually as
big or bigger than the GDP of Mexico or Canada. We're the second largest economy
in North America."

In this year's presidential election, Hispanics are expected to play a critical
role in determining who will be America's next commander-in-chief. As the Pew
Hispanic Center noted in a December report, "In 2008, Latinos will comprise
about 9% of the eligible electorate nationwide" and they "loom as a potential
'swing vote'" because of their sizable presence in key battleground states such
as Florida.

What all this means for Israel and the American Jewish community is that we need
to start recognizing the importance of the Hispanic-American community and
quickly develop appropriate political and public outreach programs. Not next
year or next month, nor even manana. It has got to be done right now.

A greater effort must be made to educate Latinos about Israel and its cause.

As a senior official at a leading Jewish organization in New York recently told
me, "Israel isn't really on their [Hispanics'] radar screen. They are not in
favor and they are not against. Many simply aren't familiar with our issues, and
we need to change that."

I COULDN'T agree more. While groups such as AIPAC are making more of a
determined effort of late, and Israeli consulates in Miami, Houston and Los
Angeles have been investing important resources in this direction, it is far
from sufficient.

For example, I checked a number of several prominent official government Web
sites, such as those of the embassy in Washington, and the Foreign Ministry and
Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem. Not one of them had a separate section for
information in Spanish.

Many Spanish-speakers have limited possibilities with which to familiarize
themselves with Jews and Israel.

With a little foresight, this situation can easily be remedied by organizing
regular trips to Israel for prominent Hispanic-Americans, translating and
disseminating basic materials in Spanish and focusing more energy on reaching
out to the burgeoning Spanish-language press.

Major government Web sites need to start incorporating Spanish-language
information, and Israel should also consider appointing a roving ambassador to
reach out to Latino-Americans.

For the reality is that if the US Census Bureau's figures are correct, then a
vital factor in maintaining long-term US support for Israel will be the extent
to which we are able to answer one simple, yet very important, question: How do
you say hasbara in Spanish? If Israel and American Jewry continue to leave this
question unanswered, don't be surprised if we wake up 20 or 30 years from now
and discover that not only has America itself changed, but so too has its
Mideast policy.

And that is one gamble that we can ill afford to take.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: LOS ANGELES MAYOR Antonio Villaraigosa visited Tel Aviv's Bialik
Rigosin School during his trip to Israel last June. (Credit: Sasson
Tiram/courtesy photo)

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August 20, 2008 Wednesday

Is this the way?

BYLINE: DANIEL GAVRON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 906 words

HIGHLIGHT: Israeli officials should take a cue from a London lawyer who 60 years
ago called for focusing on dialogue with Arabs instead of with Western powers.
The writer's most recent book is Holy Land Mosaic, published in the US by Rowman
& Littlefield.

Why would a pamphlet published 60 years ago be of any interest today? This was
the question I asked myself, when it arrived on my computer recently, in
response to a public discussion in which I had participated in London. Jonathan
Freedland of the Guardian, noted academic and peace activist Tony Klug and I had
debated "Two-states for two peoples: solution or illusion?" At the end of the
evening, Prof. Michael Zander approached me about his late father, Walter
Zander, and subsequently e-mailed me his Web site (www,walterzander.info). I was
fascinated by both the books and essays, but particularly struck by a 45-page
pamphlet he wrote in 1947.

"Is This the Way?" was published early in 1948 by Victor Gollancz, price one
shilling. While much of the material relates very much to its own time, I was
astounded at how relevant its insights are to our situation today. The
German-born Zander was the secretary of the Friends of the Hebrew University in
Britain for almost three decades. A lawyer by training, he was a prolific
author, writing about everything from economics and legal matters to Soviet
Jewry and the holy sites in this country.

"Is This the Way?" was composed in the dramatic period between the United
Nations vote partitioning Palestine in November 1947 and the declaration of the
State of Israel in May 1948. Very much in defiance of the triumphal mood in the
Jewish community at that time, Zander criticizes the Zionist policy toward the
Arabs.

IN ITSELF, this is not remarkable. There were several critics of the Zionist
movement's policy - or rather lack of policy - toward the Arabs. What makes
Zander's essay special is his insistence that, with a Jewish state on the way,
we Jews should stop blaming everybody else for our problems and take
responsibility ourselves. In the shadow of the Holocaust and with the nascent
Jewish state fighting for its life, it must have required great courage to stake
out such a position.

"For many years it has been our custom to put the blame for every new difficulty
and every new setback to our cause on the shoulders of others. As long as our
political fate was mainly determined by other peoples, it was understandable
that we were inclined to see the cause for our situation in the actions of
others. But since we have taken again the shaping of our political history into
our own hands, full responsibility now rests upon us, and this will require the
greatest moral courage. We must ask fearlessly to what extent we ourselves have
contributed to the present situation."

Quoting Ahad Ha'am to the effect that "since the beginning of Palestinian
colonization, we have always considered the Arab people as non-existent," Zander
asserts (writing in 1947) that he sees no fundamental change in this attitude.
"Rather than concentrating on the people who have been living in the country for
more than a thousand years," he notes, "we put our trust in those who happened
to be their rulers for one generation." The Zionist movement, he points out, has
focused its efforts on London, rather than on Jerusalem. Underestimating Arab
opposition to Zionism, "we omitted to give adequate consideration to the
question of how the two peoples could live together within the Jewish
commonwealth."

How similar to the present, when, instead of seriously engaging our own Arab
citizens and the neighboring Palestinians, we focus almost all our attention on
enlisting the support of the United States and, to a lesser extent, Europe.
Washington may have replaced London as the center of our universe, but the
mentality is fundamentally the same as it was then. Even 60 years of sovereignty
have not changed us.

WHILE ACKNOWLEDGING that the Jewish conquest of Palestine was driven by great
need, Zander argues that "we never admitted that our return requires from the
Arab a sacrifice of the first order." Deploring the fact that the Jews have
refused to accept any guilt, he writes: "We have blamed everybody but ourselves;
and very few of us have indeed accepted the full share of responsibility for
what has been done."

He continues in a passage that could have been written yesterday: "The main
task, as in all periods of the whole movement, remains the solution of the
Jewish-Arab problem. It is obvious that ultimately peace with our neighbors is
required if the Jewish state is to survive. At present we are trying to achieve
this peace by force and to build up in feverish haste the military strength
which is to guarantee our security. But under no conditions can force be
enough."

Reading and listening to the daily comments by Israeli political leaders and
commentators, one cannot help but admit that reliance on force remains a central
pillar of our policy and general approach. Against this prevailing attitude, let
us consider the wise and courageous words written 60 years ago by Walter Zander,
a thoughtful attorney, living in Gerards Cross near London: "It is obvious that
this situation creates a particular responsibility and obligation on our side.
The spirit of mutual retaliation and vengeance - aiming at subduing the opponent
by fear - is not only utterly senseless, but, as far as we Jews are concerned,
fundamentally wrong. We Jews should have a deeper insight and should be able to
see both sides of the problem. It is we who aim at a change of the existing
conditions, and it is therefore our duty to find a solution. The initiative for
this task must remain with us."

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GRAPHIC: Photo: WALTER ZANDER. His '47 pamphlet is still relevant today.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 19, 2008 Tuesday

Mullahs in space

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 711 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

The 15th day of the Muslim month of Shaban fell on Saturday. It is one of the
holiest days in the Shi'ite calendar, the birthday of the 12th Imam, or the
hidden savior known as the mehdi. His return at the end of history is to herald
a messianic era.

Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a devotee of the hidden imam. The Iranian leader
has spent a fortune refurbishing the Jamkaran mosque, a shrine outside Teheran
dedicated to the mehdi.

At 7:06 p.m. Saturday, Ahmadinejad commemorated the Imam's birthday by having an
entirely Iranian-manufactured satellite, the Omid (Hope), launched into space.
The event was also meant to underscore what Iran can achieve despite being
"under heavy sanctions" as the Iranian media put it.

Iran's military, too, noted the significance of the launch date, "On the birth
anniversary of the last Imam of Shi'ites, Hazrat Mahdi (May God Hasten His
Reappearance), thus illustrating the auspicious name of the Imam in space."

Such messianic references may be lost on Westerners. That does not make them any
less consequential.

SATURDAY'S launching may also have been intended to dissuade Israel from
attacking Iran's nuclear facilities as well as announcing that Iran was already
a regional power to be reckoned with.

Geography is sometimes even more consequential than ideology. Russia was a major
power under the czars, communists, and is now resurgent under the popular
autocrat, Vladimir Putin.

Persia once swept westward into the Middle East building an empire that
encompassed Egypt, Babylon, and the Greek colonies in Anatolia. Its ruler, Cyrus
(circa 539 BCE), granted Jews the right to rebuild their Jerusalem temple
demolished earlier by Nebuchadnezzar.

Alas, Iran's present-day leader has other plans for the Jews.

Were Teheran to achieve regional hegemony the consequences would be profoundly
destabilizing. For the mullahs are fueled not just by geography, politics and
nationalism, but by a sense of invincible messianic imperialism. Their ambitions
may well extend beyond our region.

THE DIMINUTIVE 20-kilogram Omid satellite is of minor concern to Israeli
observers - one called it "space junk." And it will take a while for analysts to
determine whether the satellite has achieved a stable orbit. If not, the effort
will be judged a failure.

The Safir (emissary) vehicle that carried Omid into space is an improved version
of the Shihab-3, which has a demonstrated range of about 1,500 km. (930 miles) -
capable of reaching Israel. But the Jewish state has long been within range of
Iranian missiles.

The implicit message of the latest launching may be directed at Europe: The
Islamic Republic already has surface-to-surface missiles capable of reaching
parts of Europe. It is just a matter of time before the Shihab-4 extends that
reach even further.

Iran's achievement in space also provides insight into the scope of the
country's military industrial complex. Ahmadinejad boasted that 7,000 scientists
and engineers were involved in the satellite project. Iran has uranium mines and
facilities to enrich the mineral so as to produce a controlled nuclear reaction;
it has the brainpower necessary to militarize these capabilities. It certainly
appears poised to achieve the capability of placing a nuclear device on a
ballistic missile.

IRAN IS explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel - so Jerusalem must
worry day and night about Teheran's nuclear program. At the same time, the
Iranian military industrial complex is so vast, advanced and diversified as to
make incredibly complex any last resort to military action.

Europe and the international community, meanwhile, dawdle rather than apply the
kinds of meaningful sanctions that could conceivably force the mullahs to
reconsider their bellicose posture.

Thus by avoiding a confrontation with Iran today, the international community is
setting the stage for a far more perilous future - and not just for Israel.

Is it not clear how emboldened, empowered and belligerent the mullahs already
are? The threat to world peace grows exponentially with each week, each month.

Either the Iranian regime must be made to go, or a strategy needs to be
developed to ensure that Iran does not attain the military capability to achieve
its imperial aspirations.

There really are no other options.

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August 19, 2008 Tuesday

Invisible fathers at the Olympic Games

BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 892 words

HIGHLIGHT: The number of superior male athletes at the Olympics who look to
their mother for inspiration is astonishing. The writer hosts a daily US radio
show on Oprah and Friends. His most recent book is The Broken American Male and
How to Fix Him.

The most memorable scenes of the Beijing Olympics are not what Michael Phelps
accomplished in the pool but what he did right after emerging with yet another
gold medal after every swim. Here, a 23-year-old athletic superstar took his
flowers from the medal podium, climbed over benches and photographers and handed
them to his beaming mother.

The gesture was startling. When I served as rabbi at Oxford, I noticed how
uncomfortable students were whenever their parents visited. They had gone to
university to assert their independence and were often embarrassed, or at the
very least uncomfortable, when they had to introduce their visiting parents to
their friends. Certainly, the last thing they did was go out and buy their moms
flowers and present them in the presence of their entire social circle.

If anything, we should have expected Michael Phelps to come out of the pool and
give the flowers to some beautiful young girlfriend. But no, it was his mom.

But then again, Debbie Phelps is no ordinary mother, but the single mom who
alone raised Michael and his two sisters, Whitney and Hillary, from the time
Michael was nine.

AS A child of divorce who was raised by a single mother from about the same age,
I can attest to the fact that the feat is never forgotten. Children retain a
lifelong debt of passionate gratitude toward a mother who sacrifices all on
their behalf. They will move heaven and earth to show appreciation for a mother
who made her children her entire universe.

Champions are not born, they are raised. And those who do the raising,
especially when it is done in solitude, earn their moment in the sun.

Indeed, the number of superior male athletes at the Olympics who look to their
mother, as opposed to their father, for inspiration is astonishing. Basketball
superstar LeBron James was raised alone by his mother Gloria to whom he remains
especially devoted. Jamaican uber-sprinter Usain Bolt ran straight to his mother
Jennifer's arms after breaking the world record in the 100 meter dash and
becoming the fastest man alive. America's best male sprinter, Tyson Gay, is so
close to his mother Daisy that he phones her every day and especially an hour
before he races to help calm his nerves. The list goes on.

Indeed, few indicators of the falling stature of the American male are as potent
as the receding influence of men in their sons' lives, as they are slowly
replaced by mothers of unbreakable devotion. Whereas once this may have been
true of areas where women carry special insight, such as in, say, vetting a
girlfriend or giving advice about love and relationships, today it is true in
the area one where we would least expect it, sports.

WHICH BEGS the question, aside from the moment of conception, are men even
necessary? If a single mother can produce the greatest Olympic champion of all
time, do we even need dads?

An increasing number of women are saying no, we don't. They are choosing to have
children on their own, or remain single and raise their kids by themselves long
after they have divorced. Dads are becoming a luxury.

I thought of this scary development as I took a day trip with my children
recently. What was it that I, as their father, gave them that their mother could
not? Was I, as a man, superfluous? To be sure, there were the obvious things
that I contribute. I help support the family. I take my kids to synagogue, study
Judaism with them and teach them about our ancient tradition. I attempt to
inspire them with talks about character and I remain the principal
disciplinarian in the home. But surely these were all things that my wife, if
God forbid forced to, could do on her own. Was there anything that required me
and only me?

And then I remembered. Yes, there was one big thing. I alone could love their
mother. That was not something she could do on her own. I could teach my
children by means of living example the glories of devotion to a special woman
who sacrifices so much on all of our behalf. I could show my children that love
was not a fantasy concocted in Hollywood or invented in a novel. I alone could
demonstrate to my children that their mother was precious and that love was
real. No one could do this but me. I was necessary after all, as was every other
father and husband.

In other words, the greatest gift a man gives his children is to love their
mother. By doing so, he imparts the lesson that there are things in life more
glittering than gold and more precious than rubies.

In House of Morgan, the monumental biography of John Pierpont Morgan, America's
greatest banker, Ron Chernow details how his son and successor, Jack, idolized
his father in every way but one. He could not forgive him for his contemptible
treatment of his mother, Fanny, and made a point of nurturing his mother in his
father's presence as if to show his undisguised contempt.

The prophet Malachi foretold of a time when "the hearts of the fathers will be
returned through the hearts of the children." While many men spend their lives
ignoring their families to chase money, their children are teaching them that
one can earn gold and dedicate it to the family. In an age where many men are
falling out of love with their wives, perhaps the time has come for them to look
to their own sons to remind them that they need look no further than their own
homes to discover their most valuable treasure.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: MICHAEL PHELPS. If a single mother can produce the greatest
Olympic champion of all time, do we even need dads? (Credit: AP)

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August 19, 2008 Tuesday

Letters

BYLINE: Asta Skaisgiryte Liauskiene, Dr. Lily Polliack, Menachem Dayagi, Hillel
Goldberg, Jeffrey Marlowe, Sunny Holtzman

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1199 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Lithuania's position

Sir, - The Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania would like to draw your
attention to the Lithuanian leaders' position concerning any expression of
anti-Semitism ("Yad Vashem blasts Lithuania for Holocaust revisionism, anti-
Semitism," August 12).

When the act of vandalism was perpetrated against the Lithuanian Jewish
community building, President Valdas Adamkus stated that "the contempt targeted
at the nation which has suffered from genocide is not casual hooliganism. It is
a destructive and sordid act against Lithuania as a whole, not only Lithuania's
Jewish community. I underline that there is no, and will never be, room for
hatred and instigation of discord in Lithuanian society. I have no doubt the
organizers and perpetrators of the act will be identified and punished. At the
time when the traditions of tolerance and respect for human rights are being
consolidated in Lithuania and when Lithuania is helping other states to
consolidate freedom and democratic values, I consider such disreputation of our
country a harsh provocation against Lithuania. I call on all people of Lithuania
to be intolerant to the instigation of hatred whatever form it may take."

Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas sharply condemned the acts of vandalism when
swastikas and other offensive signs were sprayed on the walls of the Jewish
community center in Vilnius. "Lithuanian citizens of Jewish origin have
substantially contributed to the fame of our native country. The Holocaust
tragedy during the war years should remind us all how disastrous the policy of
racial and ethnic hatred can be."

On August 11 Finance Minister Rimantas Sadzius, who was acting prime minister
during Gediminas Kirkilas's summer holidays, made a phone call to Simonas
Alperavieius, chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish community, and expressed his
solidarity with the community concerning the malicious attack. He also called
upon Police Commissioner General Vizgirdas Tely'nas to investigate the incident
and find the perpetrators as soon as possible. The police are now conducting its
investigation in close cooperation with other law enforcement institutions that
have come across similar incidents before.

We sincerely hope that these facts will find reflection in your newspaper.

ASTA SKAISGIRYTE LIAUSKIENE

Ambassador

Republic of Lithuania

Tel Aviv

Serving Iran's interest

Sir, - Re: "Israel and Iran: A bridge too far?" (Elsewhere, August 18).

While history can teach, when distorted it can blind the reader into adopting
false policies. As a fellow political scientist, I would like to enlighten your
readers so that they will see what the "prominent Teheran political scientist"
is really up to when he declares that "Israel must take steps to bring its
nuclear program in line with the UN nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

He is in fact, serving the Iranian interest to strip Israel of that one ultimate
deterrent it still maintains to ward off her enemies, first and foremost Iran,
its arch enemy, no matter how many false historical comparisons he would like to
apply to prove the opposite.

After all, his reference to the good times in Israel- Iran relations, when Cyrus
the Great allowed the Jews "to return to their homeland and to build the Temple
in Jerusalem," has got nothing to do with the current president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who wants to see that same Jewish homeland destroyed and brought
into the fold of Islam. But then King Cyrus had never heard of Islam, a
civilization established about 1,000 years after his famous edict of 538 BCE
liberating the Jews of Persia/Iran.

DR. LILY POLLIACK

Jerusalem

Where to cut

Sir, - Israel must be the only democratic country where the civil servants at
the Finance Ministry decide the annual budget instead of the government as a
whole ("Knesset committee warns against defense budget cuts," August 17). If
there are to be budget cuts, I have a few suggestions to offer:

Cut the president's, prime minister's, ministers', MKs', directors-general and
department heads salaries by 10 percent. Let ministers have one office only in
the capital. Allow overseas travel only on special missions. Charge all private
phone calls, especially on cellphones, against their salaries. And enforce a
minimum period of two years for civil servants to work in a related field in
private industry.

MENACHEM DAYAGI

Tel Aviv

Beating the bear

Sir, - Russia does not seem to forget that a quarter of a century ago an
engineer Lech Walesa from the then Lenin shipyard in Gdansk with his workers'
union Solidarity conquered the Russian bear and kicked the oppressors out from
Poland - without firing a single shot ("Russia threatens Poland with attack over
US missile deal," August 17). Other European countries achieved courage to do
the same. Walesa later became Poland's president and today, as a retiree,
lectures all over the world about freedom.

Now, with American help, Poland wants to safeguard its own and others
territorial integrity. Russia, the loser, threatens this nation even with
nuclear strikes. Poland has been divided three times (by Austria, Prussia and
Russia) and, like Israel, was without statehood for a long time. This year
Poland celebrates its 90th anniversary of its rebirth and Israel celebrates its
60th birthday.

The industrious and freedom loving Polish people will not succumb to Russia's
revived superpower roar. They'll keep singing: "Jeszcze Polska nie zginela" -
"Poland is not yet lost."

HILLEL GOLDBERG

Jerusalem

Caving in

Sir, - The government plans to transfer ownership of the land on which
Jerusalems' St. Sergius Church stands to Russia in the coming weeks ("Government
to transfer ownership of disputed Jerusalem property to Russia," August 14).
This follows a tete-a-tete between Ehud Olmert and Vladimir Putin, both
temporary figures setting a permanent and worrying precedent.

This land was purchased from the Kruschev government in 1964 in exchange for
citrus fruit. The Russians now claim this was not legitimate, and Olmert has
caved in to Putin without consulting the Knesset.

What have the Russians ever done for Israel that requires goodwill, for that is
what this is. It is not a legal requirement, but it will be irreversible.

In 1867 Czar Alexander II sold Alaska to the US for $7,200,000 - less than two
cents an acre. What chance do you think Russia would stand if it said that deal
was not legiitimate and demanded it be annulled.

JEFFREY MARLOWE

Leeds

Sir, - I loved Rochelle Mass' article "Redefined" (UPFront, August 8).

I came to Israel from Montreal in 1960 and no one could pronounce my name
properly. I am called Sunny. So instead of being called by my name, everyone
called me "Sony." I got tired of that and so I started having people call me
Sema, my Jewish name.

However, I never answered them as I really didn't know who Sema was and wouldn't
turn around when called.

After having people tell me I must be deaf since I never answered them as I was
not really ready to identify with Sema, I decided that I must educate them to
pronounce my name properly and finally they did.

I so know how she feels about not keeping her name.

I am defined by Sunny - as I really am that type of person. Certainly not a Sema

SUNNY HOLTZMAN

Tel Aviv

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August 19, 2008 Tuesday

WJC embraces an anti-Semite

BYLINE: ISI LEIBLER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1179 words

HIGHLIGHT: He's driven out a quarter of Venezuela's Jews, but President Hugo
Chavez is kosher enough for the WJC. Candidly Speaking

World Jewish Congress officials allowed themselves to get carried away when they
hailed a recent meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as having been
"successful" and proclaimed that he had joined the global struggle against
anti-Semitism. The Venezuelan demagogue did announce that his ambassador to
Israel, who had been recalled during the Second Lebanon War, would resume his
duties. But beyond that he has yet to display any meaningful initiative to
reverse his long-standing hostility to the Jewish people and the Jewish state
and his fervent alliance with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It must have been music for the ears of Chavez to hear WJC secretary-general
Michael Schneider proclaim to the media that "when it comes to anti-Semites, we
[Chavez and World Jewry] are on the same page." Schneider's explicit assertion
that "Chavez was certainly not an anti-Semite" was based on an assurance to that
effect by Chavez and a vacuous offer to join others and "condemn all forms of
anti-Semitism, discrimination against minorities and anti- Muslim sentiment." To
his credit, WJC president Ronald Lauder was more circumspect and apparently
declined to comment.

The paeans of praise directed towards Chavez by Schneider and his colleagues
ignore the fact that this wretched hooligan has achieved the notoriety of being
the most loathsome contemporary anti-Semitic head of state outside the Muslim
world. This is the man who in a Christmas speech alleged that "the descendants
of those who crucified Christ control the world's wealth."

CHAVEZ HAS also achieved international notoriety as one of Ahmadinejad's closest
allies. Both tyrants extol one another's virtues and radiate hatred against the
US and Israel. Chavez describes Ahmadinejad as "a fighter for just causes," a
"brother" and a "revolutionary." Last year the Iranian president awarded Chavez
Iran's highest honor, the Islamic Republic Medal.

Chavez boasts of his close ties with President Bashar Assad of Syria. At a joint
press conference with Assad, Chavez said "We know how Israel was born. It is an
annex of the North American empire in the Middle East. Israel is the cause of
the conflict in the region. This territory 6,000 years ago belonged to the
Canaanites and the Philistines. These lands belong to the Palestinians."

The Venezuelan president has also enthusiastically identified himself with
Hizbullah and was widely displayed together with its leader, Sheikh Hassan
Nasrallah, in posters throughout Lebanon stating that "Israel needs to be judged
for its crimes." He also provides a haven in Venezuela for Hizbullah terrorists.

During the Second Lebanon War, Chavez recalled the Venezuelan ambassador to
Israel in response to what he described as a "new Holocaust" comparable to
Hitler's actions against the Jews being perpetrated with "gringo" planes
provided by the US.

Chavez also intimidated the 12,000 members of the Venezuelan Jewish community,
25 percent of whom have emigrated since he assumed power. His government
sanctioned vicious anti-Semitic media campaigns and a proliferation of
anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic propaganda and graffiti at all levels. As recently
as six months ago, Chavez authorized a police raid on the Caracas Club Hebraica
on the spurious grounds that illegal weapons were being stored there. The
synagogue has also been subject to repeated vandalism. In June this year, Alexis
Navarro, the Venezuelan ambassador to Russia, alleged that a failed coup against
Chavez had been orchestrated by Mossad intelligence snipers who were "Venezuelan
citizens but Jews."

It is therefore mind-boggling that Schneider could blithely inform the media
that "there may have been some differences on some issues such as Iran and also
the Middle East," but after Chavez had assured him "that he was certainly not an
anti-Semite," the meeting was a "success." In effect, certain World Jewish
Congress leaders are legitimizing the man who maintains warm relationships with
Holocaust deniers and demonizers of Israel, enshrining him with a mantle of
respectability in the struggle against anti-Semitism, when he merely paid lip
service to the cause by saying that he "opposed anti-Semitism."

Clearly oblivious to the growing international concern about the expanding
Iranian presence in his region, Latin American Jewish Congress president Jack
Terpins casually informed the media that the question of Iranian influence in
Venezuela "is an internal problem between Venezuela and Iran." He stressed that
"the meeting could not have been better and that a new era has begun," adding
that "the world Jewish community is now calmer about President Chavez. He has
demonstrated that he is a great friend of this community."

To top off this Alice in Wonderland diplomacy, Chavez is also reported to have
agreed to assist the WJC in its interfaith dialogue activities with Christians
and Muslims. Last month, WJC representatives at King Abdullah's interfaith
conference in Madrid displayed their impotence by failing to raise the issue of
Saudi anti-Semitism. But if their intention is to now coopt this loathsome
tyrant to promote interfaith relations, they would be forfeiting any semblance
of Jewish dignity and their groveling would have descended to an all-time low.

IDEALLY WE would prefer to treat foul mouthed anti- Semites like Chavez as
lepers. But the harsh realities of political life sometimes oblige Jewish
leaders to converse with tyrants and leave no stone unturned in efforts to
ameliorate onerous situations. A carefully planned meeting between international
Jewish leaders and Chavez was therefore entirely appropriate, even were it only
to provide support for the embattled local Jewish community. But the rules of
diplomacy in such an encounter do not require the Jewish party to absolve an
anti-Semite of his past sins merely because he agrees to a meeting.

In this context, the WJC leaders blundered in failing to make explicit
representations concerning the global anti-Semitic and anti-Israel policies
conducted by the Venezuelan regime. They were also premature in dispensing a
clean bill of health to one of the key personalities leading the international
anti Jewish campaign. Worse, their failure to even relate to these issues in
subsequent media interviews may transform this encounter into an utterly
counterproductive exercise.

In recent years, our greatest challenge has been to demonstrate that
demonization and delegitimization of Israel is simply a new version of
anti-Semitism - substituting hatred of the Jew as an individual with hatred of
the Jewish state. Now we have the WJC secretary-general and some of his
colleagues lauding Chavez and bestowing upon him the dubious distinction of
being the first leader openly embracing Iranian Holocaust deniers and
shamelessly indulging in demonization of Israel to be treated with deference and
regarded as an ally by a body purporting to represent world Jewry. If any
reputable non-Jewish organization or government behaved in such a manner, we
Jews would be the first to protest.

ileibler@netvision.net.il

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: HUGO CHAVEZ gets a medal from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A haven in
Venezuela for Hizbullah terrorists? (Credit: Bloomberg)

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August 19, 2008 Tuesday

Neo-coms are the threat

BYLINE: MICHAEL WIDLANSKI

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1084 words

HIGHLIGHT: The huge communist dictatorships have mutated, not died. The writer,
a research fellow at the Shalem Center, was the Schusterman Visiting Professor
at Washington University in St. Louis for 2007-8. He has also served as a
special adviser to Israeli delegations to peace talks in 1991-1992 and as
strategic affairs adviser to the Ministry of Public Security, editing secret PLO
archives captured in Jerusalem.

Perhaps the most important lesson of Russia's military conquest of Georgia is
that international politics - especially where great powers are concerned - is
an area for cold analysis, not wishful thinking.

After the Berlin Wall fell, many Western analysts thought the successor to the
Soviet Union would willingly give up its satellite states and move inexorably
toward democracy.

Many Western pundits felt it was only a matter of time before China, too,
embraced democracy. Then-president George H.W. Bush, who had been head of the
CIA and ambassador to China, felt we were moving to "a new world order." Francis
Fukuyama wrote a book, partially titled The End of History, tracing a straight
line to a utopia in which liberalism had defeated authoritarianism. It was as if
the messiah had come: America and its allies could now turn swords into
plowshares.

Many in the State Department, especially secretary of state James Baker, felt
that the "end of the Cold War" meant an end to the special status of Israel in
Middle Eastern affairs, not dreaming that the rise of radical versions of
Shi'ite and Sunni Islam exported by Iran and the Saudis might make the country
more valuable than ever.

To these Western observers tracing their lines in the sand, history was
progressing linearly and clearly.

But history does not move in straight lines or dialectical patterns to suit
liberal social scientists or Marxist social theorists. Rather, it repeats itself
or moves in cycles, based not only on economic factors but those of custom,
culture, religion and human nature.

Fukuyama was wrong, while thinkers along the line of Bernard Lewis and Samuel
Huntington more correct. This does not mean that there is no place for liberal
idealism in international politics, but it does mean that the idealism must be
tempered with a solid reading of the international and regional terrain.

Since the Enlightenment, intellectuals of the liberal/left have concentrated on
the "perfectibility of man," skipping over the cautionary lessons which come
more easily to those observers who are often called conservatives.

It was conservative Edmund Burke who saw that the light of French Revolution was
becoming a fire that would burn into a reign of terror, while two generations
later it was Alexis de Tocqueville who explained the advantages of the
evolutionary change of the American Revolution versus the revolutionary change
that scarred Europe.

What they said two centuries ago remains dead right today.

Similarly, some of the same arguments were repeated a century later in the
dialogue between American presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson spoke of idealism, the League of Nations and "the war to end all wars."
Roosevelt spoke of the need to speak softly while carrying a big stick. Teddy
Roosevelt was the first US president to travel abroad, but he did not lose
himself in vague notions of international comity. Rather, he fused his idealism
with a view of his own national interest and a sober view of the national
interest of others.

TWENTY YEARS after the fall of the Soviet empire, it is much easier to see that
the current Russian regime wants to reclaim great power status. It more
resembles the earlier Soviet regime and those of the czars than it does any
Middle European liberal state.

Indeed, its exploitation of Russian-speaking minorities in the Georgian
provinces of Abkhazia and Ossetia as pawns is reminiscent of the tactics of the
Nazi regime in the 1930s.

Russia has invaded Georgia not just to punish Georgia's elected leadership, but
also to reclaim Russian control of gas and oil pipelines in the Caucasus region.
Russia wants to bully Ukraine and Turkmenistan, which have natural resources and
are turning westward, the same way Vladimir Putin bullied and jailed Russian
businessmen who had amassed economic power and were Western-oriented.

We should keep this in mind as Prime Minister Putin and his puppet president,
Dimitri Medvedev, scatter promises around the world, including that of a
withdrawal from Georgia.

One can expect they will keep their pledges of peace the way Yevgeny Primakov
(another Russian prime minister of KGB extraction) and Victor Chernomyrdin
promised Bill Clinton and Al Gore to limit arms transfers and nuclear
development to North Korea, Iran and Syria during the 1990s.

HUGE COMMUNIST dictatorships, like deadly viruses, have mutated, not died.
Russia and China wear the trappings of capitalism when it suits them, but they
are willing to bludgeon "naughty" neighbors and "delinquent" dissidents at will.

Putin, the graduate of the old KGB, has been sending agents to poison or shoot
journalists and dissidents at home and abroad. The West has responded with
collective clicking of the tongue and spasmodic wagging of fingers.

China has outlawed entire religious sects and grabbed entire countries, such as
Tibet, working hard to stamp out their identity, even as it sets Olympic records
in the profits from the trade in human organs "reaped" from "criminals" it has
executed.

Both China and Russia have worked hard to prevent international control of
Arab-Islamic terror, genocide and weapons proliferation from North Korea to
Sudan to Iraq. When Russia and China speak of honoring international law and
national sovereignty, their words should be treated gingerly.

This does not mean Georgia is without blame in the present case, or that a US
plan to station missiles inside Europe was a brilliant idea, nor that Israeli
trade in arms to Georgia was always smart. But none of these are at the root of
the neo-communist invasion of Georgia nor of the neo-com support for Iran, North
Korea and Syria.

In recent years, some Western journalists and academics have contended that the
greatest threat to world peace was from "war-hungry" neo-conservative thinkers
known as neo-cons. Many of these pundits could have spent their time and words
better worrying about neo-coms and Arab- Islamic terror.

Idealism, dialogue and trust all have their place in international relations,
but as president Ronald Reagan said to president Mikhail Gorbachev on more than
one occasion: Doveryay, no proveryay - Trust, but verify.

Reagan might also have said to Putin and Medvedev: "Nations do not mistrust each
other because they are armed; they are armed because they mistrust each other."
And for as long as Russia and China continue to act as they do, showing that
they are not to be trusted, we would be wise to arm ourselves with knowledge,
weapons and with careful stratagems.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: VLADIMIR PUTIN speaks with South Ossetian refugees. Exploiting
Russian-speaking minorities in Georgia's rebel provinces? (Credit: AP)

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August 19, 2008 Tuesday

The West's Islamist infiltrators

BYLINE: DANIEL PIPES

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 772 words

HIGHLIGHT: Islamist moles could inflict far more damage to national security
than Soviet spies, for the US and Soviet Union never actually fought each other.
The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and distinguished visiting
fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Aafia Siddiqui, 36, is a Pakistani mother of three, an alumna of MIT and a Ph.D.
in neuroscience from Brandeis University. She is also accused of working for
al-Qaida and was charged last week in New York City with attempting to kill
American soldiers.

Her arrest serves to remind how invisibly most Islamist infiltration proceeds.
In particular, an estimated 40 al-Qaida sympathizers or operatives have sought
to penetrate US intelligence agencies.

Such a well-placed infiltrator can wreak great damage, explains Michael Sulick,
a former CIA chief of counterintelligence: "In the war on terrorism,
intelligence has replaced the Cold War's tanks and fighter planes as the primary
weapon against an unseen enemy." Islamist moles, he argues, "could inflict far
more damage to national security than Soviet spies," for the US and Soviet Union
never actually fought each other, whereas now, "our nation is at war."

HERE ARE some American cases of attempted infiltration since 2001 that have been
made public:

* The air force discharged Sadeq Naji Ahmed, a Yemeni immigrant, when his
superiors learned of his pro-al-Qaida statements. Ahmed subsequently became a
baggage screener at Detroit's Metro Airport, which terminated him for hiding his
earlier discharge from the air force. He was convicted of making false
statements and sentenced to 18 months in jail.

* The Chicago Police Department fired Patricia Eng- Hussain just three days into
her training on learning that her husband, Muhammad Azam Hussain, was arrested
for being an active member of Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi (MQM-H), a Pakistani
terrorist group.

* The Chicago Police Department also fired Arif Sulejmanovski, a supervising
janitor at its 25th District station, after it learned his name was on a federal
terrorist watch list of international terrorism suspects.

* Muhammad Alavi, an engineer at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, was
arrested as he arrived on a flight from Iran, accused of taking computer access
codes and software that provide details on the plant's control rooms and plant
layout to Iran. He subsequently pleaded guilty to transporting stolen property.

* Nada Nadim Prouty, a Lebanese immigrant who worked for both the FBI and CIA,
pleaded guilty to charges of fraudulently obtaining US citizenship; accessing a
federal computer system to unlawfully query information about her relatives and
the terrorist organization Hizbullah; and engaging in conspiracy to defraud the
United States.

* Waheeda Tehseen, a Pakistani immigrant who filled a sensitive toxicologist
position with the Environmental Protection Agency, pleaded guilty to fraud and
was deported. WorldNetDaily.com explains that "investigators suspect espionage
is probable, as she produced highly sensitive health-hazard documents for toxic
compounds and chemical pesticides. Tehseen also was an expert in parasitology as
it relates to public water systems."

* Weiss Rasool, 31, a Fairfax County police sergeant and Afghan immigrant,
pleaded guilty for checking police databases without authorization, thereby
jeopardizing at least one federal terrorism investigation.

* Nadire P. Zenelaj, 32, a 911 emergency operator of Albanian origin, was
charged with 232 felony counts of computer trespass for illegally searching New
York state databases, including at least one person on the FBI's terrorist watch
list.

Three other cases are less clear. The Transportation Security Administration
fired Bassam Khalaf, 21, a Texan of Palestinian origins, as an airport baggage
screener because lyrics on his music CD, "Terror Alert," applaud the 9/11
attacks. FBI Special Agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz "showed a pattern of pro-Islamist
behavior," according to author Paul Sperry, that may have helped acquit Sami
al-Arian of terrorism charges. The Pentagon cleared Hesham Islam, an Egyptian
immigrant, former US Navy commander and special assistant to the deputy
secretary of defense, but major questions remain about his biography and his
outlook.

OTHER WESTERN countries too - Australia, Canada, Israel, the Netherlands, the UK
- have been subject to infiltration efforts. This record prompts one to wonder
what catastrophe must occur before government agencies, some of which have
banished the words "Islam" and "jihad," seriously confront their internal
threat? Westerners are indebted to Muslim agents like Fred Ghussin and "Kamil
Pasha" who have been critical to fighting terrorism. That said, I stand by my
2003 statement that "there is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim
government employees in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps
need to be watched for connections to terrorism."

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: RALLY IN KARACHI for the release of Aafia Siddiqui. (Credit: AP)

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August 19, 2008 Tuesday

What Olmert has to complete before exiting

BYLINE: GERSHON BASKIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 923 words

HIGHLIGHT: Domestic political concerns should not be on the list of
considerations in making the decision to pay the price for Schalit's release.
The writer is co- CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and
Information.

Ehud Olmert did the right thing by deciding not to participate in the Kadima
primaries. His premiership has been filled with critical errors for which there
is a political price to pay. His lack of popularity is not simply a result of
the many suspicions of corruption but of bad decisions and lack of performance
on many of the issues that he promised the public that he would target

Olmert still has some time left in office to correct some of his mistakes and to
close some issues which there is a moral responsibility on his shoulders to
complete.

The number one issue is bringing Gilad Schalit home. I have been involved in the
behind the scenes talks on this issue since a few days after his abduction on
June 25, 2006. After dozens of phone conversations with various people in Gaza,
on July 22, 2006 I was contacted by my interlocutors from Hamas offering a
package deal in exchange for Schalit. It included a full cease-fire and a
prisoner exchange - the terms being the same as we know today. I transferred the
message to Olmert via a close relative of his. I received an answer several
hours later stating that before anything, Hamas must produce a sign of life from
Schalit. Olmert further asserted that Israel would not negotiate with
terrorists.

From July 22 to September 9, I continued to carry on daily contacts with the
Hamas people in Gaza and Damascus to get that sign of life. I was informed by
Olmert's relative that Israel was sure he was alive - the main reason for the
"sign of life" was to prove that there was a channel which could produce
results. On September 9, with my direct involvement, a handwritten letter from
Gilad was delivered to the Egyptian representatives in Gaza proving that he was
alive and that there was a channel through which negotiations could be
conducted.

On August 15, 2006 I received a fax from Hamas in Gaza with a list of its
demands for the release of Schalit. That evening the newly appointed "point man"
for the prisoner release negotiations, Ofer Dekel, traveled to Hila in the North
to meet the Schalit family. I sent that fax from Hamas to Noam Schalit to
present to Dekel. Several days later I handed Dekel the hard copy of the fax.

The Hamas demands have not changed since. It did take some additional six months
before Hamas produced its list of names of prisoners that it demanded be
released, but its conditions have not changed, nor will they change in any
substantial way, at least as far as I can assess.

HAMAS WAS ready to enter into a cease-fire in July 2006. Israel rejected that
offer then and instead waited for two years before agreeing. During those two
years, thousands of Kassam rockets were shot at the innocent civilians living
around the Gaza Strip. Since the abduction of Schalit, some 1,100 Gazans have
been killed by Israeli security forces. Gaza was placed under full economic and
military siege, and in June 2007 Gaza fell to complete control by Hamas. During
this entire period, the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) have assessed
over and over again that there is no military option for releasing Schalit
without him and many others being killed.

Every time I read in the newspapers that negotiations over Schalit have been
frozen, I almost laugh. What negotiations? There is nothing to negotiate over,
except perhaps on the margins. Maybe Hamas will agree that some of the more
difficult Palestinian prisoners to release be sent to Gaza for a limited period
instead of to the West Bank. Maybe Hamas will remove a few specific names from
the list in exchange for increasing the number of prisoners. These are all minor
factors.

I have been asked over and over by Hamas representatives in Gaza and in Damascus
if Olmert will pay the price. I have explained over and over how difficult it is
for any prime minister to pay such a high price. The Egyptian mediators have
asked me to propose ideas how to advance the negotiations. I have sent many
ideas and many suggestions. The bottom line remains the same: Hamas is willing
to wait until Israel pays the full price it demands.

NOW IT is up to Olmert. No doubt there are great risks when Israel releases more
than 1500 Palestinian prisoners. The biggest risk may not actually be releasing
convicted terrorists and murderers, but releasing the Hamas parliamentarians who
will then enable the convening of the Palestinian Legislative Council and
declare the Abbas-Fayad government null and void. They could also act to hold
new elections or to block new elections, for Palestinian president and
parliament. The entire deal will strengthen Hamas's position throughout the
Middle East. This is not only difficult for Israel, it poses significant
difficulties for Egypt as well, as the Egyptian mediators have told me several
times.

All of this is quite true; nonetheless, Olmert has a moral responsibility to
bring Gilad Schalit home. He was abducted on his "watch," and before Olmert
leaves the Prime Minister's Office he must bring him home. Domestic political
concerns should be off of the list of considerations in making the decision to
pay the price for Schalit's release. He has to face his own conscience and to
continue to look the Schalit family, and in fact all of us, in the eyes and say:
"I did everything possible to bring Gilad home."

It is probably too late for Olmert to make good on most of his other promises
(removing outposts, freezing settlement building, reaching an agreement with
Abbas, cleaning up government, election reform, etc.), it is not too late for
him to bring Gilad Schalit home.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: PALESTINIAN WOMEN hold pictures of prisoners held in Israeli
jails. Hamas is willing to wait until Israel pays the full price. (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

858 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 19, 2008 Tuesday

Iran's American protector

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1790 words

HIGHLIGHT: The US defense secretary has made defending Iran's nuclear
installations against the prospect of any Israeli or US attack his primary
concern. Our World

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates is the darling of Bush administration foes.
Gushing about Gates in a recent column, Washington Post writer David Ignatius
crooned, "Gates is an anomaly in this lame-duck administration. He is still
firing on all cylinders, working to repair the damage done at the Pentagon by
his arrogant and aloof predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld." Ignatius called on the
next administration to give Gates a major role leading its foreign and defense
policy.

It can only be hoped that Ignatius's advice will be ignored.

Today the US strategic posture lies in tatters in the aftermath of Russia's
invasion of US ally Georgia. The fact that aside from issuing strong reprimands
the administration has no policy for contending with Russia's aggression shows
clearly that the move caught Washington completely by surprise.

That Russia was apparently able to invade Georgia without US foreknowledge is a
stinging indictment of all US intelligence agencies. As was the case before the
September 11, 2001 attacks, again US intelligence agencies have failed their
country.

But America's intelligence agencies' failure to comprehend the significance of
Russia's intentions was not theirs alone. It was shared as well by Gates and by
his State Department counterpart Condoleezza Rice. Both senior cabinet
secretaries simply failed to notice what Russia was doing, or how its actions
would influence US interests.

GATES'S DENIAL of Moscow's strategic hostility to the US was made clear as late
as last month. As Russia built up its forces along Georgia's borders, Gates
released his new National Defense Strategy which he presented as "a blueprint
for success" for the next administration.

Gates's strategy paper, which foresees asymmetric campaigns against non-state
actors comprising the bulk of US military operations in the coming decades,
raised the hackles of US military commanders when he turned his attention to
Russia and China. In Gates's view, the best way to confront these authoritarian
rising powers is to deny that they constitute a threat to US interests. Rather
than building US forces to confront them, Gates advocates building
"collaborative and cooperative relationships" with them.

Gates's penchant for collaborating and cooperating with US rivals and enemies is
no doubt the reason that the Left supports him so enthusiastically. Since he
assumed office after the November 2006 elections, betraying allies as part of a
strategy of appeasing US enemies and rivals has been the focus of his efforts.

Ahead of his appointment to the Pentagon, Gates was a member of the Iraq Study
Group led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton. The thrust of the ISG report, issued
on December 6, 2006 - the day he was sworn into office - was that for the US to
maintain its credibility in the Middle East and generally, it was necessary to
appease its enemies by betraying its allies.

While the ISG report was ostensibly focused on Iraq, its real focus was Israel.
Although the report advocated removing all US combat brigades from Iraq by the
beginning of 2008, it wasn't wedded to the notion. It allowed the possibility of
a temporary surge of US forces to secure Baghdad and so enable the Iraqi
government to assert control over the country and build its military.

But while ambivalent on Iraq, the Baker-Hamilton report was unyielding in its
insistence that the US distance itself from Israel. The report argued that to
gain regional - and indeed international - support for the project of
stabilizing Iraq, it was necessary for the US to appease the Syrians, the
Iranians, the Saudis, the Egyptians and the Jordanians. And the best way to do
that, they claimed, was to disembowel Israel. The report recommended that Israel
be forced to give Syria the Golan Heights and coerced into accepting a
Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem which would be run by a
Hamas-Fatah "national unity government."

Like Baker and Hamilton, Gates was also not wed to the idea of a speedy
withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq. Instead he supported the surge and for
that he has gained great acclaim in Washington. But also like Baker and
Hamilton, Gates has been unyielding in his push to distance the US from Israel.
Indeed, in his National Defense Strategy, Israel is not listed as a US ally.

GATES'S PUSH to abandon the US's alliance with Israel in favor of embracing
Iraq's Iranian and Arab neighbors is nowhere more apparent than in his actions
regarding Iran's nuclear weapons program. And those actions are simply a
continuation of his efforts before entering office. In 2004, Gates co-authored a
study for the Council on Foreign Relations with Israel foe Zbigniew Brzezinski
calling for the US to draw closer to Iran at Israel's expense.

Over the past nine months, largely due to Gates's advocacy, this has been the
essential thrust of US policy toward Iran and Israel. The policy involves
downplaying the urgency of the threat of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons,
understating the progress Iran has made toward nuclear capabilities and openly
working to appease Iran through US support and involvement with EU negotiations
with Teheran.

The first US assault on what had until then been a more or less united public
front with Israel on the issue of Iran's nuclear program came with the
publication of the US's National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear weapons
program last November. In the face of Iran's open calls to destroy Israel and
the US, its rapid progress in its uranium enrichment activities, its command of
the insurgency in Iraq, of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian
Authority, and its ballistic missile buildup, the NIE claimed that Iran had
ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The publication of the NIE was a body blow not only to Israel's efforts to
isolate Iran and forge an international consensus about the need to confront
Teheran. It was also a precision strike against the US's own stated objective of
building a consensus for sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council.
Gates was responsible for the report's public dissemination.

IN RECENT months, as Iran has ratcheted up its genocidal rhetoric, taken over
the Lebanese government, strengthened its alliance with Syria, built up its
offensive forces, doubled the scale of its uranium enrichment, and strengthened
its attachment to Russia, Gates has moved out of the shadows and into the
spotlight. Assisted by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen
and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, Gates has made
defending Iran's nuclear installations against the prospect of any Israeli or US
attack his primary concern.

Gates has been a constant proponent of "engaging" Iran. In May for instance, he
told a group of retired US diplomats, "We need to figure out a way to develop
some leverage... and then sit down and talk with them. If there is going to be a
discussion, then they need something, too. We can't go to a discussion and be
completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us."

Following Gates's clear lead, the US not only stopped being "the demander," it
has become Iran's supplicant. And it has been repaid with increased Iranian
extremism. Iran met the US's decision to openly join the Europeans in offering
it everything from nuclear reactors to World Trade Organization membership last
month with intensified military action directed most recently against the US's
allies in the Persian Gulf. Iran has threatened international oil shipments
through the Straits of Hormuz, has launched a satellite and tested still more
missiles and again and again called for Israel's destruction.

BUT THIS hasn't thwarted Gates. Since Iran itself demonstrated the falsity of
the National Intelligence Estimate, Gates moved from subtle to open opposition
to US military strikes against its nuclear installations. Together with Mullen,
in recent months he has stated repeatedly that attacking Iran would be a
disaster for the US. And he has not stopped there. Gates has used his authority
as defense secretary to also block any possibility that Israel will attack Iran.

In June the Pentagon leaked information about the IAF's massive exercise in the
Mediterranean which it claimed was a rehearsal of an attack against Iran. The
same month, McConnell and Mullen visited Israel and rejected requests for
military equipment and other support that would improve its ability to attack
Iran's nuclear facilities.

Asserting that as far as the obviously infallible US intelligence estimates are
concerned, Iran's nuclear program is not nearing completion, Mullen and
McConnell also told their interlocutors that the US opposes an Israeli strike
against Iran. As a consequence the US will deny the IDF the right to fly over
Iraqi airspace.

Alarmed by the administration's swift slide toward Iran in recent months, senior
IDF commanders and cabinet ministers have streamed into Washington. Last month
Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi spent a week in Washington trying
to convince the US to change course. After Ashkenazi failed to deliver the
goods, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and
Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz all converged on Washington. They too
failed.

To hide the US's now openly pro-Iranian position from the public, Mullen gave
Ashkenazi an unrequested Legion of Merit decoration. Gates agreed to supply
Israel with advanced anti-missile defense systems that could be deployed as
early as 2011 if funding is steady. If deployed successfully, these anti-missile
systems should be able to intercept up to 90 percent of incoming Iranian nuclear
warheads.

SPEAKING OF Russia's invasion of Georgia over the weekend, Gates claimed that
Russia's actions would harm its relations with the US and the West "for years to
come." But at the same time, he demurred from mentioning even one concrete step
that the administration is considering adopting against Russia, arguing that
"there is no need to rush into everything."

The administration has been accused by its critics of ignoring the strategic
alliance among Russia, Iran and Syria. That alliance has been made most apparent
by Russia's assistance to Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and its
provision of sophisticated air-defense systems to both countries. Yet it is more
likely that the administration is acutely aware of that alliance. Bush has
simply decided to follow Gates's recommendation of appeasing all three.

Gates's position presents a daunting challenge to Israel and indeed to the US.
If Iran is to be prevented from carrying out genocide, and if Bush hopes to
leave office with even a shred of international credibility, Gates must be
shunted firmly to the side.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SECRETARY ROBERT Gates. Pushing to abandon the US's alliance
with Israel in favor of embracing Iraq's Iranian and Arab neighbors? (Credit:
Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

859 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 18, 2008 Monday

Make national elections more local

BYLINE: JEFF BARAK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 868 words

HIGHLIGHT: In the campaigns for Tel Aviv and Jerusalem city halls, the voters
have a clear choice. The writer is a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem
Post.

All politics is local, Tip O'Neill, the liberal Democratic congressman and
longstanding speaker of the House, once said. It's clear he didn't know much
about the Israeli political system, where proportional representation ensures
that sectoral, not regional or local issues, have the upper hand. Local issues
again took the back seat last week as Ehud Barak's attack on Tzipi (or Tzipora
as he prefers to call her) Livni caught the headlines, despite the fact that the
more meaningful political development was the decision of Hadash MK Dov Henin to
stand as a candidate in the Tel Aviv municipal elections. Hadash, the only
Jewish-Arab party in the Knesset, might be best known for its very left-wing,
pro-Palestinian standpoint, but it has also become one of the more impressive
voices for the country's environmental movement, thanks to first-term MK Henin.

The co-chair of the Knesset's socio-environmental caucus, Henin has a radically
different vision for Tel Aviv than its current mayor, Ron Huldai. Over the past
decade of Huldai's tenancy in city hall, huge tower blocks have sprung up over
the city, providing attractive apartments for the wealthy but pushing the
less-affluent out of the city. Henin, standing as the head of the Ir Lekulanu (A
City for All of Us) list, intends to change this through massive public housing
projects, in which municipal firms will buy buildings and then rent them out
cheaply. All new developments, he pledges, will have to plan for a mixed- income
neighborhood and not just another skyscraper for the wealthy. And fixing his
sights on the traffic jams and air pollution for which Tel Aviv is infamous,
Henin also promises to reduce Tel Avivians' reliance on their private cars by
revolutionizing the city's public transportation system and making it far more
accessible.

Until Henin announced his candidacy, Huldai's status as Tel Aviv mayor seemed
certain - he won 63 percent of the vote last time around. Suddenly, Huldai too
is beginning to make noises about the need for more affordable housing in the
city as he realizes that he might have a fight on his hands.

What makes Henin's decision to run for mayor so refreshing is that unlike the
ideological emptiness engulfing the candidates in the Kadima leadership election
campaign, he has a clear and cohesive view of how things should be run and a
proven track record, both in this present Knesset and as a past chairman of the
umbrella environmental organization, Environment and Life, of implementing
change. He represents a threat to the established order and provides Tel
Avivians a real alternative in much the same way that Ken Livingstone in London
challenged the consensus when he ran his first, successful mayoral campaign.

SIMILARLY, IN Jerusalem, voters there will get a real choice following United
Torah Judaism's decision to replace Uri Lupoliansky, the present mayor and a
member of UTJ's Degel Hatorah faction, with Meir Porush, the representative of
UTJ's hassidic Agudat Yisrael faction.

For many, Lupoliansky was the smiling face of haredi Judaism and a politician
who did not seek unnecessary conflict. His past record as the founder of the
estimable Yad Sarah organization, which loans out medical equipment, wheelchairs
and the like for free, made him popular among the secular public too, which also
uses its services and for which Lupoliansky was rightly awarded the Israel
Prize.

Porush, with his long flowing beard and sharp tongue, is a different kettle of
fish. He has a long career as a haredi politician, both on the local and
national level, and sees his mission in life as representing, first and
foremost, the (extremely) narrow interests of his particular constituents. With
Porush as mayor, Jerusalem's gay pride parade, for example, is unlikely to pass
by as peacefully as the last one.

In the past, the secular residents of Jerusalem - a dying breed it has to be
said - have accommodated the haredi political interests by simply not turning
out to vote, leaving the political playing field open to the haredim. Now, faced
with the prospect of a full-on haredi mayor - let's not forget it was pressure
from Lupoliansky's haredi colleagues that forced the ridiculous Taliban-style
clothes on the young dancers at the opening ceremony for Jerusalem's Bridge of
Strings - these secular residents have a chance, possibly the last chance, to
keep the city in the 21st century. That is providing they don't elect Arkadi
Gaydamak, who has made no secret of the fact that his vision of Jerusalem is
that of one big shtetl, with him playing the role of the gvir.

But whatever the results of the municipal elections in November, the
contribution of politicians such as Henin and Porush is that they are offering
the electorate a clear choice: an economically left-wing, environmentally aware
vision for Tel Aviv in Henin's case, or an uncompromising haredi worldview in
Porush's, leaving the voters in no doubt as to what they are voting for or
against. If only our national politicians, and first and foremost the candidates
for Kadima's leadership, would follow these local politicians' example and
provide the wider electorate with a clearer sense of the direction in which they
want to lead.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: TEL AVIV skyline. Hadash MK Dov Henin (inset) has a radically
different vision than does the current mayor, Ron Huldai. (Credit: Ariel
Jerozolimski/The Jerusalem Post)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

860 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 18, 2008 Monday

Sexual harassment taints campus life

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 733 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Odds are Eyal Ben-Ari will never be charged, much less convicted, with outright
sexual assault. Ben-Ari is the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Sociology and
Anthropology professor who was arrested after an anonymous letter claimed that
he serially extorted sex from female doctoral candidates. Police have barred him
from campus for 30 days. Yet so far they have managed to convince only three
students to testify against him and these corroborated allegations are of sexual
harassment, not rape and assault as the unsigned letter charges.

To be sure, Ben-Ari is hardly the only Hebrew University faculty member to be
the subject of such continual innuendo. And the rumor mill has also been
generating allegations at other Israeli institutions of higher learning. The
higher women students climb on the academic ladder, the more they can be at the
mercy of their personal dissertation advisers.

Prof. Orit Kamir, a specialist in feminist jurisprudence who drafted a sexual
harassment bill that was adopted into law by the Knesset a decade ago, explains
that women graduate students "fall into inbuilt structural traps," which
sometimes render them as timid as battered wives.

Identifying advisers willing to take time away from their own research, writing
and teaching is never easy. So graduate students who have invested years of hard
work find themselves dependent on the goodwill of a lone academic mentor
theoretically capable of sabotaging their professional futures.

For instance, professors can dissuade colleagues from taking "rebellious"
students under their wings, prevent grants from coming their way, and
effectively thwart publication or participation in international conferences,
and foil appointments or job offers.

Such destructive powers are underscored by the travails of women in Israeli
academia. The Hebrew University's entire Committee on Gender Issues resigned
last week to protest institutional discrimination, evident in the fact that
annually half of PhD graduates are women, yet they reportedly account for only
11% of recent senior faculty appointments.

The persistent buzz on campus intensifies the suspicion that where there is so
much smoke, there must be at least some fire. The situation in Israel's halls of
academe isn't unlike what was whispered for decades in the IDF about the
pressure for sexual favors imposed by officers on young women recruits. Over
time a norm of exploitation and degradation was uncovered. Stricter enforcement
of rules has by no means rooted out all abuse of authority, but it has reduced
it considerably and empowered women soldiers to stand up for their rights and
complain.

THE TIME has come for female graduate students, part of our intellectual elite
and therefore people presumed to be aware and relatively self-assured, to assert
themselves. The trouble is that, as things stand, professor-protege relations
are entirely unregulated on Israeli campuses. As distinct from the situation in
many foreign universities, there aren't even explicit rules here that prohibit
sexual relations between teacher and student.

Legal restrictions obviously constitute no actual barrier to untoward demands,
but they at least put both predator and victim on notice that rights are being
infringed upon.

This newspaper therefore fully supports the initiative of MK Zehava Gal-On
(Meretz) and 22 women's rights groups who have called upon the education
minister to champion legal protection for women students.

Women activists are justified in maintaining that by not explicitly forbidding
dubious relations, higher education institutions are indirectly complicit in the
sexual exploitation of female students.

Next, creative - indeed innovative - thinking to free doctoral candidates of
dependency on a single adviser is in order. Ways could be devised to involve
more than one person of authority in essentially making or breaking a young
woman's academic career.

We would like to imagine that the apparent current lackadaisical attitude on the
part of Israeli universities could be transformed into pioneering arrangements
that would liberate women academics.

Ben-Ari is innocent until proven guilty. But no matter the legal outcome of the
his case, it may turn into a blessing in disguise - if for no other reason than
to have illuminated what was hitherto a dark reality.

"Sunlight," as US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, "is the best
disinfectant."

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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All Rights Reserved

861 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 18, 2008 Monday

Israel's grand strategy

BYLINE: BARRY RUBIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1030 words

HIGHLIGHT: A coherent foreign policy is driving our leadership. The Region. The
writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center and
editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal and Turkish
Studies

I'll bet you didn't know that Israel has a strategy. After all, given
politicians' maneuvering, the difference between what is said in public and
private, the partisan sniping and so on, it's easy to miss the underlying
coherence of policy. This is not to suggest that politicians are thinking great
ideas and putting them into effect; rather it is the set of interests, threats
and opportunities that push people into a coherent structure.

There is no solution; the enemy is not going away, nor will it moderate. The
world wants to hear that Israel is seeking peace and doing everything possible,
and it will.

Yet the fact that these expectations are wrong is also an essential part of the
idea package.

Total military triumph is also not a way to solve the problems, as far as ending
them is concerned. Attacks can be deterred, reduced in number and made less
effective, but actual peace is beyond reach.

If, however, the threats and their effect can be minimized, life goes on and the
country does well. So far this year, unemployment has hit a 20-year low, the
economy is doing incredibly well and tourism has hit an all-time high. Morale is
high despite contempt for the current prime minister. Things are pretty good.

This does not mean people are na·ve, even compared to the levels of hope in the
1990s. Lessons have been learned. So here's what underlies what's happening.

ISRAEL IS facing threats on four fronts. In each case, there is an effort under
way to neutralize, or rather reduce, those problems.

* To the north is Hizbullah. The Lebanese radical Islamist group will never
accept Israel's existence. If it thinks such actions are profitable Hizbullah
will attack, at least through cross-border raids. The prisoner exchange has not
sated its appetite; instead, it has produced more bragging. But it has also
contributed to undercutting one of its most compelling means of incitement.

Hizbullah's main problem, however, is two-fold. Its top priority is securing the
bulk of power within Lebanon and at least doing well in next May's election.
Fighting Israel right now is a distraction from that goal. In addition,
Hizbullah reduced its popularity in 2006 with just such a war and has not been
able to rehouse many of its supporters after two years, despite lavish promises.

Aside from the cost of the attack, Israel's tactic is to warn Lebanon that now
with Hizbullah back in the government, any aggression will result in all of
Lebanon being a target. Israel's deterrence on this front should not be
underestimated, and it is likely to remain relatively quiet for a while.

*To the northeast is Syria, with whom the government is currently negotiating.
Virtually no one in the leadership expects an agreement. But aside from domestic
politics, the immediate goal is to give Syria an incentive to keep Hizbullah on
a leash. The attack on Syria's nuclear installation, probable involvement in
assassinating a high- ranking Hizbullah official allied to Syria and a possible
part in killing a Syrian general also signalled Damascus that Israel can hit it
hard if necessary.

A key aspect is the humiliating nature of these three incidents. The IAF showed
its planes could attack anywhere in Syria. and that a high-ranking terrorist was
not safe even in Damascus's most secure area. That sent a clear message.

So Syria is constrained from attacking directly or indirectly. But there is
another element of Israeli policy towards that country that is little
understood: the looming confrontation with Iran over nuclear weapons. If Israel
some day attacks Iran, it wants to minimize the extent to which Syria or
Hizbullah would retaliate. By providing them incentives to remain quiet -
reinforced by deterrence power - these two forces are less likely to attack, or
would do so at a lower level. A similar pattern exists on the eastern front,
with the Palestinian Authority, and southern one, with Hamas.

* Regarding the PA, Israel wants to see Fatah remain in power: Hamas would be
worse, and the PA does do a bit to block terrorism. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are eager either to reach an agreement in
principle with the PA (nowadays called a shelf agreement) or pretend to have
done so to claim great success. At the same time, though, there is little
illusion about possible peace and no better real alternative than maintaining
the status quo.

* In the short term, the Hamas front is the most potentially volatile. Through
the cease-fire, Hamas has been given incentive not to go to all-out war if its
patron Iran is attacked. Of course, Hamas frequently violates the cease-fire,
either directly or by tolerating attacks - but at a low level. For Israel, the
decision posed is what amount of violations (or in the longer run, Hamas
military buildup) should trigger an offensive. There are also few illusions
about a military attack "ending" the problem or stopping rocket firing
completely. Virtually nobody thinks Hamas will make peace or even a long-term,
reliable cease- fire. Yet again the status quo is about the best that can be
accomplished.

THE EFFORTS on these four fronts will not necessarily diminish the response to a
future attack on Iran, but they could and are - for other reasons as well -
basically worth trying. This doesn't mean all politicians would implement this
strategy the same way or that the current government's actions are brilliant -
in general terms, the current leadership gives up more than is advisable or
necessary - but the gap isn't huge.

The bottom line is that being prepared to focus on the Iranian front, the
relatively good domestic situation, internal politics, the lack of attractive
alternatives, the intransigence of opponents, the weakness and doubtful
moderation of potential negotiating partners and international passion for the
mirage of peace have created a strategy based on a relative consensus across the
political spectrum. It looks messy and certainly poses a range of problems, yet
is neither terrible nor irrational.

One might apply here in joking terms the anecdote about Winston Churchill being
asked what it was like to be 90 years old. "Terrible," he replied, "but consider
the alternatives."

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GRAPHIC: Photo: TZIPI LIVNI and Ehud Olmert. A man - and a woman - with a plan?
(Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski/The Jerusalem Post)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 18, 2008 Monday

Letters

BYLINE: Namik Tan, Lars Knuchel, Arnold Sullum, Dr. Jan Sokolovsky, Mattias
Rotenberg, Elana Sztokman, Joe Frankl. Jerusalem Post staff

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1117 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Biased view

Sir, - I was deeply disappointed to read the piece by Caroline B. Glick
("Turkey's abandonment of the West," August 12) which constitutes yet another
grossly biased and ill-informed view by this author on Turkey and its efforts
toward reaching a sustainable peace in theMiddle East.

Although the impeccable record of Turkish-Israeli relations, as well as the role
that Turkey has been playing to promote peace and stability in the region, which
is highly regarded by all concerned parties, simply discredit Glick's innuendos,
I still believe that this prejudiced piece, full of farfetched and baseless
arguments, should not have found a place in your paper, which is well known for
its objective and balanced reporting.

NAMIK TAN

Ambassador, Republic of Turkey Tel Aviv

For your information

Sir, - Hillel Neuer's op-ed 2008 "Who will guard human rights at the UN?" (July
14) was republished by the Israel Hasbara Committee in New York on August 12. We
would like to draw your attention to the following facts:

1) Human rights issues and the human rights situation in Iran were on the agenda
of the talks that Swiss Federal Councillor Micheline Calmy-Rey held with Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in
Teheran. In her meetings and in a press conference, Federal Councillor Calmy-Rey
expressed her concerns about the human rights situation in Iran and the
unacceptable rhetoric of the Iranian leadership against Israel.

2) Calmy-Rey was neither a candidate for the post of UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights nor has she ever been "vigorously campaigning" for it.

3) On Monday, July 28, the General Assembly approved the appointment by UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of Judge Navanethem Pillay as United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights.

LARS KNUCHEL

Deputy Head of Information

Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

Berne

What chutzpa

Sir, - It is disheartening to note that Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski is
following the path of previous chairman Avraham Burg and engaging in political
activities while receiving a full-time salary plus perks from the agency
("Livni: First I'll win Kadima primary, then we'll win national election,"
August 17). The Jerusalem Post reported that Bielski endorsed Tzipi Livni as
head of Kadima. Burg recently had the chutzpa to sue the agency which did not
continue to provide a driver and vehicle for his personal use! Is it any wonder
that the Israeli public holds public officials in low regard?

ARNOLD SULLUM

Jerusalem

Ratification not needed

Sir, - In the editorial "Boundaries for Israel" (August 15), you point out the
dangers of Israel's negotiating a "shelf agreement" with the Palestinians under
the current circumstances. However, when you note, "The chances of him winning
Knesset ratification for any 'shelf agreement' are close to nil," you
incorrectly assume that ratification by the Knesset is necessary before it would
enter into effect.

Unlike in America and in most European states, this is not our law. Here, when
the government signs a treaty, we are bound internationally without any prior
action by the Knesset. Knesset approval is required only to make the treaty part
of our domestic law. We were bound by the Oslo Accords when Yitzhak Rabin signed
on the White House lawn.

There is now a bill in the Knesset which seeks to rectify this anomaly in our
law. Prof. Malvina Halberstam, a world-renowned expert in international law,
explained the need to enact such a law, in a Jerusalem Post article entitled
"The cart before the horse" (April 27, 1994) when a similar law was first
proposed. It is even more relevant today.

DR. JAN SOKOLOVSKY

Jerusalem

Ride a bike

Sir, - On the same day that Ehud Waldoks reported about the green agenda in the
upcoming Tel Aviv mayoral election ("Next Tel Aviv mayor's big challenge is to
clear the air," August 14), The Jerusalem Post printed an article entitled
"Flush with energy" about why Denmark leads in clean power.

What shocks me about the Waldoks article is that there is no mention of the
noise polluting, air polluting buses and cars. To this observer, the one thing
that ruins the quality of life in Tel Aviv more than anything else is the buses
and cars. Not to mention 100 deaths and 26,000 cases of pulmonary illness in
children.

Just imagine a Tel Aviv where 50 percent of its work force commutes to work by
bike every day - even in the rain. Imagine a Tel Aviv where all taxis, buses and
cars are electric. Gas stations and their pollution problems would be
non-existent.

In Denmark the cost of gasoline is $10 a gallon and rising ($4 in the States)
because of high energy taxes.They will consequently lower income taxes.

What a revolution that would be here.

MATTIAS ROTENBERG

Petah Tikva

Not quite so rare

Sir, - I'm delighted to hear that in Dr. Nir Osherov's department at Tel Aviv
University the view is optimistic ("This bias is rare," Letters, August 14).
Nonetheless, the statistics I cite in my op-ed ("You want that degree? Sleep
with the professor," August 13) come from the extensive, longitudinal work done
by Nina Toren about all the departments in all the universities, coupled with
the investigation currently under way at Hebrew University and my own 13 years
of personal experience and compiled anecdotal evidence. I look forward to the
day when all the departments in all the universities reflect the culture created
in Nir's.

ELANA SZTOKMAN

Jerusalem

Self reliance

Sir, - What do Georgia and Czechoslovakia have in common?

Both were small, democratic peace loving countries. Both were attacked by big
and powerful neighboring dictatorships on some pretext. Both had close ties with
Western democratic countries and both had treaties with powerful Western
countries to guarantee their integrity.

And when attacked both were abandoned by their Western sponsors when, in spite
of treaties and sweet promises, it became politically expedient. In both
instances appeasement was - in the short term - more convenient to the Western
powers than meeting their moral and treaty obligations.

Israel must learn that lesson. Israel, too is a small, democratic country
surrounded by aggressive and extremist dictatorships. We too have treaties, but
when it comes to the crunch we cannot rely on all those sweet promises US
President George W. Bush murmured when here for our 60th anniversary.

We can only rely on ourselves and make our decisions according to what is best
for us. We must ignore other countries' pressures or wishes. If it means
preempting, so be it.

JOE FRANKL

Savyon

Correction

The photographs accompanying the article "Animal farm in Sderot" (August 5) were
incorrectly identified as "courtesy photos." They were taken by Noam Bedein.

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August 17, 2008 Sunday

The SAMs of Suez

BYLINE: YEHUDA AVNER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1964 words

HIGHLIGHT: When Menachem Begin predicted the Yom Kippur War. The writer served
on the personal staff of five prime ministers, including Golda Meir, Yitzhak
Rabin and Menachem Begin.

The overture to the 1973 Yom Kippur War came in the form of a now all but
forgotten conflagration called the War of Attrition. It was orchestrated by the
thousands of Soviet instructors in Egypt who were rapidly retraining and
re-equipping that country's battered army after the Arab debacle of the 1967 Six
Day War.

In March 1968 the Egyptians launched a massive bombardment of Israel's
fortifications along the Suez Canal, from which time on the greasy black puffs
of bursting shells rained ever more relentlessly and lethally upon the IDF's
forward positions - the Bar-Lev line. Casualties mounted and Israel hit back
with escalating and deep-penetrating ferocity. Yet the Egyptians pounded on,
intent on compelling the IDF to abandon the canal line while pushing forward
their umbrella of sophisticated Soviet surface-to-air missiles - SAMs - to
neutralize Israel's overwhelming air superiority. The one hope the Egyptians
ever had of regaining the Sinai by force was by first knocking IAF aircraft from
the skies so as to enable their amphibious forces to cross the canal. The
Soviet- manned SAMs were designed to do just that.

The War of Attrition went on for more than two years until, in August 1970, the
Americans, under president Richard Nixon, and through his secretary of state
William Rogers, brokered a cease-fire. The Rogers initiative was a
political-military package in which both sides agreed to stop shooting and start
talking under a UN umbrella. The envisaged talks were to be essentially based on
the famous Security Council Resolution 242, which called for "withdrawal of
Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent [1967] conflict."
This, to Menachem Begin, was anathema.

After much wrangling, prime minister Golda Meir finally accepted the US
initiative, whereupon Begin and his party quit her government. As they saw it,
Israel was being asked to commit itself to a withdrawal even before a concrete
peace proposal was in sight.

Worse was to follow when, hours after the cease-fire came into effect, Egypt
brazenly violated it by rushing its SAM umbrella into the designated standstill
zone adjacent to the canal, achieving by stealth what it had failed to
accomplish by attrition. Cairo now had the means to clear the skies of Israeli
aircraft whenever it resolved to strike across the canal.

Golda fumed. She demanded the missiles be removed forthwith, but Nixon,
embroiled in his losing war in Vietnam and fearful of a direct confrontation
with the Soviets, procrastinated. He showered the prime minister with hopeful
reassurances until she succumbed, igniting Begin's outrage. When Washington
refused to even officially acknowledge that a violation had taken place,
indignation launched him into a barrage of dire prophecy, predicting with
uncanny prescience the inevitability of the Yom Kippur War.

He told the Knesset: "The Egyptians, with the aid of their Russian advisers,
have violated the cease-fire in a manner so gross it threatens our security,
indeed our very future. They have deployed batteries of enhanced SAM missiles
capable of penetrating to a depth of 10 to 15 kilometers over our side of the
canal. Hence, whenever Egypt decides to reopen fire - and knowing the realities
we have to assume that such a day shall surely come - it will have a decisive
advantage over us. Given its expanded missile umbrella, it will be very
difficult for our air force to hit back without sustaining substantial losses.
This is the reality, and our people must know it."

WITH THIS crescendo of indignation, Begin wound up his speech and stepped down
from the podium into a crowd of admirers who showered him with their fervent
praise, to which he responded with thanks full of grace. He made his way to the
Knesset dining room where Golda was conversing with Yitzhak Rabin, then
ambassador to Washington.

"That was some fire and brimstone," hissed Golda derisively as the opposition
leader walked by.

"And I hope you took note of my every word, Madame Prime Minister," commented
Begin with an air of impudence and gravity in delicate balance.

"What you don't seem to understand," she scolded, "is that we have a new
situation on our hands. There would be no cease-fire unless we accepted all the
conditions of the Rogers initiative. We couldn't choose half the package without
the other."

"But they hardly consulted us," countered Begin. "Rogers gave us a letter to
sign. You initially rejected it. You had reservations, and you rightly sought to
insert changes. But in the end, it was all but dictated to us."

"Nonsense!"

"Is it? In my view there is a smell of an imposed US- Soviet solution brewing.
Nixon is going to sell us out!"

This irked Golda so much she raised her voice: "You know very well I've totally
rejected any whiff of an attempt to impose a solution on us. I will not go back
to the 1967 lines, and I've made this plain both to Rogers and to the president.
I told them both that Israel will neither be a victim to American appeasement of
the Arabs nor to their big power politics with Russia."

"True, but you should never have given in to their appeasement over the
cease-fire violations, which they themselves brokered. We shall pay a heavy
price for that one day. Moreover, I genuinely believe your acceptance of the 242
language of 'withdrawal' is the beginning of a major unconditional retreat from
all of the cease-fire lines."

"Goodness gracious, Begin" - Golda's eyebrows were arched provocatively - "how
you get carried away by your own rhetoric! If only you stammered or hesitated
occasionally."

Unperturbed, Begin bayoneted, "No, Madame, this is an instance when you have
gotten carried away by your own wishful thinking. Nixon is playing chess with
the fate of Israel. This could be a Middle East Munich. America seems to be more
interested in Arab oil than in Israel's secure future."

"With all due respect, Mr. Begin," interrupted Rabin, his voice deferential but
terse, "only recently president Nixon told me the very opposite. I believe we
have a good friend in Richard Nixon."

"A good friend? People tell me the man's an anti- Semite."

Rabin smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes: "Confidentially, I'd say yes,
he is an anti-Semite," he said in his characteristic baritone. "He doesn't like
the way Jews overwhelmingly vote Democrat, and he certainly doesn't like the way
liberal Jews are at the forefront of the anti-Vietnam War campaign. Moreover, he
probably believes Jews control the press, and he suspects many are more loyal to
Israel than to America. However, this hasn't stopped him from appointing
individual Jews to high places, like Henry Kissinger, based on their exceptional
competence. I think he has the highest regard for our leaders" - this with a nod
toward Golda - "and admires our guts in defense of our national interests.
Certainly he recognizes Israel as an American asset in the Cold War."

Begin sat down uninvited. "So how does that square with Rogers cease-fire
initiative, which is tantamount to appeasing the Russians and the Arabs?" he
asked.

"It squares," said Rabin, sinking his teeth into the argument, "because all
along Nixon and Kissinger have known that in the War of Attrition the Soviets
and the Egyptians were putting us both - America and Israel - to a test. They
know the Soviets are feeding and manipulating the entire Egyptian war effort.
That's why I was the one to advocate deep penetration raids into the heart of
Egyptian territory, to prove to the Americans that we have what it takes to
stand up to the Soviets. Those raids not only changed the balance of power along
the fighting front, they tipped the scales of the superpower confrontation in
America's favor. And thanks to that it ensures our American arms supplies. But
Nixon, nevertheless, has to strike a balance."

TO MAKE his point he extracted from his pocket a sheet of paper, and said, "Let
me quote Nixon's own words to me." He read: " 'If it were just a question of
Israel against the Egyptians and the Syrians, I'd say, "Let 'em have it! Hit 'em
as hard as you can." Every time I hear you penetrating deep into their territory
and hitting them hard on the nose, it gives me great satisfaction. But it's not
just a problem of Egypt and Syria alone. The other Arab states are watching,
too, so we have to play it in a manner that we won't lose everything in the
Middle East. We want to help you without harming ourselves by losing the
Arabs.'"

Here, Rabin paused, and when he read on there was a touch of triumph in his
voice: "'Damn the oil! America can get it from other sources. We have to stand
by decent nations in the Middle East. We will back you militarily, but the
military escalation can't go on endlessly. We must do something politically.'
And that," concluded Rabin, "is the meaning of the Rogers initiative."

To which Golda, brimming with gratification at her ambassador's first-hand
analysis, said, "I, personally, don't think any American president has ever
uttered such a pro-Israel statement before. Add to that, in return for our
accepting the Rogers cease-fire package Nixon has promised me we will not be
expected to withdraw a single soldier from the cease-fire lines except in the
context of a contractual peace agreement which we would regard satisfactory to
our security needs. Moreover, had we not accepted the Rogers initiative we would
not be getting any more American arms. Surely you understand that!"

Begin dismissed this clincher with a perfunctory wave of the hand. "What do you
mean we wouldn't be getting American arms? We would demand them."

"You know, Begin," said Golda sarcastically, "you sometimes make me think you're
a mystic. You've convinced yourself that all we have to do is to go on telling
the United States that we won't give in to pressure and that if we do this long
and loud enough, then one day that pressure will vanish."

"My good lady," responded Begin in a similar patronizing vein, "you trivialize
Israel's importance to the United States of America."

"Do I? I think that though the American commitment to Israel's survival is
certainly great, I'm afraid we need Mr. Nixon and Mr. Rogers much more than they
need us."

"I disagree!" said Begin with a vigorous shake of the head. "The Americans don't
give us arms out of the kindness of their hearts. Israel is doing more for
America in keeping the Soviet Union at bay in the Middle East than what America
is doing for Israel to defend itself, and I dare say Mr. Nixon is well aware of
that. Besides, you must not underestimate the voice of American Jewry."

"Oh, I don't. But I'm afraid our policies can't be based entirely on the
assumption that American Jewry either would or could compel Mr. Nixon to adopt a
position against his will and better judgment, especially when he doesn't like
liberal-minded Jews."

"We shall see," said Begin rising, and turning to Rabin said with a becoming
smile. "I beg of you not to misconstrue my argument with the prime minister as
something personal. Mrs. Meir and I differ on many issues, but I assure you that
I regard her as a proud and courageous Jewess."

"Stop being a schmoozer," snapped Golda with a grin that greatly softened her
craggy and aging features.

"No, no, madame, I say this not in flattery. I shall always oppose you whenever
I believe you are in error, as I do now. But on the personal level my respect
for you shall never waver. I simply pray that my reservations with regard to
your present policy will prove unfounded, but I fear they won't."

Whereupon, he semi-bowed and moved off to join a table of fellow oppositionists
for a glass of lemon tea.

Three years later, in October 1973, under the umbrella of the SAM missiles,
Egyptian armies massively crossed the Suez Canal and so ended the cease-fire and
so began the Yom Kippur War.

avner28@netvision.net.il

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: FIELD HOSPITAL during the Yom Kippur War. Egypt violated the
1970 cease-fire to set up a missile umbrella over the Suez Canal, ensuring skies
clear of Israeli planes when it attacked three years later. (Credit: Starphot)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 17, 2008 Sunday

Chavez's darkest side

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 733 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

President Hugo Chavez met with World Jewish Congress leaders on Wednesday,
pledging to work together against anti-Semitism and open up channels of
communication despite strong differences on Mideast politics.

- Associated Press, August 14

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wants South American countries to create their
own version of OPEC. At the same time, his country has been charged with
providing financial support to Hizbullah. Such are Venezuela's dangerous
juxtapositions under Chavez: massive oil wealth and an appalling foreign policy.

None of Chavez's views is more appalling, in fact, or more characteristic than
his obsession with Israel and the Jews. During the Second Lebanon War, he
compared Israeli tactics with the "methods of Hitler." Israel's actions amounted
to "a new Holocaust," he said, and promptly downgraded diplomatic relations with
us.

In a July 2006 interview with al-Jazeera TV, Chavez touched on the relations
between the US and Israel: "The greatest menace to the future of humanity is the
United States, and one of its instruments of aggression in [your] part of the
world is the State of Israel."

The region's real instruments of aggression, meanwhile, find in Chavez a
reliable ally. Venezuela harbors Hizbullah terrorists like Hakim Mamad Ali Diab
Fattah and explosives expert Abdul Ghani Suleiman Wanked. And in Lebanon,
Hizbullah trains young Venezuelans, members of Chavez's PSUV party, who are
recruited by, among others, Tarek el Ayssami, Venezuelan vice-minister of the
interior, and Gahzi Nasr Al Din, a diplomat at Venezuela's embassy in Beirut.

Besides Venezuela's close ties with Hizbullah, there is also the warm
relationship between Caracas and Teheran, capitals with little in common save an
avidity for petrodollars and a shared hatred of America and Israel. Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who has made three official visits to Caracas in the last two
years, has presented Chavez with Iran's highest honor for "supporting Teheran"
in its nuclear standoff with the international community.

WHAT ACCOUNTS for this Latin American populist's antagonism toward Israel, 6,500
miles distant, and his gestures of friendship to its foes?

In part, Chavez's anger is stirred by the knowledge that Israel has been
supplying his Colombian enemies in Bogota with drone aircraft, arms, ammunition
and electronic equipment for use in combating the leftist FARC rebels Chavez
supports. And he wasn't pleased when Israel joined Washington's arms embargo of
Venezuela two years ago; or when Israeli defense officials thwarted Venezuelan
bids to buy high-resolution satellite imagery.

Chavez's anger at Israel is sometimes a matter of domestic political expediency,
as when he likened the plight of Venezuela's Indians to that of the
Palestinians, or when he wished to insult Colombia by calling it "the new
Israel."

But the darkest side of Chavez's fixation on the region is revealed in his
intermittent bursts of anti- Semitism. About 12,000 Jews remain in the country.

In an address he delivered on Christmas Eve in 2004, for instance, Chavez spoke
of "minorities, the descendants of those who crucified Christ," who had "taken
possession of the riches of the world."

Such rhetoric bears all-too-real consequences. Since Chavez took office in 1999,
an unprecedented wave of anti- Semitism has surged throughout this Latin
American country, which once provided haven for Holocaust survivors. The
Sephardi Tifferet Israel synagogue suffered repeated attacks in the wake of
pro-Chavez demonstrations. Club Hebraica, the Caracas Jewish community center,
has endured two inexplicable police raids. And the verbal intimidation in the
government-sponsored media is too pervasive even to list.

CHAVEZ, who heads a regime that controls over 100 billion barrels of proven oil
reserves, the largest of any country in the Western hemisphere, is someone who
shows no hesitation in wielding oil - or the disruption of supply - as a
political weapon. He has warned, for instance, that oil prices will soar in the
event of a strike on Iran.

Tempting though it may be, therefore, to dismiss Chavez's ravings, we cannot
turn a blind eye to them. We must protest his alliance with the region's
terrorists and tyrants and ensure that Chavez pays dearly for befriending them.

Yes, his meeting with Jewish leaders was welcome news - but only if it heralds a
genuine change in policy toward Jews and the Jewish state.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 17, 2008 Sunday

Letters

BYLINE: Rabbi Shlomo Wexler, Stuart Pilichowski, Pircha Lottner, Bernard Smith,
Paul David Swinford

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 948 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Kosher counter...

Sir, - Rabbi David Eliezrie's "It's Kosher in Iowa" (August 14) was very
welcome. I believe it presented an accurate description of the Agriprocessors
meat plant in Postville and countered some of the heavy criticism of the kosher
slaughtering at that plant. It also gave your paper an opportunity to balance
recent articles showing undue confidence in the work of Dr. Temple Grandin, who
designs non-kosher processing plants in many countries and may not sympathize
with kosher slaughter or understand how necessary it is for Orthodox Jews.

Rabbi Eliezrie may also have some bias in favor of kosher slaughter, but it is
important for Post readers who observe kashrut to read his views.

RABBI SHLOMO WEXLER

Jerusalem

...where it's all tip-top

Sir, - I often perform worker interviews, safety and compliance checks at
manufacturing plants in the Middle East.

So on the one hand we have Rabbi Eliezrie, who visited the Agriprocessors plant
one day with a large group of rabbis from various Orthodox organizations and
found everything in tip-top shape. And on the other hand we have the state labor
investigators identifying 57 under-age workers who were employed at the kosher
meat-packing plant and have asked the attorney-general to bring criminal charges
against the company for child labor violations. In a raid in May, 389 illegal
immigrant workers were detained there in the largest immigration enforcement
operation ever at a single workplace.

Of course today, after submission of the state investigators's report to the
attorney-general, the plant is as clean as a whistle.

How often will the rabbinical organizations be going back to check workers'
ages, safety and compliance issues? Probably never. They've already stated that
that's the US government's job, not theirs.

STUART PILICHOWSKI

Mevaseret Zion

Plastic trees & broken walls

Sir, - In "Defending a Jerusalem oasis" (August 10) Gil Troy wrote: "All too
often in Israel, the big overwhelms the small."

Such, we saw, is the case in Petah Tikvah as traffic engineers, with the mayor's
blessing, turned a relatively quiet street into a throughway, endangering the
elderly and schoolchildren on their respective ways to morning library
activities and school. Time after time, near-catastrophes occurred, with
bicycle-riders and motorcyclists almost run down by traffic.

As to Petah Tikva's famous citrus trees: Concerned citizens banded together
hoping that, united, they could salvage some of the orchards, the last green
area in the Dan region. To no avail. A city of concrete arose over the rich soil
of the lush orchards. Today a token plastic orange tree stands at the center of
a crossroads where the original pioneers toiled to turn the swamps into world-
famous orange groves.

The latest hutzpa: After living happily for 35 years with garbage bins whose
color blends with the foliage, whose contents are always neat - the bins are
kept sparkling clean on the sidewalk - citizens who are the proud owners of
small enclosed gardens have received notice from the city that they must, at
their own expense, smash down their garden walls to make way for sheds that will
house their garbage bins.

Another item to be dealt with, demanding energy, funding and organization to
fight city hall.

PIRCHA LOTTNER

Petah Tikva

Israel as a way station

Sir, - Israel is a minuscule country which must maintain its Jewish character.
It cannot absorb tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Africa. But, for their
sake and our right to call ourselves Jews, we must play a role in saving them.

Instead of absorbing the refugees, Israel can be a way station. Those crossing
through Egypt could be temporarily housed and cared for until they went to a
prearranged receiving country, which would absorb them either as new citizens or
until it was safe to return to the Sudan; safe meaning an end to janjeweed
barbarity and even a change of government. Meanwhile, the UN would be tasked
with providing the funds to Israel for temporary shelter and upkeep.

Each UN member state - where conflict does not rage - would provide safe haven
for 500 to 10,000 refugees, depending on habitable land mass, size of population
and wealth. Norway, for example, could easily accept several thousand. It would
justify its preaching morality to certain nations by straining its resources to
admit more refugees than would ordinarily be reasonable.

European countries would benefit. Instead of filling their diminishing
populations with Arab countries' emigres, many unable or unwilling to be
absorbed into the host culture, they would find a people not only willing to
learn and join the workforce, but grateful to countries that saved them.

Meanwhile, the US, Britain and the other armed forces of NATO countries must
finally deal with the marauding vermin, the janjeweed, and the supporting
Sudanese armed forces. That means no military aircraft unaccompanied by US or
allied fighters flying over Darfur. Just as Saddam learned the lesson, Sudanese
helicopters and fighter planes would quickly be grounded. Armed men on horseback
or camels in Darfur would be targets for allied aircraft.

After so many have been mercilessly murdered, maimed and wounded, the nations of
the world must act justly. Otherwise, just as they enabled Hitler's atrocities,
they will stand accused of being Sudan's accomplices ("Death in the desert,"
UpFront, Larry Derfner, August 1).

BERNARD SMITH

Jerusalem

Sir, - I consider myself a strong Christian, but my hope for the future doesn't
lie in the Christian Church. Rather it is in Israel, in the heart and soul of
every Jew. "Israel is God's chosen people" isn't just a nice comment, it is also
the truth.

PAUL DAVID SWINFORD , Geneseo, Illinois

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The Jerusalem Post

August 17, 2008 Sunday

Nukes under concrete?

BYLINE: EPHRAIM ASCULAI

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 581 words

HIGHLIGHT: The burden of proof is on Syria. The writer is a senior research
fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).

In some old gangster films, as well as probably in real life, there is the scene
where the victim is thrown into a building construction mold and drowned in a
thick layer of cement. A tell-tale shoe that fell off in the old movies - and
more recently the hidden security camera - provides the clues that bring the
culprit to justice, even though the body has not been found. The case of Syria's
bombed Al-Kibar site holds many similarities to these gangster movie scenarios.

The photographic evidence of the existence of a nuclear reactor under
construction at the site was overwhelming: pictures of the reactor under
construction, with great similarities to a North Korean plutonium production
reactor, and its later camouflage by the construction of a surrounding building
that completely enclosed the structure; the intake of water from the Euphrates
River and the outlet of returning water from the building back into the
downstream of the river, which indicated the existence of a strong energy source
at the site. The most damning piece of evidence probably is the way the Syrians
razed the site, poured concrete over it and claimed that it was some sort of a
military site and not a nuclear reactor.

THIS SHOULD have been enough for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
to indict Syria for its violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
However, the IAEA requested an inspection of the bombed site in the hope that it
would be able to collect evidence that would clinch the matter. A four-day
inspection trip was made in June 2008, months after the Syrians finished their
clean-up of the site, but was probably limited by the Syrians to "classical"
IAEA inspection methods of visual observations and collection of samples. It is
doubtful whether these would uncover much, given the Syrian efforts at a
cleanup. The "corpse" still lies buried in the huge amount of poured concrete.
It is possible, however, that the IAEA inspectors were getting too close for
comfort, since Syria recently announced that it would not permit the inspectors
to return to the site.

In addition, the Syrians made an important diplomatic move, seeking a seat on
the IAEA Board of Governors, a 35- member forum that could decide that Syria
violated its obligations. Since most of the decisions in this body are made by
consensus, Syria would thus insure itself against condemnation. Thus, by
refusing inspections and gaining the seat of governor, which it has a good
chance of doing, Syria is taking out double insurance.

THE TIME has come for the IAEA to take a strong stance on the Syrian issue and
state that the burden is now upon Syria to prove that there was no reactor under
construction at the site. Syria would have to permit the most intrusive
inspections, using advanced technologies, such as thus called for in on-site
inspections of the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty. If Syria is unwilling to do
this, it should be censured and, at the very least, banned from becoming a
member of the IAEA Board of Governors. Given the attitude of the present
Director General of the IAEA, it is doubtful that this will happen.

The United States is also an important actor in the Syrian affair, since it
provided the evidence on Syria's misdeeds, and the connection to North Korea.
The US is acting against the proposal to let Syria become a member of the Board.
If it can persuade North Korea to disclose its connection to the Syrian nuclear
reactor, it will put an end to Syria's lies and denials.

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GRAPHIC: 2 photos: SUSPECTED SYRIAN nuclear reactor, before and after bombing.
Not enough for the International Atomic Energy Agency to indict for violation of
the Non-Proliferation Treaty?

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August 15, 2008 Friday

Boundaries for Israel

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 739 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Early this week Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly handed Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Israel's detailed proposal for a "shelf
agreement."

Olmert offered an Israeli pullback from 93 percent of Judea and Samaria,
"compensating" the Palestinians with territory from the Negev. A 40-km. link
would provide unfettered passage between Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinian
state would be demilitarized and "right of return" for refugees would be
exercised almost entirely within "Palestine." The Jerusalem issue would be put
off by mutual consent.

The Prime Minister's Office did not deny the proposal, reported in Haaretz,
which aims to preserve settlement blocs such as Ma'aleh Adumin and Gush Etzion.
Israel's hopes for Ariel, the strategic Jordan Valley, and other places were not
revealed.

According to the proposal, after the "shelf agreement" is signed, the Jewish
communities on the Palestinian side will be evacuated in a two-stage process:
the first, voluntary relocation and compensation; the second - presumably
involuntary - contingent on the Palestinians fulfilling various commitments.

By Tuesday night, however, Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh provided the
Palestinian response: "The Israeli proposal is unacceptable, it is a waste of
time. The Palestinian people will agree to a state with territorial contiguity
only in a way that includes Jerusalem as its capital." Saeb Erekat, the lead
Palestinian negotiator, described the report as full of "lies and half-truths" -
a public relations campaign against the Palestinians.

BEYOND the intriguing question of why the story was leaked by the Israeli side,
what impresses is how faithfully and unwaveringly Erekat and Abu Rudeineh adhere
to the Palestinian line. They demand an Israeli withdrawal to the June 4, 1967
boundaries; territorial contiguity; the "right of return;" Jerusalem as their
capital; and the removal of all Jewish communities beyond the 1949 Armistice
Lines.

By contrast, to this day Israel has yet to officially declare which territories
it insists on retaining in any deal with the Palestinians. This black hole in
Israeli diplomacy explains why international public opinion believes, wrongly,
that Israel should be, and even would be, prepared to withdraw to the 1967
"borders" assuming the details can be worked out. It will be an uphill battle to
disabuse the world of the notion that Israel can safely return to the
indefensible 1949 Armistice Lines - and to make a clear and unequivocal case for
the borders the Jewish state can live with.

GRANTED, IT sometimes seems as if the Abbas-Olmert talks are being conducted in
an alternative universe.

Discredited and unpopular, the premier has already announced he's stepping down.
The chances of him winning Knesset ratification for any "shelf agreement" are
close to nil. Abbas has limited influence in the West Bank, and none in Gaza,
which he has lost to Hamas. A referendum among West Bank Palestinians alone
would have limited legitimacy.

Yet the bargaining is very real, taking place on several planes - between the
two sides, among the parties' internal constituencies, and in the arena of
global public opinion.

As to substance, the Palestinians may well be right that the issue of Jerusalem
and the holy places can't reasonably be postponed. For what future would a shelf
agreement have if, at the end of the day, no accord was reached on Jerusalem?

Hard-nosed specificity trumps vague, feel-good pronouncements. For any deal to
garner support from the Israeli mainstream it must nail down the tough issues,
especially in the security realm. For instance, would "Palestine" have the
sovereign right to invite Iran to establish a military presence on its
territory? The Palestinians are demanding an airport and seaport. They want an
army. What is Israel's position on these?

THE STATUS quo is untenable politically, diplomatically and demographically,
making a two-state solution the preference of most Israelis. Yet Palestinian
spokesman are saying that unless Israel capitulates to their maximalist demands,
they will promote a one-state solution - aimed at the demographic destruction of
Israel.

That's why Israel needs to define, finally, the boundaries of the Jewish state
in the context of its vision for a viable two-state solution - and to place the
onus for failing to achieve "two states for two peoples" squarely where it
belongs: on 100 years of Palestinian intransigence.

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August 15, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Mike Ayl, Stuart & Hasja Palmer, Fred Gottlieb, C. Heuman

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 486 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Shock treatment

Sir, - Kol hakovod to Tamar Kagan for her letter "Taps off, briefly" (August
10). The authorities appear to be doing very little to prepare for the water
shortfall and possible advent of rationing. Neither the municipal authorities
nor the public appear to be taking much notice of the advertisements warning of
the shortage, and carry on blithely watering gardens and generally wasting
water.

Nothing would be as effective as a daily one- or two- hour total cutoff. Not
only would it start saving water, it would wake up all concerned and bring the
forthcoming crisis to everyone's attention.

Shock treatment is urgently required.

MIKE AYL

Ashkelon

Is there a doctor

in the house?

Sir, - So suddenly there is a manpower crisis in the hospitals, a trend which
has been well-known for many years ("Surgeons warn severe crisis in manpower
will endanger lives," August 11).

Our doctors and interns work so many hours as to be deprived not only of sleep
but also of family life. All this for a pitiful salary, which ultimately means a
pitiful pension and no perks. It is no wonder many seek their fortunes abroad,
to the detriment of our own healthcare system.

Do our prime minister and his associates in the Knesset - who enjoy salaries,
perks and pensions several times in excess of those earned by our doctors and
surgeons - have to study for seven years, plus an additional five to six years
of specialization, to run the country? I wonder how the health care system would
operate if it was based on patronage.

Of course, many doctors do supplement their incomes with private surgeries and
consultations, but this takes their efforts away from the hospitals where they
should be spending their time, reducing the waiting period for elective surgery.

STUART & HASJA PALMER

Haifa

No-go area

Sir, - Legend has it that when the Germans invaded Denmark, the king wore the
yellow star in solidarity with his Jewish countrymen. At this time, it would be
a great shame for any self-respecting Jew to visit Jordan - whether he dons
tefillin or not ("Jordan bars entry to Israelis with religious objects for their
'safety,'" (August 14).

FRED GOTTLIEB

Jerusalem

Safed blues

Sir, - While Eli Minoff has the right to complain about his city, Safed, being
"dysfunctional," he really missed the point of Melinda Ribner's "Ode to Safed"
(August 7). His disparaging remarks about Chabadniks and Breslovers show a
rather low tolerance of spiritually, which he claims can be found easily outside
Israel.

Yet one does not have to be religious to appreciate the uniqueness of Safed,
considered one of the four holy cities of Israel.

And yes, when I visit Safed, I, like, Col. Sir Charles Wilson in 1880, see
garbage strewn on the ground. But, more, my eyes behold the beauty of the place.

If Mr. Minoff is still unhappy in Safed after living there for 47 years, why
doesn't he move out? ("Astronaut heaven," August 12)

C. HEUMAN , Ginot Shomron

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August 15, 2008 Friday

Georgia, Israel and the nature of man

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1883 words

HIGHLIGHT: Column One

In their statements Wednesday on Russia's invasion of Georgia, both US President
George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice openly acknowledged that
Russia is the aggressor in the war and that the US stands by Georgia.

This is all very nice and well. But what does the fact that it took the US a
full five days to issue a clear statement against Russian aggression tell us
about the US? What does it say about Georgia and, in a larger sense, about the
nature of world affairs?

Russia's blitzkrieg in Georgia this week was not simply an act of aggression
against a small, weak democracy. It was an assault on vital Western security
interests. Since it achieved independence in 1990, Georgia has been the only
obstacle in Russia's path to exerting full control over oil supplies from
Central Asia to the West. And now, in the aftermath of Russia's conquest of
Georgia, that obstacle has been set aside.

Georgia has several oil and gas pipelines that traverse its territory from
Azerbaijan to Turkey, the main one being the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
Together they transport more than 1 percent of global oil supplies from east to
west. In response to the Russian invasion, British Petroleum, which owns the
pipelines, announced that it will close them.

This means that Russia has won. In the future that same oil and gas will either
be shipped through Russia, or it will be shipped through Georgia under the
benevolent control of Russian "peacekeeping" forces permanently stationed in
Gori. The West now has no option other than appeasing Russia if it wishes to
receive its oil from the Caucasus.

Russian control of these oil arteries represents as significant a threat to
Western strategic interests as Saddam Hussein's conquest of Kuwait and his
threat to invade Saudi Arabia in 1990. Like Saddam's aggression then, Russia's
takeover of Georgia threatens the stability of the international economy.

While Russia's invasion of Georgia is substantively the same as Saddam's attempt
to assert control over Persian Gulf oil producers 18 years ago, what is
different is the world's response. Eighteen years ago, the US led a UN- mandated
international coalition to defeat Iraq and roll back Saddam's aggression. Today,
the West is encouraging Georgia to surrender.

Whether due to exhaustion over the domestic fights about the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq, dependence on Russian oil supplies, a residual and unjustified belief
that Russia will side with the West in a confrontation with Iran over its
nuclear weapons program, or the absence of an easy option for defending Georgia,
it is manifestly clear that today the West is fully willing to accept complete
Russian control of oil supplies from Central Asia.

Notwithstanding the strong statements issued Wednesday by Bush and Rice, the
West has taken two steps to make its willingness to accept Russia's moves clear.
First, there was French President Nicolas Sarkozy's photogenic mediation-tour to
Moscow and Tbilisi on Tuesday. And second there was the US's response to
Sarkozy's shuttle diplomacy on Wednesday.

Sarkozy's mediation efforts signaled nothing less than Europe's abandonment of
Georgia. During his visit to Moscow, where he met with Russian dictator Vladimir
Putin and Putin's Charlie McCarthy doll, "President" Dmitry Medvedev, Sarkozy
agreed to a six-point document setting out the terms of the cease-fire and the
basis for "peace" talks to follow.

The document's six points included the following principles: The non-use of
force; a cease-fire; a guarantee of access to humanitarian aid; the garrisoning
of Georgian military forces; the continued deployment of Russian forces in South
Ossetia and Abkhazia, and anywhere else they wish to go; and an international
discussion of the political status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

As a reporter for France's Liberation noted, by agreeing to the document France
abandoned the basic premise that Georgia's territorial integrity should be
respected by Russia. Moreover, by leaving Russian forces in the country and
giving them the right to deploy wherever they deem necessary, Sarkozy accepted
Russian control of Georgia. By grounding Georgian forces in their garrisons, (or
what is left of them after most of Georgia's major military bases were either
destroyed or occupied by Russian forces), Sarkozy's document denies Georgia the
right to defend itself from future Russian aggression.

In their appearances on Wednesday, both Bush and Rice praised Sarkozy's efforts
and Rice explained that the US wants France to continue its efforts to mediate
between Russia and Georgia. Although both American leaders insisted that
Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected, neither offered any sense of
how that is to be accomplished. Neither explained how that aim aligns with the
French-mediated cease-fire agreement that gives international backing to
Russia's occupation of the country.

The West's response tells us three basic things about the nature of world
affairs. First, it teaches us that "international legitimacy" is determined
neither by a state's adherence to international law nor by a state's alliances
with great powers. Rather, international legitimacy is determined by the number
of divisions a state possesses.

After Russia illegally invaded Georgia, European and American officials as well
as Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama hinted that Russia had
a legitimate right to invade, when they wrongly referred to South Ossetia as
"disputed territory."

While South Ossetia and Abkhazia are separatist provinces, their sovereignty is
not in dispute. They are part of Georgia. Georgia acted legally when it tried to
protect its territory from separatist violence last Friday. Russia acted
illegally when it invaded. Yet aside from the Georgian government itself, no one
has noticed this basic distinction.

"We don't have time now to get into long discussions on blame," German Foreign
Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Tuesday.

"We shouldn't make any moral judgments on this war. Stopping the war, that's
what we're interested in," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner explained,
adding, "Don't ask us who's good and who's bad here."

Then there is the fact that Georgia has gone out of its way to liberalize and
democratize its society and political system and to be a loyal ally to the US.
It sent significant forces to Iraq and Kosovo. Far from returning the favor, in
Georgia's hour of need, all the US agreed to do was give Georgian forces a free
plane ride home from Iraq. That the administration has no intention of defending
its loyal ally was made clear Wednesday afternoon when the Pentagon sharply
denied Georgian claims that the US would defend Georgian airports and seaports
from Russian aggression.

The Pentagon's blunt denial of any plan to restore Georgian sovereignty was one
of the first truly credible statements issued by the US Defense Department on
the conflict. It took the US four days to acknowledge Russian aggression beyond
South Ossetia. Even as convoys of journalists were shelled, civilian's homes
were bombed, and Georgian military bases were destroyed by Russian forces in
Gori, a Defense Department official said, "We don't see anything that supports
[the Russians] are in Gori. I don't know why the Georgians are saying that."

The general lesson that emerges from Washington's claims of ignorance is that
reality itself is of no concern to policy-makers bent on ignoring it. Through
its obvious lies, Washington was able to justify taking no action of any sort
against Russia and not speaking out in defense of Georgia until after Russia
forced Georgia to surrender its sovereignty through the French mediators.

The US and European willingness to let Georgia fall despite its strategic
importance, despite the fact that it has operated strictly within the bounds of
international law, and despite its obvious ideological affinity and loyalty to
them will have enormous repercussions for the West's relations with Ukraine, the
Baltic States, Poland and the Czech Republic. But its aftershocks will not be
limited to Europe. They will reverberate in the Middle East as well. And Israel,
for one, should take note of what has transpired.

In Israel's early years, with the memory of the Holocaust still fresh in its
leaders' minds, Israel founded its strategic posture on an acceptance of the
fact that the soft power of international legitimacy, peace treaties, alliances
and common interests only matters in the presence of the hard power of military
force. People such as David Ben-Gurion realized that what was unique about the
Holocaust was not the Allies' willingness to sit by and watch an atrocity unfold
but the magnitude of the atrocity they did nothing to stop. Doing nothing to
prevent an innocent nation from being destroyed has always been the normal
practice of nations.

Yet over time, and particularly after Israel's victory in the Six Day War, that
fundamental acceptance of the world as it is was lost. It was first mitigated by
Israel's own shock in discovering its power. And it was further obfuscated in
the aftermath of the war when the Soviets and the Arabs began promulgating the
myth of Israeli aggression. In recent years, the understanding that the only
guarantor of Israel's survival is Israel's ability to defeat all of its enemies
decisively has been forgotten altogether by most of the country's leaders and
members of its intellectual classes.

Since 1979 and with increasing intensity since 1993, Israeli leaders bent on
appeasing everyone from the Egyptians to the Palestinians to the Syrians to the
Lebanese have called for Israel's inclusion in NATO, or the deployment of
Western forces to its borders or lobbied Washington for a formal strategic
alliance. They have claimed that such forces and such treaties will unburden the
country of the need to protect itself in the event that our neighbors attack us
after we give them the territories necessary to wage war against us.

It has never made any difference to any of these leaders that none of the myriad
international forces deployed along our borders has ever protected us. The fact
that instead of protecting Israel, they have served as shields behind which our
enemies rebuild their forces and then attack us has made no impression. Instead,
our leaders have argued that once we figure out the proper form of appeasement
everyone will rise to defend us.

If nothing else comes of it, the West's response to the rape of Georgia should
end that delusion. Georgia did almost everything right. And like Israel was, for
its actions Georgia was celebrated in the West with platitudes of enduring
friendship and empty promises of alliances that were discarded the moment Russia
invaded.

Georgia only made one mistake, and for that mistake it will pay an enormous
price. As it steadily built alliances, it forgot to build an army. Israel has an
army. It has just forgotten why its survival depends on our willingness to use
it.

If we are unwilling to use our military to defeat our enemies, we will lose
everything. This is the basic, enduring truth of international affairs that we
have ignored at our peril. No matter what we do, it will always be the case. For
this is the nature of world affairs, and the nature of man.

caroline@carolineglick.com

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August 15, 2008 Friday

Palestinian inflexibility bulldozes Israeli vagueness

BYLINE: DAVID HOROVITZ

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 2049 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editor's Notes. It's no wonder the Palestinians have not been wowed
by Ehud Olmert's latest offer of territorial compromise. The security barrier
already represents an Israeli declaration of intent to relinquish 93 percent of
the West Bank

The officer is not an unsympathetic man. He gazes bleakly out from his vantage
point on the outskirts of the settlement of Hashmonaim, watching the handful of
mechanical diggers and bulldozers and trucks making their imperceptible progress
as they further the construction of the West Bank security barrier in the valley
below him, and he sighs.

"It is their land, and of course they're going to struggle for it," he says.
"But they will lose."

He waves a hand vaguely into the middle distance. "They lost at Bi'lin," a few
short kilometers away - the previous focal point of struggle against the
construction of the barrier. "And they'll lose here. The fence will be built."

When he says "it is their land," the officer is not taking a political position.
He is not pontificating about Israeli and Palestinian sovereign rights. He's
talking about the specific olive tree-covered hillsides outside the village of
Ni'lin now being gashed by the winding ribbon of freshly moved earth that the
barrier will follow.

In deference to that ownership, olive trees that happen to stand in the path of
the bulldozers and mechanical diggers as they make their way along the route are
dug up and replanted to the side, hopefully to thrive afresh, with their owners
scheduled to be afforded access to their groves via gates in the barrier.
"Sometimes there are some problems" with these crossing points along the fence,
the officer acknowledges, "but generally they work."

Thoroughly unmollified by such Israeli concern for their ongoing welfare, the
villagers of Ni'lin and assorted Israeli and international protest groups now
regularly confront the tractors and the security forces here with stones and
slingshots and physical violence, to protest both the particular course of this
section of the fence and the entire, overall fact of the fence's construction.
The results have lately been fatal. An 11-year-old boy was shot in the head
during protests in late July; an 18-year-old was killed at his funeral the next
day. Making the most waves, because the shooting was captured on camera and
plainly did not occur in the heat of confrontation, a third protester was shot
with a rubber bullet in the toe on July 7, after he had been arrested,
handcuffed and blindfolded.

Sensitive to partisan political waters, the officer won't say whether he thinks
his defense establishment bosses have plotted an astute course for the barrier
in this stretch, answering my questions with one-word answers wherever possible.
No, it does not run along the Green Line, he says flatly. Yes, the Green Line is
back there, behind us, he confirms, glancing over his shoulder toward the main
road, Highway 443. And yes, too, if the planners wanted settlements such as
Hashmonaim to benefit from the fence's protective embrace, this was pretty much
the route it had to follow.

But finally unloading just a little, he looks across at me, wipes the sweat and
the dust from his eyes and pronounces: "The Palestinians could have waged their
struggle differently."

The officer, an IDF veteran it turns out, spent many years of his career in
Gaza, and what he means, as he then elaborates with a loquaciousness quite at
odds with his previous taciturnity, is that the entire resort to violence, from
the start of the first intifada in 1987, has been "a nightmare" for the
Palestinians.

"I remember Gaza way, way back," he says, "when 90,000 or 100,000 of them would
come in every day to work in Israel, all the way up to Haifa. There were no real
[security] checks. Nobody bothered them, and they didn't disturb us."

Does he mean that if the strategies of the first and second intifadas had been
eschewed, and the Palestinians had stuck to nonviolent protest and diplomacy,
they would have had a state by now? Or that they could have flourished
economically had they remained under full Israeli control, and would have spared
themselves, and us, all that bloodshed and all these intensified security
impositions?

He doesn't answer directly, instead reminding me that Ni'lin used to be known as
a "village of peace" - not because its 4,500-strong populace was renowned for
any particular affection for Israel, but because of its very proximity to
Israeli residential areas. Israelis living nearby used to go shopping in droves
here in more tranquil times, and Ni'lin felt the financial benefits.

Indeed, he goes on, until very recently, as the barrier was gradually filled in
elsewhere along its route north of Jerusalem, the fact that Ni'lin was so close
to one of the few remaining gaps meant that some villagers rented out rooms to
Palestinians from more remote West Bank areas, who would sleep the night and
then sneak through the open land into Israel to work. The upsurge in protest
means that these last few unfenced kilometers are more closely patrolled now,
the officer tells me, and so this source of income is drying out too.

HE'S RIGHT, of course, that had the Palestinians chosen nonviolent struggle,
both sides would have been spared many nightmares these past two decades. He's
certainly right that, were it not for the strategic waves of suicide bombers
dispatched through the hillsides of the West Bank into Israel to kill and maim
men, women and children, prime minister Ariel Sharon, in his penultimate
incarnation, would never have built an ultra-sophisticated, border-style
obstacle separating much of the West Bank from Israel. That pre-disengagement
Ariel Sharon had been urging Israelis to "grab the hillsides" of Judea and
Samaria so that those territories could never be relinquished, and he vehemently
opposed constructing anything that might look like a border until a traumatized,
bloodied Israeli public forced his hand.

But given that shift by Sharon - the grudging consent to build the barrier -
followed by his decision to relinquish Gaza even without an agreement, I
question the logic of this officer who accompanied me to the Nil'in stretch of
the barrier last week. Has the Palestinians' murderous intifada strategy really
failed them?

Yes, in recent years, it has failed the hundreds of thousands of Gazans and West
Bankers no longer able to find employment in Israel. It has failed the farmers
of Nil'in and Bil'in and countless landowners and others along the barrier's
route whose access to their lands and their jobs and their schools is no longer
free and unremarkable - though I don't recall any of them staging regular
protests, with enthusiastic international support, against the suicide bombers
who prompted the change.

But Israel has gone from Gaza. And the extraordinarily costly West Bank security
barrier - constructed at as profound an investment as any national boundary
anywhere - represents an immense, undeniable declaration of Israeli intent to
retreat from the overwhelming proportion of the West Bank as well, with the
settlements on the "wrong" side of the fence necessarily rendered second class
and vulnerable.

In its original conception, the barrier, which has proved so effective a defense
against the bombers, was planned to place about a seventh of the West Bank on
the "safe side," the Israeli side, and was lambasted as such by the Palestinians
and, indeed, by many Israelis. Serially petitioned by Palestinian landowners,
the Supreme Court relentlessly forced it westwards, so that the final route will
take in only about half the intended West Bank territory. The Palestinians
continue to oppose the very fact of its construction, with considerable overseas
backing. The mainstream international community, meanwhile, recognizes the
security imperative behind the barrier, but wishes it were constructed along the
Green Line.

And so, as the demonstrators of Nil'in and their supporters spend the next year
or so waging their weekly or even daily struggle against the building of these
final few kilometers, a more accurate assessment, I think, is that the
Palestinian employment of intifada violence has rid them of Israel's presence in
Gaza, and produced, in the shape of the barrier, physical evidence of Israeli
readiness to relinquish almost all of the West Bank. And this has been achieved
in the absence of genuine Palestinian recognition of Israel's right to exist as
a Jewish state, and amid a rise of Islamic extremism resolutely committed to
using all means to achieve Israel's destruction.

Far from alienating Western support for the Palestinians, furthermore, the last
two decades of conflict have produced an increasingly overt consensus even among
Israel's friends that the final route of the barrier - which would then be
acknowledged as the border - must run pretty much along the pre-'67 lines.

Today, we don't merely have familiarly hostile individuals and forums and
nations demanding our retreat to the parameters of 41 years ago, but the likes
of France's markedly pro-Israeli president and Britain's son-of-an-
Israel-loving-clergyman telling us the same. And we have a US presidential
contender, Barack Obama, making only his second brief visit here, who is certain
enough that he understands the historical flux as to boil down Israel's claims
in Judea and Samaria to a "buffer zone," and declare, as a friend, that if
Israel wants to maintain all or part of it, it needs to take into account the
"antagonism" this will cause on the other side.

HOWEVER MUCH we might wish to agonize and indulge in internal recriminations as
to the cause, the fact is that Jewish biblical and historical claims on Judea
and Samaria, though they might be recognized in theory, are of little practical
consequence even to Israel's friends these days. And even the security argument
- Israel's right to sufficient territorial depth to enable it to protect itself
against proven aggressors - resonates increasingly narrowly.

The Palestinians and those who spoke for them rejected the UN's division of
British mandatory Palestine, and they tried relentlessly to wipe out the State
of Israel even in the 1948-1967 period when neither Gaza, nor the West Bank, nor
east Jerusalem were in Israeli hands - facts which savagely undermine the
argument that the conflict would be resolved if only Israel relinquished that
same land. Israel has a profound historical connection to these territories, was
acutely vulnerable to attack when it did not hold them, and captured them in a
war forced upon it - strong arguments, all, against a subsequent return to the
'67 lines.

And yet, in trying to keep it all, Israel is gradually losing all support for
keeping any of this territory. There is still widespread international backing
for Israel's right to exist, a widespread understanding that we deserve to
survive. But there is far too little understanding of what dimensions are
required for that survival, of what constitute defensible borders - in no small
part because Israel has been unable to articulate them consensually and
effectively, and then fight for them.

So, sure, the Palestinians might have waged their struggle differently, and the
villagers of Ni'lin and elsewhere would have been spared the diggers fencing
them in.

But is it not really we Israelis who should have waged our struggle differently,
for what we deem are vital parts of this land... if we could only agree on where
the barrier, the border, existentially needs to run? Is Palestinian
inflexibility not bulldozing Israeli vagueness?

In the months before Ehud Barak set off for the Camp David talks with Yasser
Arafat in 2000, there were members of his Labor Party - very senior and very
dovish members - who were confident that Israel would be able to reach a
permanent accord with the Palestinians under which it would maintain not merely
a few slivers of West Bank territory to encompass major settlement blocs, but
those big blocs, a presence in the Jordan Valley and a fair amount of additional
land besides.

This week, it has been reported that Israel has essentially offered the
Palestinians 100 percent of the West Bank in the Olmert-Abbas negotiations over
recent months - a 93% withdrawal, 1.5% of Israeli territory in the "safe
passage" corridor from Gaza to the West Bank, and 5.5% of Israeli sovereign
territory in the Negev to match a 5.5% expansion of sovereignty to encompass
major West Bank settlements including Ma'aleh Adumim and the Etzion Bloc.

A 100% deal. And the Palestinians have turned it down.

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August 15, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Ellen W. Horowitz

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 242 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

MORE THAN MONEY

Yes, Mina Fenton ("Holier than thou," August 1) is a real firebrand who is
passionate about her work, but outside of her stunning dedication to her people
and her job, the most dangerous thing about Fenton is that she pushes biscuits,
tea and damning documentation across the table.

And yes, those reports, facts and figures are picked up and reviewed by a number
of influential and concerned people - including rabbinic leaders. But I can
assure you that these personalities have the capability of critically thinking
and analyzing a situation on their own.

Individuals, families and schools accosted by missionaries; representatives from
various counter- missionary groups; and responsible, concerned Jewish citizens
are contacting halachic and municipal authorities over an increase in attempts
to evangelize Jews in the Jewish state.

I would think that influential people like Dudi Zilbershlag, founder of the Meir
Panim soup kitchen chain, and Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the
International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, would have no problem gaining
access to and presenting an effective defense to rabbinic authorities - unless,
of course, there really is disproportionate evangelical influence which needs to
be addressed.

There is a very real problem of missionary activity here in Israel, and an
outstanding public servant like Mina Fenton deserves credit for pursuing the
uncomfortable truth.

Ellen W. Horowitz, Moshav Nov

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August 15, 2008 Friday

Mailbag

BYLINE: Barry Newman, M. Veeder, Oren Klass responds, Zelda Dvoretzky

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 683 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Turn the trickle into a flow

Re: A changing of the tide? (August 8)

Dear editor,

I do hope that South Africa's religious leaders are not in for a rude awakening,
and that what they perceive as indicators of a renewed vibrancy for their
country's Jewish population will not turn out to be nothing more than short-
lived snippets. Indeed, the nation that not too long ago might have legitimately
been referred to as pound-for-pound the most Jewish in the world - considering
the relatively high rate of aliya, the consistent and aggressive support for
Israel, and the low incidence of intermarriage - may very soon find itself
struggling with the eroding effects of assimilation.

Which would come as no surprise. With apartheid nothing more than an ugly blot
on South African history and communal insulation a thing of the past, the "new"
Jews of South Africa may just find orthodoxy to be overly burdensome, support
for Israel a political and business liability, and secular causes more
immediately pressing and worthy of support than Jewish ones. So, while that
country's orthodox leadership may be quietly celebrating the trickling aliya
from Johannesburg and Cape Town, their energy, I think, should be refocused.
Clever and catchy though it may be, the phrase "Go home or stay home" sends the
wrong message.

Until I arrived in Israel more than 20 years ago, I never met anyone from South
Africa. Since then, of course, I've met many, and thoroughly enjoy the
intuitiveness and humor that they brought with them, not to mention their love
for kiechel and their true appreciation of good herring. It would be a shame, I
think, to make their unique personality into an endangered species, and would
urge the South African Jewish leaders - both religious and lay - to do what they
can to turn that trickle to Israel into the flow it once was.

Barry Newman,

Ginot Shomron

Hello! Over here...

Dear editor,

I was pleased to read your request for readers to send in details of personal
experiences.

Here's one: As an avid Netanya reader of the Post and Metro, each week, I am
regularly disappointed by the absence of news about Netanya. I have counted no
more than three (short) articles about our beautiful city in the last six
months. Whereas, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Ra'anana, Hod Hasharon, etc. are covered each
week, both good news and bad. Is it that Netanya is too good to be included, or
are you afraid that our city would be sullied by stories familiar to the
residents of the aforementioned towns? Or is it that nothing ever happens here?

M. Veeder,

Netanya

...We see you

Dear Mr. Veeder,

Duly noted. Please rest assured that the lack of stories coming out of Netanya
has nothing to do with any sort of official editorial policy, and that Metro
will do its best to visit your wonderful city in the near future.

Oren Klass,

Editor, Metro

Beautiful city, but dangerous to look at

Dear editor,

A recent visitor from overseas enthused over the physical beauty of my city; the
vistas, the greenness, and above all the flowers. She commented on the hanging
baskets and the beautiful flower beds at the traffic circles and on the medians
of our boulevards, the pocket parks and playgrounds - all achievements of our
city, funded by the arnona - the city tax we pay.

I agreed with pride, but had to admit that, as a pedestrian, I wasn't able to
enjoy them as I would like. Unfortunately, the condition of the sidewalks
requires that I watch my step, literally. If I am not cautious enough to look up
to appreciate the view or the flora, I run the risk of tripping over a pothole
or a raised brick or broken piece of concrete. I've fallen more than once,
damaging my limbs, my dignity and, once, my glasses that flew off on impact and
had to be replaced. There also is the danger of stepping into what my son-in-law
drolly calls a "land mine" - planted by some of my dog-owning neighbors who
don't carry "pooper-scooper" bags.

The city from which I made aliya also has terrible sidewalks, but most people in
Houston have cars and seldom walk. In Haifa people do, and it's a shame this is
such a dangerous activity.

Zelda Dvoretzky,, Haifa

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August 15, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Stuart Pilichowski, Simmy Waner, Stephen J. Kohn, Yonatan Silver

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 537 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

C'mon over!

Sir, - Re "Eruv fight on a summer holiday" (Marilyn Henry, August 7): You mean
all is not hunky-dory in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Come on
over, all ye frum, no-carry-on-Shabbat Americanos, to the Holy Land, where
freedom of religion ain't no problem... as long as you eat Badatz, don't need to
convert, keep shmita by buying from the Arabs and don't need to divorce your
spouse.

Sarcastic? You betcha. But you have to admit your problems before you can even
begin trying solve them.

STUART PILICHOWSKI

Mevaseret Zion

It just ain't so

Sir, - Re "Service with a smile" (Ricky Ben-David, August 1): "To make aliya was
considered an abandonment of the community and was looked on negatively" is a
terrible misrepresentation of the facts. For years South Africa has had strong
Zionist youth movements. Secular and Mizrachi Jewish day schools, where the
majority of Jewish children study, have also always been highly Zionist. The
community as a whole has always encouraged and supported aliya: Look at the
number of South Africans who have made Israel their home.

Why imply that the opinion of two young girls (Michelle and Nicole) reflects the
views of either the youth or the community as a whole?

SIMMY WANER

Johannesburg

There's the rub

Sir, - Jonathan Rosenblum seems to alternate between rational articles and
articles that are a rationale for every aspect of haredi life.

"Israel's greatest untapped source of brainpower" (August 8) was filled with
guesswork and hearsay: "Teenage haredi girls receive a secular education that is
on a par with and likely superior to the average student in the state education
system." "And anyone who has ever listened to students in the elite Tel Aviv
high schools stumped by questions such asÉ." "Haredi kids are probably better
informed about current events than their secular contemporaries."

My observations of haredi kids compared to a son who finished an elite Tel Aviv
high school and his schoolmates are the opposite - but I would never generalize
from them.

To disregard the importance of math and physics in the 21st century is absurd.
To ignore world history and civics in a society forced to make crucial decisions
is bizarre. And what about English in a world with few Hebrew speakers outside
Israel?

Of course some of these kids are bright. They and we are being shortchanged.
There is an unwritten compact in Israel that people participate in key
activities - the military and the workforce. For that, we pay taxes and the
government provides our education and defense. We desperately need excellence in
both.

And there's the rub. If one sector is militant in demanding all possible
benefits and niggardly in participating in those key activities, something is
wrong, very wrong.

STEPHEN J. KOHN

Ra'anana

Sir, - Fortunately for our haredi community, many Israelis' inferior secular
education enables them to provide welfare payments to poverty-stricken products
of the superior haredi educational system. The occasional doctor or dentist with
secular qualifications is also useful. Haredi schools need to impart basic
Jewish values such as hakarat hatov (gratitude) and the talmudic duty to teach
one's son a trade.

YONATAN SILVER

Jerusalem, maglet@jpost.com

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August 15, 2008 Friday

Are the Olympics still worth having?

BYLINE: AMOTZ ASA-EL

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 1204 words

HIGHLIGHT: Middle Israel

Scenes of helpless civilians emerging terrified, bleeding, limping and bereaved
from bombarded apartment blocks are never happy, but the footage from Georgia
this week was even more depressing, as it overshadowed the Olympic spectacle in
Beijing.

It was globalization at its most surreal, as billions followed the dramas of
sports and warfare from armchairs, often through split screens and at times even
with similar scorekeepers' undertones, while events unfolded simultaneously in
Asia's opposite corners. Yet while most broadcasters decried the gap between
China's quest for festivity and Russia's zest for animosity, few recalled that
the ancient Greeks halted all their wars while conducting the original Olympics.

The violence in the Caucasus, of course, serves as a reminder that even this
most fundamental Olympic ideal, the brotherhood of nations, has long been
abandoned, but the fact is that this moral erosion is neither new nor singular.
The entire Olympic ideal, the way it was restored in 1896 by Baron de Coubertin,
has since been gradually bastardized - politically, economically and
physiologically - so much so that we now have to wonder what, if anything, is
left of it and whether the whole commotion is worth the trouble it has come to
entail.

THE POLITICAL abuse of the Olympic ideal was of course originated by the Nazi
spectacle in Berlin in 1936, which is also why many later were happy deluding
themselves that it had been buried along with fascism. It hadn't.

In 1980 the Soviets tried to use the Moscow Games to portray their totalitarian
empire as humane and happy, and the Chinese opening ceremony this week, while
impressive in its impeccable deployment of thousands of gymnasts, acrobats,
athletes, actors, musicians and singers, also had its fair share of fascistic
echoes, like goose-stepping soldiers carrying the red flag and the thousands of
drummers shouting who-cares-what in screeching unison. Somehow, this ceremony,
like the Russian and the German before it, failed to conceal what lurked beyond
it, and if anything made millions in the free world consider the arrests,
executions and trampling of freedom for which China remains notorious.

Meanwhile, the insertion of politics into the games continued, as Iranian
athletes obeyed their clerical leaders' ban on competing with Israelis, a smooth
continuation to assorted Cold War boycotts, like Washington's of the Moscow
Games, Moscow's of the Los Angeles Games and 28 African nations' of the Montreal
Games.

WHILE THE political hijacking of the games is, after all, not nearly what it was
in the past, economically the Olympiad has become a monstrosity that would
probably make de Coubertin turn in his grave.

What emerged as a money gobbler that in 1976 brought Montreal to the brink of
bankruptcy has since been transformed, by American businessman Peter Ueberroth
who oversaw the 1984 games in LA, into a monumental cash machine. Now the
International Olympic Committee is expected to earn $3 billion from the Beijing
Games, most of it from selling sponsorships to the likes of Nike, Toshiba and
Coca-Cola and distributing broadcast rights in 220 countries. The Rome Olympics
of 1960, by contrast, were broadcast in just 21 countries that generated between
them a mere $1.2 million, peanuts even by contemporary values.

Not only have the games become a financial circus, nothing at all is left of the
original appreciation for amateurism. The thought today of legendary American
athlete Jim Thorpe being stripped of his medals for playing some minor league
baseball is absurd, as Olympians thrive on advertising beverages, cereals,
footwear and vehicles, besides of course selling their souls, bodies and entire
time to the twin devils of fame and profit.

This, too, like the sponsorships and broadcast rights, has been about utility;
the crowds wanted the best athletes, which meant better ticket and broadcast
sales, and therefore also more bending of the rules. Once the American Dream
Team memorably brought the NBA's finest to the Barcelona Games, the floodgates
opened. Now even the richest and most professionalized of all athletes - soccer
strikers and tennis champions - flock to the Olympics.

ALL THESE dynamics of commercial compromise came while the games were
increasingly becoming a moral morass.

First were the drugs. Gone were the innocent days when Olympic heroes like Czech
long-distance runner Emile Zatopek - who broke 18 world records in the 1950s -
could be counted on to play fair. Gone also were the days when foul playing was
seen as a communist exoticism. True, Western governments are not in the business
of turning women into men, men into racing hounds and children into rubber
dolls, but their civilization is. That is what all understood back in 1988 when
Canada's Ben Johnson was stripped of a gold medal, as well as a world record in
the 100-meter dash, because he had tested positive in a drug test.

At the same time, a slew of bribery scandals that accompanied the selection
process of the host cities made people realize that just when the East Bloc's
abuse of the Olympics was buried under the Berlin Wall's rubble, the games had
come to be plagued by the West's own ailments.

Now the universal feeling is that what originally was intended to promote
political tolerance, personal modesty and competitive honesty has been corrupted
into an orgy of corporate greed and political intrigue involving substance
abusers who entertain a perennially conflicted and often also oppressed world.

Set against this backdrop it was only natural that the games would also be
clouded by the new century's main scourge - Islamist fundamentalism.

THE CONCERN for Olympic security hardly existed before the Munich Massacre of
1972, but even after that trauma it remained reasonable both in terms of its
costs and in terms of the inconvenience to the public. But then came 9/11, and
with it the astronomical spending in Athens of $2 billion on security.

The Chinese are believed to have spent at least as much, while deploying some
100,000 troops, cops and detectives in addition to thousands of surveillance
cameras, checkpoints and sniffing dogs. Never mind that none of this was in
Baron de Coubertin's vision, it wasn't in Ueberroth's either. Now the security
hassle threatens not only the naive, but also the capitalistic vision of the
games, since hosting them has arguably come to involve more costs than benefits.

It would not have come down to this but for the Islamist zealots who are assumed
to eagerly seek the games' disruption, not only because of the unique
opportunity they offer to terrorize the entire world, but also because the
entire institution is for them a theological anathema.

Curiously enough, that is how the ancient games came to their abrupt end, after
more than a millennium's existence. True, the fundamentalists who banned the
games in 393 AD were Christian rather than Muslim, but much like Osama bin Laden
they saw in the Olympiad a vestige of the paganism they were out to eradicate.
Now that resemblance alone should be reason enough for all of us, from innocent
fans and intoxicated athletes to sinister governments and greedy corporations,
to keep the Olympic Games - warts and all - alive.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Fascism is alive and well. Launching the games in Beijing.
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August 15, 2008 Friday

Where are our leaders?

BYLINE: DAVID J. FORMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1175 words

HIGHLIGHT: Counterpoint

Before the Democratic US presidential campaign began, Hillary Clinton was
considered her party's presumptive nominee. Then along came a relatively unknown
challenger, Barack Obama, who, after a laborious and grueling battle, managed to
subdue the well-oiled and well-connected Clinton political machine.

Obama's victory was primarily due to his message of hope and change, his
oratorical skills, his fine-tuned campaign and his overall charisma. But he got
some help from Hillary's husband, former president Bill Clinton, who seemed to
falter on the campaign trail, losing much of the star quality and personal
luster that catapulted him to the presidency in 1992. Many political pundits
blame Bill for Hillary's failure to ultimately secure the nomination. His
legacy, already significantly impaired by his illicit affair with White House
intern Monica Lewinsky, was further damaged.

I always felt that Hillary should have divorced her husband when his sexual
tryst with Lewinsky came to light. After he undermined her bid for the
Democratic nomination for president, it seems now would be an opportune time for
her to send Bill packing.

If that were to happen, I would suggest that Clinton do right by his jilted
intern, Monica, and marry her. Why - to salvage his political career and rebuild
his legacy. Being Jewish, Monica could move to Israel and be granted automatic
citizenship under the Law of Return that confers citizenship upon any Jew
(barring a criminal). As her husband, Clinton would also be granted citizenship.
Israel imposes no restrictions on a citizen born in another country, which means
that Clinton could seek public office. His natural charm worked wonders on us,
and he worked assiduously to achieve a settlement between Israelis and
Palestinians. Israelis loved him, as did Palestinians. He would win the
premiership hands down.

Although possessed of some blatant moral deficiencies, in matters of domestic
and foreign policy Clinton's presidency was inspired - marked by intelligence,
fortitude and reason. He surrounded himself with competent individuals, not
political hacks who occupy seats of power in our government or know how to
blackmail the coalitions to satisfy their narrow and self-serving interests. In
Israel, party loyalty is rewarded above intellectual acumen and practical
astuteness.

Bill Clinton - rogue that he is - dwarfs any of our politicians. Indeed, our
leaders are corrupt, bungling and far more ethically challenged than Clinton
ever was: a finance minister charged with embezzlement, a president accused of
rape, defense and justice ministers convicted for sexual misconduct and a prime
minister most likely to be indicted for fraud. Even worse, all the above were
failures in their fields of responsibility. It's unbelievable, it's shameful,
it's intolerable.

YET, WE suffer from another baffling phenomenon. While we may lag behind much of
the Western world when it comes to recycling, we are far ahead of other
democracies regarding recycling failed leaders, like Ehud Barak, Binyamin
Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon. However worn, wasted or decrepit they are, we drop
them in a leadership bin, compress them, repackage them and churn them out for
reuse. We would be far better off discarding the present crop of political
apparatchiks than seeing them pasted back together for more use, or should I say
more abuse. As American folksinger/satirist Tom Paxton wrote: "What did you
learn in school today, Dear little boy of mine? I learned our leaders are the
'finest' men. And we elect them again and again. That's what I learned in school
today. That's what I learned in school."

But, worse than our enthusiasm for recycling disastrous leaders is our
willingness to tolerate certain personalities to head political parties - ones
with gangster-like resumes (Arkadi Gaydamak, Shmuel Flatto- Sharon and Avigdor
Lieberman), or marionettes who cannot make a move without the consent of their
religious gurus (Eli Yishai and Avraham Ravitz), or bigots (Effi Eitam and the
late Meir Kahane), or an extremist demagogue (Azmi Bishara). People of integrity
wind up in the political trash can (Dan Meridor, Avraham Burg, Benny Begin, Ofer
Pines-Paz, Yossi Sarid and, I bet, Tzipi Livni). Tragically, we have been left
not only with a cadre of moral derelicts to choose from, but also with a host of
political buffoons to vote for.

However, we, the citizenry are to blame. We get what we deserve. The leaders we
choose reflect the will of the voters and the collective character of the
country. Further, we have accepted a parliamentary system that fosters
ineptitude. Because there is no representational form of government where our
elected officials must respond to their constituents, not only is the Knesset a
breeding ground for incompetence, but also for corruption. The most important
form of checks and balances - public accountability - does not exist.

What this country desperately needs and deserves is a "government of the people,
by the people and for the people." But, this can only happen when we, the
people, begin to assert ourselves. There was a time when we believed that social
protest and political activism could change the status quo. Motti Ashkenazi led
a revolution after the Yom Kippur War that brought an end to Golda Meir's
government; the 24-hour-a-day vigil for those killed in the First Lebanon War,
held across the street from the prime minister's residence, drove Menachem Begin
from office; and the 400,000 who stood in Kikar Malchei Yisrael in Tel Aviv to
protest the Sabra and Shatilla massacres established the Kahan Commission that
returned Ariel Sharon to his farm (even if temporarily).

Why weren't there hundreds of thousands of us calling for Ehud Olmert's
immediate resignation after the fiasco of the Second Lebanon War? Failing to
have done that, why did we not fill the public squares in every city demanding
that he vacate his seat as prime minister because of the increasing evidence
that he is an out-and-out thief - well before his belated announcement that he
won't compete in the Kadima primaries, which, in the end, could leave us to
suffer him as a caretaker prime minister for who knows how long?

Where were we when one woman after another came forward to say her "j'accuse"
against Moshe Katsav? Why did all those who voted for the Labor Party not scream
bloody murder when Amir Peretz appointed himself defense minister? Somehow, we
have become numb, retreating into our own private worlds; thinking that we can
somehow protect ourselves from being morally stained by such discreditable
leadership. However, had we been engaged, we might have changed the political
atmosphere in the country, thus saving us from heartache and embarrassment.
Perhaps then, those who run for public office would know that they would be held
ethically and politically answerable for their actions and behavior.

Until we collectively step up to the plate and say "no more," we may have to
fantasize that our salvation will better come from outside - from William
Jefferson Clinton.

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August 15, 2008 Friday

Both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem

BYLINE: ELI KAVON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 947 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer, based in Florida, is an adjunct lecturer on Jewish
history at Broward Community College.

Zvi Yehuda Kook and Yeshayahu Leibowitz shared much in common during lives that
spanned most of the 20th century. Both were Orthodox Jews living in Israel, both
attracted a loyal and devoted following and both embraced extremes in their
ideologies and aroused controversy. Yet, in the end, Kook and Leibowitz differed
sharply over their vision of what Judaism and what a Jewish state should be in
the modern epoch.

Kook, son of Abraham Isaac Kook - the great theologian of religious Zionism -
followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a rabbi and known for his devout
belief that the modern State of Israel was the first flowering of God's
redemption of the Jewish people. According to the younger Kook, "Zionism is a
heavenly matter" and "the State of Israel is a divine entity, our holy and
exalted state."

At the helm of the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva until his death in 1981, Kook was the
spiritual father of Gush Emunim, the fervent movement among young religious
Zionists to settle Judea and Samaria, lands captured in the 1967 Six Day War
that Kook believed could never be returned to the Arabs for any reason - to
return the land of the Bible would be an act of sabotaging God's messianic plans
for His nation.

As fervent as Kook was in his belief that the State of Israel was a holy state,
Leibowitz was equally adamant that the opposite was true. "The state," he wrote
in a 1975 essay on the modern political entity of Israel, "has no religious
value." A professor who headed the Biological Chemistry Department at the Hebrew
University, Leibowitz often called for the separation of religion and state in
Israel and censured Israel for the occupation, in his eyes, of Palestinian land
in the West Bank and Gaza.

Before his death 14 years ago this month at the age of 91, Leibowitz was the
country's most controversial intellectual. The fury he aroused in his time was
even more than that which Avraham Burg has stirred with his recent acid-penned
Hebrew tome Defeating Hitler. Burg, influenced by Leibowitz, is highly critical
of modern Israel and wants the nation to abolish its identity as a Jewish state.

STANDING AT their own extremes, Kook and Leibowitz opposed each other on the
nature of the relationship between the Zionist state and Judaism. Perhaps,
however, both men were addressing the issue in the wrong way. Zionism is both an
outgrowth of Judaism and a decisive break with Jewish tradition. The early
Zionists, most whom were alienated from traditional Judaism, secularized and
nationalized key dogmas in Judaism and the holidays of the Jewish calendar. They
took concepts in Judaism such as messianic redemption and the ingathering of the
exiles and, in a break with tradition, placed the Jew, rather than God, at the
center of a modern political ideology.

Secular Zionism owes a great debt to Judaism and the history of Jewish faith in
2000 years in the Diaspora. Without the core idea of Jewish theology of the
centrality of Jerusalem in the Jewish worldview, the Zionists would have had no
doctrine on which to base their ideology. If there had been no Jewish yearning
for a messiah and the hope for Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel,
Zionism could never have emerged as a mass movement among the Jews.

Tel Aviv, the first modern Jewish city in Israel, owes a great debt to
Jerusalem, the focus of Jewish faith for so many centuries. Judaism grounds
Zionist identity not only in a 150-year-old national movement based on European
models but in a tradition that dates back more than 3,000 years and has
preserved the Jewish people for millennia.

At the same time, Judaism has benefited in a tremendous way from the rise of the
Zionist movement and the State of Israel. Although Israel is a country founded
by socialists who were not religious, the modern state has energized a Judaism
that may not have recovered from the disaster of the Holocaust if there had been
no emergence of a Jewish state. The modern, democratic State of Israel has
provided the inspiration and the framework for Jewish life to thrive all over
the world. Israel has become central to Jewish identity for Jews throughout the
world.

THE CHALLENGE today for religious Zionists is not to build a third temple but to
apply Halacha for the first time to a sovereign Jewish state. The Zionist dream,
once shunned by Orthodox and Reform Jews, has revived Jewish tradition. There
could be no Jerusalem to inspire Jewish faith without the reality of secular Tel
Aviv. Zionism has strengthened Judaism.

To speak in the extreme language of Rabbi Kook and Professor Leibowitz is
dangerous and self-defeating. Whether the state is supremely holy or whether it
has no theological meaning at all does not matter in the end. We must go beyond
the realm of theory and explore ways in which secular Zionism and Jewish
tradition need each other to survive and thrive. Zionism and Judaism are neither
identical nor are they standing in total opposition to each other. While Israel
is a modern democracy in which the Torah is not and should never be the law of
the land, Judaism must still play a central role in Zionist identity.

Perhaps the socialist founders of the state believed that Judaism would one day
disappear as a medieval anomaly, but that has not happened. Rumors of the death
of Jewish faith - and Zionism - are premature. The State of Israel must look for
creative and constructive ways to link the worldviews of secular Zionism and
Judaism. There will always be tensions between the two, but there is also the
reality that Jerusalem and Tel Aviv cannot exist without each other. Jews all
over the world must find a way to build bridges between ancient tradition and
modern political ideology.

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August 15, 2008 Friday

Kinot from Ukraine

BYLINE: BARBARA SOFER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1281 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Human Spirit

No monument stands over Babi Yar. A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.
I am afraid. Today, I am as old as the entire Jewish race itself.

So begins the extraordinary poem Babi Yar, published in 1961, by Russian poet
Yevgeni Yevtushenko. Dmitri Shostakovich set it to music in his Symphony No. 13
in 1962. In 1966, as a representative of Young Judaea, I recited an English
translation on the steps of the State Capital in Hartford, among Jewish youth
marching to urge our state representatives to fight for the release of
persecuted Soviet Jewry. Our Connecticut senator, Thomas Dodd, was among the
staunch supporters of this successful struggle.

In those days of the Iron Curtain, this was a poem about freeing Soviet Jewry.
It never occurred to me that I might one day be at Babi Yar. Last week, just
before Tisha Be'av, our national mourning for the destruction of the Temples in
Jerusalem, I find myself there, the site of the single largest massacre of the
Holocaust, reading the same poem, this time in Hebrew. I am accompanying a small
group of Holocaust educators from Israel. They are planning the annual
educational trip sponsored by Hadassah for the children who live in residential
Youth Aliya villages. Many of these youngsters are from Ukraine, and the
educators want to weigh the possible impact of visiting sites there in addition
to or instead of those in Poland.

I'd always imagined Babi Yar as an isolated site - perhaps illogically because
the Hebrew word for forest is ya'ar. I'd pictured a forest. But the infamous
killing field is simply part of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. On the way there,
we've stopped on Pushkin Street to visit the former home of the mother of one of
the educators. Her mother had always described the grand apartment, near the
Opera House, a stylish building with an elevator, a memory that had sounded
aggrandized. But the apartment has large, luxurious rooms with curved balconies
offering views of Kiev's golden domes. Indeed, it's near the Opera House, and
there is an elevator.

On September 29, 1941, all these Jews were ordered to report at 8 a.m. to the
corner of Melnikov and Dokterivsky Streets with their documents, money,
valuables and warm clothing.

They didn't need the coats. Pushed naked into the gorge, they were shot and,
dead or alive, buried in the pit; 33,771 Jews were murdered in Babi Yar on the
eve of Yom Kippur, 1941.

THE APARTMENT we visited was the home of the mother of Adina Shtoyer, 56, from
Jerusalem. Her maternal grandparents made a narrow escape to Azerbaijan, but she
has brought a thick folder of printouts of her Kiev cousins from the Pages of
Testimony of Yad Vashem of the many relatives who were murdered here. She hands
me one for Fima Fastovsky. I do the arithmetic. She was three years old.

Today there are three memorials at Babi Yar - a modest stone menora, a Soviet
style mega-sculpture for the Ukrainians killed there and a children's sculpture.
None of them, not individually or as a whole, conveys the tragic story of what
happened here, but even worse is the thought that there are hundreds of smaller
Babi Yars all over Ukraine, many not yet discovered.

Shtoyer's paternal grandparents lived in a small town near the regional center
of Kolomiya, in western Ukraine. We fly to Lvov, and drive four hours over rich
farmlands as far as you can see. Her grandparents ran the kosher butcher shop;
they had eight children. Adina's father Moshe Luks and his brothers Avraham and
Yossele became soldiers in the Red Army. All three fought in the Ksnigsberg
offensive operation in 1945. Only Moshe survived. After the war, he learned that
his other siblings, his parents and his young bride had perished too. An
eyewitness described their murder at the Szeparowce forest of Kolomiya. His
sister Haya, seven, was bashed to death on a tree when she cried out in hunger.
More than 3,000 Jews were all shot into the pits which had been previously
prepared by the Jewish prisoners.

All this Shtoyer knows only because in the days after her father died in 1994,
she read his beautifully penned memoirs while sitting shiva. Among the papers
was a living will calling on her to keep alive the memory of the family.

Shtoyer's parents met and married after the war, had two children and eventually
moved to Israel. Adina and her husband Zvi became high-ranking police officers.
They have three children and four grandchildren.

Telling the story to their own children didn't feel like enough to her. Shtoyer
retired from the police force, went back to school and became a fulltime
Holocaust educator. She has been to Poland more than 30 times with groups, most
of them schoolchildren. This is her first visit to Ukraine. It is both her
birthday and the anniversary of her father's death.

The small stone memorial to the Jews at the Szeparowce forest is frequently
vandalized. Today, too, it is pockmarked. Our Jewish guide shrugs. "You asked
about anti- Semitism. This is Ukraine."

Shtoyer has brought large laminated photos of her parents' graves in Jerusalem
and places them on the memorial. "My father always felt guilty that he survived
and the others didn't," she says. "At least in death he'll be reunited with his
family."

BEFORE THE trip, I'd never heard of Kolomiya. But another of the educators in
our group also has family roots here. Yossi Krautheimer, the director of the Ben
Yakir Youth Aliya village in Kfar Haro'eh, is a descendant of the Karlin
Hassidim who left Kolomiya for Jerusalem 200 years ago. Before we leave,
Krautheimer is eager to find the graves of ancestors. A stone marker confirms
the spot amid an acre of trees. There's nary a tombstone. The guide senses our
disappointment. He takes us to the old Gestapo compound, a parking lot has been
paved with stone: tombstones. We can make out the Hebrew letters. We run our
fingers over the script, trying to make out names, to no avail. Sixty-five years
after World War II, no one has bothered to remove the tombstones of the dead of
Kolomiya's Jews from the parking lot.

One last stop. A synagogue remains in town, Beit Haknesset Yerushalayim, no
less. According to the guide, it's the last remaining synagogue in which the
Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the hassidic movement, prayed. One Torah scroll is
more than 200 years old. At last, something from the time that the early
Krautheimers lived here.

Yossi Krautheimer holds the Torah high. We follow him around the synagogue in a
singing procession. It's neither Monday nor Thursday, but reading from the Torah
is irresistible. Krautheimer places the scroll on the bima and carefully scrolls
the brittle parchment to the week's portion, the opening of Deuteronomy.

The scroll is patched together from many different parchments cut from other
Torah scrolls. In our own synagogues in Israel, such a scroll would never pass
muster. But here in Kolomiya each scrap of Torah becomes a sacred memorial.
"These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel, on the other side of the
Jordan..." chants one of our group members, an experienced reader unencumbered
by the uneven script. "Come and possess the land that God swore to your
forefathers..." The words of Moses have never sounded better.

Adina Shtoyer's daughter is named for little Haya and her son, Adina's grandson,
bears the name of his great- grandfather Moshe. Shtoyer is back in Poland this
week with another group. Krautheimer is preparing for the hundreds of children
who need special attention in his village. There are still far too few monuments
to the 1.5 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust of Bullets. But better than
headstones are those who have come from behind the Iron Curtain to bear their
names and tell their stories.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Saying kinot in Babi Yar. The killing field is located inside
the city of Kiev itself. (Credit: Shlomi Ben Ami)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 14, 2008 Thursday

Rationalize the budget

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 729 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

The most reliable indicator and truest measure of a society's priorities is how
it allocates its resources. You can tell a great deal about Israel by studying
how it spends its money.

The Finance Ministry has unveiled its proposed NIS 319 billion budget for 2009
and on Sunday the cabinet will begin debating what legendary political scientist
Harold Lasswell called the politics of "who gets what, when, and how."

Approval by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet would bind the next Kadima
government (assuming one is formed). The Knesset is obliged to pass a national
budget by December 31.

Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On cunningly submitted two alternative,
comprehensive schemes for cabinet consideration. Since the Treasury is loath to
increase either taxes or government spending, both versions demand that
ministries make do with less. In one version the bulk of savings would come from
defense; in the other, the axe would fall more heavily on social programs.

"Budget 1" would command NIS 2.1b. in defense cuts, along with NIS 117 million
in social spending reductions, and a cut of NIS 30m. in monies for local
government. "Budget 2" would cut NIS 900m. from defense, but NIS 1.2b. from
social welfare, while hacking NIS 160m. off local government.

Bar-On recommends Budget 1 - cutting defense so social programs suffer less. Too
bad he hasn't offered a third, less draconian and more equitable reduction plan.

To be fair, Israeli "hyper-pluralism" - in which single-issue parties act as if
there was no collective interest - tempts the Treasury to rule with an iron
hand. Recently, for instance, the legislature went off and spent NIS 740m.
beyond the NIS 301.5b. budget for 2008 without making provisions for covering
those new expenses.

REGARDLESS of which 2009 budget is adopted, the Treasury wants to cut subsidies
for extra-curricular education, road safety instruction and government
contributions to the health funds. Citizens will have to pick up the slack. We
will also likely be paying more for public transportation, saying farewell to
educational television and the post office bank, as we know it - perhaps, gasp,
even to the police orchestra.

The news isn't all gloomy. The Treasury wants to spend more on improving the
infrastructure in the periphery; to create incentives for cheaper cable and
satellite television; and to press transit cooperatives into purchasing more
large-capacity buses.

THE PROCESS by which Israel develops its budget is not the most rational method
for allocating resources. With the Finance Ministry's monopoly on the data,
there is really no one who can authoritatively challenge Bar-On.

Who is in a position to ask whether cutting defense makes security sense? Could
citizens trust self-interested Defense Ministry bureaucrats' claim that proposed
cutbacks go too deep? Did the Treasury take into account that procuring weapons
systems is not like buying widgets, and that annual budgetary fluctuations can
wind up costing more than they save? Can the Knesset Foreign and Defense
Committee be counted on to scrutinize the defense budget and make informed
decisions?

In the social sphere, the Treasury proposes to reduce the universal child
stipend from NIS 153 to NIS 135. As a bargaining chip against Shas, which is
demanding an increase in child allocations, this may be a smart political
gambit. But if the goal is genuinely to save money, what does Bar-On propose to
do with that money?

Israel needs to develop a culture of budgetary oversight beginning with the
ministries themselves. The Treasury must stop demanding across-the-board cuts
that slash blindly at deserving and undeserving outlays alike. Instead, the
prime minister should be demanding that his ministers go through every item in
their budgets, then propose rational savings to the Treasury.

The Knesset needs to establish a nonpartisan structure - akin to the US
Congressional Budget Office - to objectively evaluate the Treasury's budgetary
proposals. Perhaps the existing Information and Research Center of the Knesset
could evolve into such a mechanism.

Moreover, individual MKs need resources to hire expert staff who can help them
evaluate the budget, make informed decisions and conduct oversight hearings.

Instead of a false debate that asks MKs to "choose" between security and welfare
- why not develop the tools for informed and rational decision-making?

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August 14, 2008 Thursday

Letters

BYLINE: Yochanan Visser, Dr. Nir Osherov, Dov Epstein, M. Knezevic, Colin L.
Leci, Mitchell Barnett, Michael Mohnblatt, Lynette Levius

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1180 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Old libels & new

Sir - The South African Sunday Times wasn't the only paper in the world that
provoked a discussion on "apartheid in Israel." In the Netherlands, the
left-wing de Volkskrant had two pieces in one week on its opinion page - one
defending Israel against the the claim of apartheid; the other, from the
chairman of A Different Jewish Voice, upholding it. The result was a heated
discussion in the talkback section of the paper, which recorded an all-time
record of 441 reactions, most supporting the apartheid claim.

The most worrying part of the debate was the number of anti-Semitic remarks
posted, the most outrageous of them from a man who presented a new, dangerous
claim: The Jews were never expelled from Israel by the Romans - they choose to
leave voluntarily! The meaning is clear: If the Jews left voluntarily, they lost
any claim to the land.

Nothing will stop these people if we do not confront these modern libels.

The chief rabbi of South Africa did what he had to do, but it would be much more
powerful if Nelson Mandela himself came forward to refute these claims ("This is
apartheid?" Warren Goldstein, August 12).

In the Netherlands, the country from where the white South Africans mostly
immigrated, the claim of apartheid in Israel seems already commonly accepted.

YOCHANAN VISSER

Efrat

This bias is rare

Sir, - Re "You want that degree? Sleep with the professor" (August 13): Elana
Maryles Sztokman's impression of Israeli academia as a domain of backstabbing
intriguers, womanizers and chauvinists is extreme and distorted. At least in the
life sciences, where I work, these things are extremely rare. Ninety-nine
percent of the researchers behave professionally, and I have felt little back-
stabbing, nor heard of such from my friends.

Finally, more new positions in the life sciences are being filled by women
scientists than men at Tel Aviv University! I have sat in professional
committees and know firsthand that there is no bias for or against women. We
simply look for the candidate with the best potential to succeed as the head of
an independent research group.

Go into the TAU life sciences/medicine Web site and count the number of women
accepted for tenure track positions from 2000, or the 1990s, until now. It's all
transparent.

Sorry, but I couldn't let this go without responding in a clear fashion with
these, my personal views.

DR. NIR OSHEROV

Tel Aviv University

Tel Aviv

Of human worth

Sir, - I credit my parents for believing in all people and their worth, and try
to teach my children that all are made in God's image. What Judy Montagu
conveyed in "Scales of worth" (August 13) is the heart of the Jewish soul.

I once experienced a situation that left me speechless. A woman I know, a mother
of not a few children, whose job was in child education, stated to me that she
didn't understand why anyone would devote time to non- functioning children who
would never contribute to their surroundings, nor to their own lives. Caught
flat-footed, I submitted no answer. Simultaneously, I thought: What would she
say if, God forbid, a tragedy befell one of her own?

Do people really see the non-functioning as human detritus? I've learned so much
about Jewish values in the presence of "those who seem to have little obvious
value."

Compassion for others is its own, internal reward.

DOV EPSTEIN

Efrat

A third option

Sir, - "A powerful, nuclear-armed Israel is the ultimate deterrent," writes MJ
Rosenberg in "Those obscene Holocaust analogies" (August 11). He does not
understand that to Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mutual Assured Destruction is an
incentive. This is the opinion of none other than Bernard Lewis, the renowned
scholar of Islam.

Last year, Prof. Lewis told The Jerusalem Post: "Mutual assured destruction, the
deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning... for
people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement."

This does not mean that historian Benny Morris is right, either. He has
apparently never considered using low-yield 1kt tactical nuclear weapons against
the Iranian nuclear sites only - quite different from Morris's scenario of an
all-out nuclear attack on Iran, something Israel could never realistically
initiate.

Iran is looking for a nuclear exchange and the destruction of Israel in order to
trigger the return of the "hidden imam." But if Iran does not yet have the bomb,
its non-nuclear retaliation for the destroyed nuclear sites would not destroy
Israel and would open the door to an Israeli nuclear retaliation.

Not quite the plan the mullahs had in mind.

The use of tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iranian nuclear sites is an
option that should not be completely discarded if a country's existence is at
stake.

M. KNEZEVIC

Split, Croatia

Dismantle the Quartet

Sir, - The de-facto annexation by Russia of sovereign Georgian territory in
South Ossetia and Abkhazia clearly rules out Russia as a principal of the
Quartet, composed of the UN, Russia, the US and the EU.

It is no longer acceptable for the Quartet itself to be recognized as a
legitimate body for setting guidelines and dictating and implementing policy as
to what we in this region should do - given that one of its principals does not
recognize either international law or borders, and that the other principals
have failed to prevent this military annexation and took their time in
condemning it.

Indeed, we can now expect more of the now independent former Soviet Union states
to be at risk of similar action by Russia ("Putin's pique," Editorial, August
12).

COLIN L LECI

Jerusalem

Sir, - Let's call a spade a spade. The former Soviet Union, more specifically
Russia, was hijacked by gangsters. As simple as that, and with all the
consequences it brings.

MITCHELL BARNETT

Tel Aviv

Why raise hopes?

Sir, - Israel is a very small, mediocre sporting nation unable to fund the
necessary infrastructure and facilities to make us a great sporting nation. We
are competing in the world sports arena against major powers that do have such
funds and much less expensive and pressing national and security needs.

Why, then, do our sports writers and commentators build up the expectations of
the Israeli public regarding our Olympic medal chase? By so doing they are
putting excessive pressure on our gallant athletes, the majority of whom are
simply not up to world championship levels.

I am proud to see our athletes performing under the Israeli flag to the best of
their ability, but have no illusions about their sporting prowess against the
world's best.

Our commentators should adopt the same attitude and encourage them; and not, in
so many cases, criticize them for not performing well ("Israelis crash out of
Olympic tennis," August 13).

MICHAEL MOHNBLATT

Tel Mond

Sir, - We should all be proud of a fine young man - swimmer Alon Mandel, who
carried on in the face of unspeakable tragedy so as not to let his country and
teammates down. May he enjoy a bright future in his chosen sport ("Mandel breaks
national record four days after his father's tragic death, but fails to reach
semis," August 12).

LYNETTE LEVIUS

Netanya

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August 14, 2008 Thursday

It's kosher in Iowa

BYLINE: DAVID ELIEZRIE

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 705 words

HIGHLIGHT: A mixed group of rabbis made an on-site inspection of Agriprocessors.
The writer is president of the Rabbinical Council of Orange County, California.

For sometime there has been a controversy about Agriprocessors, the largest
kosher meat plant in the United States. The media have raised questions of how
workers are treated, workers' safety and conditions in the plant. The government
detained a large number of illegal workers. All of these questions concerned me.
So when a mission of national Jewish leaders was organized to inspect the plant,
I decided to go.

The mission included national leaders of the Orthodox community and the
directors of kashrut agencies across the country. It represented the broad
spectrum - rabbis from Agudat Yisrael, modern Orthodox, the OU, the Rabbinical
Council of America, Chabad and Young Israel. Postville, Iowa is remote, the
nearest airport is an hour and half away, and that's sparsely serviced Dubuque.
I had two flights canceled and got home just before Shabbat after driving hours
to Chicago.

We were given free rein of the plant. Randomly, we interviewed dozens of
employees, selecting them ourselves. We viewed the production lines. We spent
hours inside the plant. In no way was the trip choreographed.

THE REALITY we saw was far different from that described in the press. The plant
is state of the art,and workers told of us of wages beginning at $10 an hour.
Benefits such as full health and dental plans kick in at 90 days. One women from
Chicago spoke of working previously at the Tyson meat plant. There she received
a dollar an hour more, but told us "in this plant the work is less rigorous and
the training better."

I was most impressed from the actual kosher slaughter process. I discovered
innovations that reflected the highest standards of halachic observance.

The mayor told us that if the plant fails, the local economy will be devastated.
The Presbyterian minister said he has never had reports of abuse from his
congregation. We questioned plant officials about safety, human resources and
compliance. We heard how the plant had recently instituted the E Verification
system that coordinates with the federal government to insure that all employees
are legal. Apparently this system checks the Social Security number against
government records to insure all employees are who they say they are and that
they are not under 18.

Some of our group, including myself, met with leaders of the local church, St.
Bridget, that has historically been very critical of the plant. The rabbis
suggested that they begin ongoing meetings with the plant management to
investigate alleged abuses. We asked them to provide us with documentation of
specific cases of worker abuse which we would bring to the attention of the
plant management. We still have not heard from them, and they have nor have they
responded to our request for regular meetings with the plant. Instead they
continue to use the press as their mode of communication.

NONE OF the press reports have been by reporters who have been inside the plant.
One JTA reporter who did visit the plant a few days before us filed a report
that reaffirmed what we said. Almost all have based their stories on reports
from outside sources - the church and the union which is trying to take over the
plant and is being sued by Smith Food for racketeering. In Arizona, a grocery
chain that has resisted the union is in court accusing it of defamation,
extortion and trespass.

Some leftist Jewish organizations interested in immigration issues have joined
the bandwagon. A group of non-Orthodox rabbis wants to create a new rabbinical
kashrut certification, based on liberal social values instead of Halacha.
Claiming to be motivated by ethics, its approach to the issue has been far from
ethical - smear campaigns and demonstrations instead of the Jewish way of
exploring the issues objectively and seeking solutions. It has created a battle
of Jew vs. Jew, creating a show the media relishes.

While I cannot know anything about the past, I did witness myself the reality
today, and it's not what we have read in the media. It could have been that
Agriprocessors grew very swiftly and management was not as strong as it could
have been. Today the plant is without question state of the art, workers are
treated well and there is strong attention to safety and compliance.

rabbi@ocjewish.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: RABBIS INSPECTING the slaughterhouse talked to workers at
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The Jerusalem Post

August 14, 2008 Thursday

Remaking US foreign policy

BYLINE: DANIEL DORON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 967 words

HIGHLIGHT: It needs fixing, but isolationism won't provide the solution. The
writer is director of The Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress.

It is easy - as Ted Galen Carpenter illustrates in Smart Power: Toward a Prudent
Foreign Policy for America - to criticize US foreign policy. It is indeed a mess
of incoherent and ill defined goals, expressing the confused thinking of the
State Department bureaucracy and its associated foreign policy establishment.

Carpenter's criticism is part of a growing debate in the US among several
schools advocating different approaches to foreign policy. As Carpenter, who is
vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute,
rightly claims, present policies lead the US to try to "dictate outcomes
everywhere and on every issue," a mission impossible even for a great power. US
foreign policy gets enmeshed in relatively marginal conflicts as in Serbia or
Somalia. It focuses far too many energies and resources on a putative Middle
East peace process - on what strategically is really a neighborhood brawl -
while neglecting crucial challenges, such as the uncertain future of the Saudi
regime and its vast oil resources, or the devastating impact a nuclear Iran will
have on the availability and the price of oil, namely on Europe's and America's
economic and political future.

Carpenter's solution, however, is not the reordering of priorities to better
focus on such prime strategic threats, but the application of a simpleminded
libertarian, isolationist foreign policy. He recommends that the US withdraw
from crucial areas of conflict and cut its strength rather than use it more
effectively. Dangerously, he ignores or belittles serious threats to America and
to the world like the spread of a triumphalist Islamic fundamentalism,
especially by Iran, and the effective use it makes of oil and terrorism as
strategic weapons against the West. Carpenter also overlooks the challenge posed
by Russian and Chinese collusion with US enemies, notably Iran, and other such
major threats.

'TERRORISM IS a tactic," Carpenter avers, "not an identifiable adversarial
threat." Considering the adroit strategic use Iran - a definitely "identifiable
adversarial threat" - makes of its terrorist proxies, instigating threats and
attacks that have jacked up the price of oil and helped it reap huge profits
that it uses for nuclear armament and ever more dangerous terrorism, Carpenter's
semantic evasions seem ludicrous.

He is apparently so blinded by his ideological blinkers that he even tries to
make light of the consequences of the use by terrorists of a dirty bomb. Since
al-Qaida "has no realistic hope of obtaining thousands of nukes..." he argues,
"the scope of destruction [of one such dirty bomb], while terrible, would still
not begin to rival the horrors of last century's bloodletting..." This pathetic
bid to minimize the danger of terrorist dirty bomb attacks on US cities by
creating a one to 10 scale of horrors and claiming that since such an attack
could not match the horrors of World War II it should not be taken seriously is
typical of his attempt to shoehorn reality into his shallow analyses and then
draw from them "alternative" foreign policy directives. Carpenter repeatedly
draws questionable policy conclusions from analogies between vastly different
events, occurring in entirely different circumstances.

ALTHOUGH THIS book is published by the economically oriented Cato Institute, it
does not even consider the huge economic consequences that Iranian control of
oil flow and price (which a nuclear Iran could impose) will generate. Nor does
it consider the devastating economic consequences - beside the tremendous loss
of life - a mega terrorist attack on US cities might cause. Carpenter may be
correct that terrorists might not be able to get "hundreds" of dirty bombs. But
might they not be able to acquire four or five, or succeed in spreading a
smallpox epidemic or in setting off toxic gases?

Would Carpenter still insist then that radical Islamic terrorism is "minor
league"? Would he still claim that if not for neoconservative "panic mongers"
(the real enemies of peace in his book because they, and their support for
Israel, are responsible for "provoking" Islamic rage), Islamic Jihad would be no
more than a "nuisance," similar to the anarchists of yore? Would he still argue
that while the Islamic threat may be "a little more potent" than that, it is
nevertheless a "manageable" one? Manageable? With possibly hundreds of thousands
of casualties and immense destruction?

Generally, Carpenter indulges in ad hominem attacks on his adversaries. Instead
of facing neoconservative arguments, he tries to discredit them by calling them
"shrill," "hysterical," "inflated," etc., not exactly a technique conducive to
serious discussion.

Carpenter's shallowness becomes even more evident when his principle foreign
policy prescription is examined: "Encourage multiple centers of power," he
admonishes, which ostensibly will provide the world with "security buffers" and
protect it.

Carpenter does not spell out who will do the "encouraging" and "protecting," nor
how. Should it be US diplomacy or the UN, institutions which have demonstrated
their efficacy in stopping the slaughter in Darfur or in imposing sanctions on
Saddam Hussein or on the Iranians?

Carpenter writes that "ideally" such centers should be "stable and democratic."
This rules out China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. It leaves one "pole" besides US -
Europe.

But as the prolonged agony around the formation and role of NATO and the growing
power of Islam within Europe indicate, Europe can hardly be counted upon to
defend itself, let alone provide an effective "security zone." Moreover, in the
past, "mulitpolarity," Carpenter's panacea, resulted not in "balance" or
security and peace but in two bloody world wars and perpetual strife between
multipolar entities.

Smart power? One wonders.

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August 14, 2008 Thursday

How Israel became the boy who cried wolf

BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1054 words

HIGHLIGHT: Terrorist organizations can violate deals with impunity, since Israel
will honor its commitments anyway. Civil Fights

Kadima has set several records during its brief existence. No other ruling party
has generated so many criminal proceedings against its representatives, nor has
any previous government so successfully outfaced public desire for its ouster.
But perhaps its most devastating record is how thoroughly it has shredded
Israel's deterrence.

Last week's column analyzed what Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Yuval
Diskin deems the worst blows to the nation's deterrence over the past three
years: the disengagement from Gaza, Hamas's subsequent takeover of the Strip and
the Second Lebanon War. Kadima, of course, deserves "credit" for all three: It
comprises all the politicians most responsible for the first (and indeed was
formed for that purpose), while the latter two occurred under its rule.

Yet far from learning from these mistakes, it proceeded to compound them.

In the South, rocket attacks from Gaza more than tripled following the mid-2005
disengagement, to over 1,000 a year in 2006 and 2007. And the mid-2006 Lebanon
war effectively undercut previous excuses for inaction. Not only did it prove
that such barrages, if not stopped, destroy morale at home and deterrence abroad
(since the enemy concludes that Israel fears to confront it), but it also
produced a military consensus on how to counter them: a major ground operation
to drive the launchers out of range.

Yet the government refused to order such an operation, instead relying on the
same failed tactic it used in Lebanon: aerial assaults. That reinforced Arab
belief that the IDF is afraid to confront the far smaller and more poorly
equipped Hamas.

Even worse, however, were its nonstop threats that we would "soon" lose patience
and invade Gaza. Since that never happened, Israel became the boy who cried
wolf. It has lost any ability to make credible threats, as its enemies will
consider them mere hot air.

THEN, IN June, the government capitulated completely, accepting a truce on
Hamas's terms - which Diskin termed a "lifesaver" for the organization.
Specifically, after having said repeatedly that any cease-fire must bring Gilad
Schalit home and prevent weapons smuggling, it accepted a truce without Schalit
and with no provisions on smuggling except Egypt's umpteenth empty promise to
combat it. It thereby proved once again that our "red lines" are meaningless.

The Palestinians soon violated this truce: Hamas itself refrained from firing
rockets, but declined to stop other organizations from doing so. Yet Israel
never responded militarily, and though it did initially close the border
crossings it had opened under the truce, it immediately reopened them at Egypt's
request. The lesson was clear: Terrorist organizations can violate deals with
impunity since Israel will honor its commitments anyway.

Moreover, Palestinian analysts say the truce bolstered support for Hamas,
because it achieved through force what Fatah failed to achieve through
negotiations: a cessation of IDF operations in its territory. In short, rather
than showing that peace pays better than terror, Kadima showed that terror pays
better than peace - thereby encouraging it.

Finally, Hamas has exploited the truce to prepare for future conflict. It is
training troops and smuggling in masses of arms (i.e. four tons of explosives).
It is stockpiling nonmilitary essentials such as food and fuel, since the truce,
with its reopened border crossings, more than tripled the volume of cargo
entering Gaza. And it is building bunkers with cement supplied courtesy of the
lull. All this will increase IDF casualties in any future Gaza operation, making
governments even more reluctant to approve one.

In short, rather than Israel deterring Hamas, Hamas is deterring Israel.

THE PICTURE in the North is identical. The Lebanon war, which followed years in
which Hizbullah amassed an arsenal while Israel did nothing, underscored the
dangers of letting terrorist organizations arm unimpeded. Yet since the war,
Hizbullah has tripled its rocket supply, to about 40,000, and now has virtually
all of Israel in range rather than the North alone. And again we did nothing.

Moreover, Hizbullah's rearmament enabled it to seize control of Lebanon's
government this spring, further increasing its ability to threaten Israel.

But not content with mere inaction, Kadima actively undermined its chances of
mustering effective diplomatic pressure against the smuggling via its indirect
negotiations with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

For Assad, the benefits were immediate: After years of international isolation,
he was welcomed back to the world stage, including a starring role in last
month's Mediterranean Union summit.

Israel, however, got nothing in exchange. Defense officials begged the
government to condition talks on a halt to Hizbullah's arms smuggling from
Syria, but the government refused. Now, having belatedly woken up, Kadima wants
the world to pressure Syria to stop the smuggling. But as a senior official told
Haaretz last week: "The fact that we are conducting negotiations with Syria
doesn't make it easier to [explain] our position to the world." After all, if
the government doesn't consider this issue important enough to employ its own
diplomatic leverage against Syria, why should other countries deem it important
enough to employ theirs?

The unconditional talks with Syria also undermined Israel's deterrence in
another way: They proved, as a senior Arab diplomat told Haaretz, that "it's
possible to supply missiles to Hizbullah, be a patron of Hamas and be in
Israel's good graces all at the same time."

If so, why should any Arab country not support anti- Israel terror?

Even after Assad flatly rejected direct talks last month - meaning that having
already given him international legitimacy in exchange for no tangible benefits,
Israel was not even getting serious negotiations - the government still refused
to end the farce. The message could not be clearer: One can support terror,
refuse serious negotiations and still reap all the benefits of peace. No more
thorough eradication of Israel's deterrent is conceivable.

Kadima inherited a country with a weakened but still extant deterrent posture
and proceeded to systemically destroy it. Now, rebuilding deterrence must be a
top priority. And Kadima cannot be trusted with the job. Its record speaks for
itself.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SYRIA'S ASSAD. Unconditional talks with that country proved
'it's possible to supply missiles to Hizbullah, be a patron of Hamas and be in
Israel's good graces all at the same time,' said one Arab diplomat. (Credit:
Bloomberg)

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August 14, 2008 Thursday

Hamas tightens grip on Gaza

BYLINE: SHLOMO BROM

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 898 words

HIGHLIGHT: Israel now has better tools to manage the conflict because the
movement bears full responsibility for everything that happens there. The writer
is a former deputy national security adviser and director of the IDF's Strategic
Planning Division. Reprinted with permission of INSS at Tel Aviv University.

The violent Gaza confrontation between Hamas and Fatah that occurred after the
July 25 explosion of a car carrying Hamas activists has brought about a
significant strengthening of Hamas's control of the Strip and an almost total
elimination of Fatah's presence there.

After Hamas' June 2007 takeover of Gaza, the Islamic movement allowed Fatah to
continue its local activities. Fatah leaders were able to travel between the
West Bank and Gaza, officials working for PA President Mahmoud Abbas continued
to operate in Gaza, and Fatah's organizational frameworks continued to function.
Among the reasons for this were Hamas's reluctance to burn all its bridges with
the PA, and the fact that Muhammad Dahlan's rivals within Fatah cooperated with
Hamas in its takeover.

The assassination of five senior members of its military wing presented Hamas
with the opportunity to wipe out Fatah's presence in the Strip. It is safe to
assume that Hamas decided on this objective long ago, because all attempts at
dialogue with Fatah had failed. The PA under Abbas and in cooperation with
Israel is engaged in an ongoing effort to destroy the Hamas infrastructure in
the West bank, and Fatah operatives in the Strip continued to challenge Hamas,
in part through firing rockets into Israel to demonstrate that Hamas control is
weak.

HAMAS HAS now banned Fatah activity in the Strip. Hundreds of Fatah members have
been arrested, including the entire cadre of senior leaders, and Hamas has
seized all Fatah assets. The confrontation peaked with the clash between Hamas
and the Hilles clan in the Seja'eya neighborhood of Gaza City. Ahmed Hilles had
served as Fatah's director-general in Gaza and is Dahlan's biggest rival. He
headed the group of Fatah operatives which cooperated with Hamas, but this did
not help him in the current confrontation. It was important to Hamas to break
the only locus of Fatah power left in the Strip.

An interesting aspect of Hamas' actions, though it did not attract much
attention, was its efforts to consolidate power by dealing with other power
centers. The most prominent among these were the Durmush clan in the Sabra
neighborhood, which used to operate under the name "Army of Islam," and the
Ahmed Abu-Reish Brigades, a militia of the Abu-Reish clan active in the southern
part of the Strip and a major player in the tunnel/smuggling industry. This clan
suffered a heavy blow when dozens of members were arrested and disarmed. In
addition, Hamas closed down the Popular Front's radio station, the only
opposition media left in Gaza.

In Israel, attention focused on the photographs of wounded and destitute Fatah
members fleeing into the country, including some involved in recent terrorist
attacks. However, this aspect is secondary to the fact that Hamas has now
attained full control of the Gaza Strip - a control that is different and much
more efficient than Fatah's ever was. In the new situation, it is clear that
ceasefire violations will result from Hamas indifference rather than inability.

THIS MEANS that as long as Hamas is interested in continuing, the cease fire
will likely be upheld. By the same token, Hamas will also be able to fulfill any
understanding it might reach with Israel or other parties such as Egypt and the
international community. This may have important implications for the Gaza-Egypt
border. The containment of the Abu-Reish clan strengthens Hamas's control of all
that takes place along the Egyptian border. It will be possible to take
advantage of this to arrive at understandings with Hamas if it receives
something in return, such as an opening of the Rafiah crossing.

The sole challenge remaining to Hamas' uncontested control is Palestinian
Islamic Jihad. There are two possible scenarios here: In one, the organization
will learn the lessons of recent events and stand down; in the other, the
organization will find itself clashing with Hamas, whereupon Hamas will force it
to surrender. Secret Fatah cells still operating in Gaza pose no significant
challenges.

THESE EVENTS all indicate that it will only be possible to bring down the Hamas
government via military takeover. As a result, the separation from the West Bank
becomes even more pronounced. Developments in Gaza strengthened the
determination of the PA and Israel to destroy the Hamas infrastructure in the
West Bank. The PA's security apparatus went on high alert because of concerns
that Hamas would retaliate, and PA forces stepped up arrests of Hamas
operatives. Similarly, there were efforts to prevent Islamic demonstrations and
marches, and preachers were arrested.

Will these developments affect the chances of securing the release of Gilad
Schalit? Hamas' increased self- confidence might make its negotiating posture
more rigid; on the other hand, it will also reduce Israel's willingness to
soften its stance. Therefore, the chances for a deal in the near future are not
good.

Hamas' nearly complete takeover of Gaza gives Israel better tools to manage the
conflict because now the movement bears full responsibility for everything that
happens there. This allows Israel to arrive at stable understandings if it is so
inclined. But if the basic premise is that the Hamas government must be brought
down, the ability to realize this has been severely damaged, and the sole
remaining option is re-occupation - a course that would certainly incur a steep
price.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: HAMAS OFFICERS stand near confiscated weapons. The
organization's increased self-confidence might make its negotiating posture more
rigid. (Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 14, 2008 Thursday

Doing the right thing the wrong way

BYLINE: DOUGLAS BLOOMFIELD

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 843 words

HIGHLIGHT: Olmert presented Abbas with a detailed peace plan, but it is going
nowhere. WASHINGTON WATCH

Almost since the first day it went in to Gaza in 1967, Israel has wanted to get
out in the worst way, and that's how it did it.

Three years ago Israel thought it was leaving for good. Everything was packed up
and moved out quickly, even if it meant many of the Jewish settlers went kicking
and screaming.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. The settlers were outnumbered by the
soldiers stationed there to protect them in their mini-fortresses, and they
needed armed escorts to travel about. The whole enterprise was a financial,
security and diplomatic drain on Israeli society, the government concluded.

Then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan was to leave unilaterally, no bargaining
with the Palestinians, just get out and toss the keys over the transom. "Good
riddance, now it's your problem. You're on your own."

For Israel, the goal was to remove a perennial flash point and any excuse for
further attacks by the Palestinians while showing the world Israel's desire for
peace and determination to end to the occupation. And it was to be an
opportunity for the Palestinians to show they could govern themselves and were
ready for statehood.

BUT INSTEAD of creating a showcase for Palestinian democracy, Hamas turned Gaza
into a missile base for attacking Israel in its campaign to eradicate the Jewish
state. Hardly what diplomats would call a confidence building measure.

The win-win theory soon collided with reality. It was badly implemented by all
parties. Most of the blame falls on Palestinian shoulders but the Israeli,
American and Arab governments share some of the responsibility.

Palestinians felt they had no obligations in the withdrawal because they'd been
deliberately excluded from the planning. Sharon refused to deal with then-PLO
head Yasser Arafat; even after Arafat died, Israel did not negotiate with the
new leader, Mahmoud Abbas, despite Sharon's expressions of support for the
"moderate" alternative to the hated Arafat.

The Bush administration, anxious to answer Arab and European criticism that it
wasn't doing enough to help the Palestinians, pressed Israel to accelerate the
withdrawal and expand it to some West Bank settlements as well.

Washington later made matters worse when it pressured Sharon, his successor,
Ehud Olmert, and Abbas to let Hamas participate in parliamentary elections
despite the objections of all three and the Islamic group's refusal to meet
conditions Israel and the Palestinians had earlier agreed to.

Both are examples of what can happen when Israeli leaders are too anxious to
please an American government that has a different agenda. Sharon and Olmert had
seen previous prime ministers lose their jobs because they mishandled the
American portfolio, and they seemed determined to avoid that at all costs.

GETTING OUT of Gaza has been a disaster for the Palestinians, but not for the
Israelis, says Haifa University's Prof. Dan Schueftan. That's because Hamas,
through its violent takeover of Gaza, its continued terrorism and its rejection
of any peace with Israel has shown what a Palestinian state would look like, he
explained, and it's better to find that out now rather than later.

Critics of the disengagement - they call it "retreat" or "surrender" - portray
the move as trading stability for chaos, but the occupation was costing Israel
money, lives and morale. Many displaced setters remain angry and bitter because
they feel their government reneged on promises of assistance, but that doesn't
make the withdrawal wrong, only badly implemented.

Some on the Israeli right are talking about reestablishing settlements if the
IDF is sent back in to clear out the rocketeers and Hamas, but they delude
themselves.

"Not being in Gaza strengthens Israeli society, indicating to Israelis that we
are essentially on the way out of the populated parts of the territories, away
from constant entanglement with the Palestinians," says Schueftan, one of the
original proponents of the separation barrier now under construction. "If we are
to be a healthy society we have to disengage."

THE GAZA experience has derailed Israeli plans to withdraw from the West Bank in
the near future - the platform on which Olmert was elected in March 2006 - and
undermined support for Palestinian statehood among Israelis and in the American
Jewish community.

Olmert this week presented Abbas with a detailed peace plan, but it is going
nowhere. There are two Palestines, Fatahland in the West Bank and Hamastan in
Gaza, and that means there is no way to conclude a peace deal no matter how
anxious Abbas and Olmert may be to sign one before they leave office.

Compounding the problem, Fatah's hold on the West Bank depends on the presence
of the Israeli army; without that Hamas would wipe out the PLO as it did in Gaza
and take over. A senior Hamas official, Mahmoud Zahar, this week called on West
Bank Palestinians to overthrow the secular Fatah in favor of the Islamists.

What was supposed to be the model for a future Palestinian state turned into a
rocket-propelled demonstration of why statehood remains a distant vision.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: PALESTINIAN ARGUES with an Israeli border police officer.
Fatah's hold on the West Bank depends on the presence of the Israeli army.
(Credit: AP)

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August 14, 2008 Thursday

Sympathy for the aggressor

BYLINE: LARRY DERFNER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 828 words

HIGHLIGHT: Georgia does not have the right to attack the break- away provinces.
Rattling the Cage

Until a week ago, I didn't know anything at all about Russia's conflict with
Georgia, and I'd never even heard of South Ossetia or Abkhazia. But since there
was a war going on and it was rivaling the Olympics as the big story, I started
following the developments. I Googled a few articles for background. By now, I'd
say I'm fairly up to speed. I know about as much about the Russian-Georgian war
as the average news consumer.

And the way I see it, the world's reaction has it backward. I don't see Russia
as the bad guy in this fight, but more than that, I don't see Georgia as the
good guy.

I CAME to this issue from about as neutral a position as could be. I'm
suspicious and fearful of Russia, especially with Vladimir Putin as its leader.
But I don't think of Georgia, or any of those countries in the Caucasus or the
Balkans or anywhere else in Borat-land, as being peace-loving or tolerant or
otherwise essentially different from Russia. Georgia is where Stalin came from,
right? I know I'm exposing my ignorance and prejudice, but I want to be honest.
I had no dog in this fight.

So after the war started, I began reading and watching the news, and I see the
pictures of people dying, wailing in agony, running for their lives amid the
bombs destroying their homes. It's a humanitarian disaster and everybody's
blaming Russia - the US, the EU and if not the Israeli government, then
certainly the Israeli media.

Why would that be? Well, Russia is clearly the Goliath in this fight. Russia
under Putin is becoming a dictatorship again, while Georgia is awfully
overmatched; Georgia is David, the underdog. So I can see some basic reasons for
the world to have an emotional affinity for little Georgia against big, bad
Russia.

But now let's find out the facts of this war, such as who started it. I read The
New York Times, AP, Wikipedia and The Jerusalem Post, I watch BBC and Sky News
and everybody is saying Georgia started it. There had been some shooting and
skirmishes with the locals in South Ossetia, which is an enclave in Georgia on
the border with Russia, and then Georgia shelled Tskhinvali, the capital of
South Ossetia, and sent its troops in to take over. Anywhere from hundreds to
thousands of civilians were killed, and tens of thousands became refugees. That
was the start of the war. Then Russia retaliated overwhelmingly against Georgia.

ALL RIGHT, so Georgia started it. But that doesn't necessarily mean Georgia was
wrong; maybe it was a war of self-defense, a justified war. So let's see - what
are the facts about the territory they were fighting over, South Ossetia? Which
side are the people of South Ossetia on, Georgia's or Russia's? The 70,000
people of South Ossetia, it turns out, are what the media describe as
"pro-Russian." South Ossetia is what the media describe as a "breakaway
province" inside Georgia. Which country is South Ossetia breaking away from?
It's breaking away from Georgia. It fought a war of secession against Georgia in
the early 1990s. So did Abkhazia, another "pro-Russian, breakaway province" in
Georgia on the Russian border.

The people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia identify with Russia, not Georgia. Most
of them have Russian passports. Over the past week, the fighters in South
Ossetia and Abkhazia fought with Russian troops against Georgian troops.

And finally, those tens of thousands of war refugees from South Ossetia - to
which country did they flee for safety? To Russia. And who went to meet them?
Putin.

So what we've got here is a bloody war started by Georgia against a small,
pro-Russian province it wants to rule - against the will of the people who live
there. And when Russia retaliates against Georgia, the people of South Ossetia,
along with the people of Abkhazia - the true victims of this war, the true
underdogs, the true Davids - are grateful to Russia for saving them.

YET THE world's sympathy goes to Georgia, and its condemnation goes to Russia.
Why?

Because Russia has a bad history, because Russia was the West's nemesis in the
20th century, because Russia wants to be an empire again, because Russia is much
stronger than Georgia - while Georgia calls itself a democracy, Georgia is the
darling of the Bush administration, Georgia's president speaks good English and
knows all the buzz words like "values" and "human rights" that Westerners love
to hear, and because Georgia defies big, bad Russia.

All this is true. But none of it changes the fact that in this war, Georgia was
the aggressor and Russia the defender.

Now that Georgia has lost the war, the world is saying that President Mikheil
Saakashvili made a "miscalculation" by starting it. Again, the world is wrong.
Starting a war of conquest that kills and maims thousands of people is not a
miscalculation, it's a horrible, detestable crime. The world should save its
sympathy for South Ossetia and Abkhazia. I'm sorry for my ignorance and
prejudice, but these days, when I think of Georgia, I think of the place Stalin
came from.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: REFUGEES WAVE to Russian soldiers in Tskhinvali, capital of the
breakaway enclave of South Ossetia, whose population is pro-Russian. (Credit:
AP)

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August 14, 2008 Thursday

It's the economy, 'tipesh'

BYLINE: CHAIM I. WAXMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1108 words

HIGHLIGHT: While the high cost of Jewish living has pushed many to aliya, the US
recession and housing crisis may actually have the opposite effect. The writer
is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute and a
professor emeritus of sociology and Jewish studies at Rutgers University. A
somewhat different version of this article appears in Hebrew in the spring 2008
issue of Hade'ah Haravahat, the quarterly publication of the Israel Council on
Social Welfare.

America's Jews enjoy relatively high socioeconomic status. The 2008 US Religious
Landscape Study of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that the
educational levels of America's Jews are second only to those of Hindus among
the country's religious groups. More than three-quarters have at least some
college education; 24 percent are college graduates and another 35% have post-
graduate education. On the other hand, it is of significance that Jews in
American colleges and universities are decreasingly attracted to science and
technology and are a decreasing percentage of outstanding students. In part,
this is due to the rapid increase of Asian students who have high rates of
excellence.

America's Jews also enjoy high occupational status, with more than 60% of both
men and women in the top categories, as compared with less than 30% of the
larger population. America's Jews also continue to have above- average rates of
self-employment. Moreover, there is much less dissimilarity between the
occupational status of men and women for Jews than for others of their
socioeconomic status. Indeed, for America's Jews, the gender gap in occupation
has largely disappeared.

Given their high educational and occupational status, it is not surprising that
Jews have high-income status. As compared to 48% for the entire population, 75%
of Jews have annual income of $50,000 or more, with 46% having annual incomes of
$100,000 and more, and another 29% $50,000- $99,000.

But the high socioeconomic status of Jews as a group masks their high income
gaps. While their incomes are the second highest in the country, with 75% having
incomes of more than $50,000 per year, they also have significant poverty rates.
According to a study by the United Jewish Communities, 15%-20% are poor. In New
York, the figure is even higher, with more than 25% living near or below the
poverty line. The Jewish poor are comprised primarily of the elderly, some of
whom are Holocaust survivors; immigrants from the former Soviet Union;
ultra-Orthodox; and those earning minimum wage or less.

The annual family income of Reform Jews is higher than that of Conservative
Jews, and that of Conservative Jews is higher than that of the Orthodox.

Since the Orthodox have more children than Conservative and Reform do, the
economic constraints are greater than the data indicate. The lower income of the
Orthodox, combined with their larger families, means that they have considerably
less disposable income than others. In addition, their ideological commitments
compel them to join synagogues at higher rates than others, to send their
children to private day schools and to contribute to a variety of other Jewish
communal institutions. They are thus disproportionally affected by what has been
called "the high cost of Jewish living."

THE COST of Jewish living has become increasingly intolerable. At least 12 years
of Jewish day school education is today the norm in the Orthodox community, a
cost borne by parents. Tuitions and other required fees in Modern Orthodox high
schools in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area average about $20,000 of
non-tax- deductible dollars per child. At Manhattan's Ramaz High School tuition
is now more than $30,000 annually. When we add the cost of synagogue membership
and summer camp fees to the many other costs involved in living Jewishly, the
economic realities of the Jewish-committed are far less rosy that the broader
data suggest.

Nor is this an issue solely for the Orthodox. Tuition at Manhattan's Abraham
Joshua Heschel School, a pluralistic Jewish day school, is very close to that of
Ramaz. Especially amid the current economic situation, many parents are finding
it increasingly difficult to make their financial ends meet, and those who are
not fully-committed to living Jewishly are discouraged from sending their
children to day schools because of the high cost. Indeed, a number of
Conservative Solomon Schechter day schools have closed in recent years, and it
is estimated that another six or so will likely close in the foreseeable future.

THE HIGH cost of Jewish living has had an impact on patterns of American aliya.
Those for whom living a Jewish lifestyle is more important are those who are
most likely to make aliya because their lifestyle costs are much lower in
Israel. Ironically, although American Jews have traditionally associated making
aliya with economic sacrifice, aliya can make economic sense.

Indeed, for the past several years, the major organizations promoting American
aliya, Nefesh B'Nefesh, the Jewish Agency, and the American branch of the Israel
Aliya Center have been directing their messages to Orthodox families with small
children, emphasizing the economic incentive of aliya. There had been some
debate about the wisdom of this approach, but it does reflect the immediate
economic concerns of young American Orthodox families. Jewish Agency officials
have recently expressed optimism that the current financial crisis will
contribute to a new wave of American aliya.

However, the current economic recession and the housing crisis may actually have
just the opposite effect. As a start, both younger and older potential olim may
be prevented from making aliya because of an inability to sell their houses at
the price they intended when they planned their aliya. Not only that: The strong
Israeli real estate market and the across-the-board recent price rises here mean
less purchasing power on both the US and Israeli sides. Fewer of the younger
olim will consider commuting to jobs in the US as a viable option because of the
increasing weakness of the dollar, and seniors living on US pensions and Social
Security will find aliya and living in Israel a much less viable option.

In addition, the combined declining dollar and increasing shekel has had serious
adverse impact on some of the programs which bring youth to Israel, such as the
NFTY- EIE High School in Israel, the Ramah Jerusalem High School TRY program,
and the many yeshivot and seminaries which comprise the post-high school
Year-in-Israel program.

But the American economic crisis is significant not only because of its impact
on the pocketbooks of Jews. It affects the population as a whole, and could lead
to social upheaval.

Although America's Jews have enjoyed unprecedented degrees of equality and a
sense of being at-home that they have not experienced in any society in which
they were not sovereign, there are no guarantees that this will not slow down,
if not reverse direction. While such a forecast is not on the radar screen,
anyone with a sense of history cannot be too certain that it cannot develop.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: NEW IMMIGRANTS. Jewish Agency officials expressed optimism that
the American financial crisis will contribute to a new wave of American aliya.
(Credit: Courtesy)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 13, 2008 Wednesday

The gangs of Israel

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 697 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Three weeks ago the country was shocked when a young mother of two, Marguerita
Lautin, was shot dead at Bat Yam beach while spending an idyllic afternoon with
her husband and children.

The bullet that killed Lautin wasn't meant for her. She was the unintended
victim of a botched gangland contract allegedly ordered by crime boss Itzik
Abergil against two of his own "soldiers" because of suspected double-dealing.

The Police National Fraud Unit expected the hit and kept the scene under close
surveillance, but was unable to prevent the slaying.

This time police didn't make do with merely arresting the shooters, but went
ahead and actually detained Abergil, their assumed dispatcher. This in itself is
a refreshing and commendable change, considering past police reluctance to go
after top mobsters and, indeed, years of insistence that Israel is free of
organized crime.

This hardly means that Abergil is out of circulation. It's no easy job to make a
case against him stick and his lawyers may soon spring him. Yet focusing on
Abergil sends an important message to him and all his high-ranking cronies that
they will be held liable for the indiscriminate violence that puts the lives of
innocent citizens in harm's way.

Much as Marguerita Lautin's smiling image - snapped minutes before the tragedy -
tugged at our heartstrings, she wasn't the first innocent victim of underworld
wars, and as things stand, she won't be the last.

A few years ago office worker Sara Adiri was killed upon entering the elevator
in a south Tel Aviv industrial building. The perpetrators did not know her; they
just placed their bomb as a "warning" in the framework of an extortion racket.
Two young parents, Daniel and Ella Nahshon, died together in 2003 at a Hadera
car lot under very similar circumstances. An explosive device was set off in
central Tel Aviv, claiming three lives.

A LAW rocket was aimed at a Netanya apartment high- rise in an attempt to
assassinate a resident mob linchpin. Had the plot succeeded, there's no telling
what the death toll would have been. The same goes for the botched assassination
attempt against Ezra Gavrieli at the Azrieli Towers car park.

These are just selected highlights. There are many other cases of "mistaken"
killings, and yet more which, miraculously, didn't cause fatalities but could
just as well have done. It's all a matter of chance, and chance cannot be relied
upon to spare any of us.

Only a concerted police and judicial offensive against organized crime will stem
the tide.

IT'S ESTIMATED that six nationwide crime families are now vying for control of
as much territory as they can wrest. Their hegemony is reportedly challenged by
the Arab Taibe-based Hariri and the Ramle-based Jarushi organizations, with
Beduin gangs claiming a monopoly on protection, drug, larceny and burglary
farther south.

In real life there are no facile movieland solutions. Known crime kingpins
cannot be brought to justice, without evidence that stands up in court, where
judges tend to mete out lenient sentences and sometimes allow cases to drag on
for years.

This is no way to deter crime.

Combating this terror-from-within must be recognized as a national priority and
accorded the necessary budget to enable the police to wage war.

Plainly, more judges are needed to eliminate the backlog and more cops must be
hired. The state prosecution needs more skilled lawyers. Police wages and work
conditions are so poor as to constitute a clear disincentive. As the population
grows, the number of officers protecting it decreases.

Our police-to-population ratio is a quarter of the average in Western countries,
where the local constabulary isn't additionally required to function as a
militia to provide internal security. Israel's police moreover, isn't only
understaffed, but also underequipped.

Regrettably, many of the social ills that effect Western society - street crime,
juvenile delinquency and family violence - are also present in Israel. But
nothing threatens our social fabric and challenges the rule of law more than
organized crime.

We owe it to Marguerita Lautin's husband and children to invest the creativity
and resources necessary to face down the mob bosses.

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From Tbilisi to Teheran

BYLINE: MICHAEL FREUND

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 976 words

HIGHLIGHT: Fundamentally Freund

As the Russian bear plunges its claws into the heart of its much smaller
neighbor Georgia, few outside the region seem to appreciate the danger posed by
Moscow's latest aggression. While many might have difficulty finding Georgia on
the map, that in no way detracts from the significance of the situation. Israel
and the West would be making a grave error if they merely shrug and issue a few
perfunctory press releases in response to this perilous development.

How this crisis plays out will have a direct impact on the ability of Israel and
the US to confront an even greater menace that lies just around the corner -
Iran and its stubborn drive to build nuclear weapons.

Here's why: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is testing the West's mettle.
He senses weakness, and is using the conflict with Georgia, a close ally of
Washington, to see to what extent the US and Europe will stand up for their
friends and their own interests.

In recent years, Russia has become increasingly assertive on the international
stage, frequently seeking to undermine Western policy. From North Korea's
nuclear program to Kosovo's drive for independence from Serbia, Moscow has taken
stances directly opposed to those of the US.

But the invasion of Georgia constitutes a serious escalation, as Russia is no
longer confining its mischief to the realm of diplomacy.

THE SMALL Caucasus nation has been an outspoken friend of Washington,
steadfastly supporting the war on terror and maintaining a sizable troop
presence in Iraq. Just four months ago, at a summit in Bucharest, NATO agreed to
invite Georgia to join the alliance. By raping Georgia in public, Putin is
thumbing his nose at the entire Western alliance.

So far, the success of his little experiment has been clear. Putin pounces on
his neighbor with abandon, violating Georgia's sovereignty and territorial
integrity and indiscriminately bombing innocent civilians with little more than
ineffectual expressions of outrage from Paris, London and Washington.

Ostensibly, the Kremlin claims it is merely acting to protect the large Russian
population that lives in the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia. But it is easy to see through the smoke screen of Russian propaganda.
For one thing, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili agreed over the weekend to
a cease-fire and began withdrawing his country's troops from South Ossetia.

That didn't stop Putin from pressing forward with disproportionate attacks, as
Russia sent armored columns deeper into Georgian territory.

Moreover, it is hard to take Russia's claims seriously, if only because of their
transparent hypocrisy. When the province of Chechnya sought to break away from
Russia, Moscow refused to countenance the idea and instead bombed the region
into submission. But when South Ossetia and Abkhazia seek to secede from
Georgia, Russia chooses to defend their right to do so, despite the glaring
contradiction in Moscow's stance.

Russia is motivated by one principle alone: the pursuit of its own interests -
even if that means storming an internationally recognized border and threatening
to bring down the democratically elected government in Tbilisi.

This can not be allowed to stand. Russia's move into Georgia will have
ramifications far beyond the Caucasus. It will send a shiver down the spines of
decision-makers in countries such as Poland, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, all of whom
might now think twice before deepening their romances with the West.

And if allowed to go unanswered, the attack on Georgia will strengthen Russia's
resolve to further undercut key Western interests.

THAT IS where Iran comes into play. The ayatollahs are glued to their television
screens, waiting to see how the West responds. After all, in recent years Moscow
has stood by Iran's side in the face of mounting Western pressure. Russia has
been supplying Iran with materials for its nuclear program. And the Kremlin is
planning to ship advanced anti-aircraft systems to the Iranians that are aimed
at making it harder for Israel or the US to take out their nuclear
installations.

While Moscow has thus far voted in favor of three UN Security Council
resolutions imposing sanctions on Teheran, it has only done so after it
succeeded in watering them down and delaying their implementation.

But a newly emboldened Russia will prove to be even more troublesome when it
comes time to confront Iran and stop its drive toward nuclear weapons.

If Putin sees that the West is a paper tiger and allows Georgia to be trampled,
then he likely will not hesitate to block additional Western efforts to strip
Iran of its nuclear ambitions. An atomic Iran, Putin realizes, would further
expose the powerlessness of the West, as well as heighten its sense of
vulnerability. Consequently, he may be tempted to defy the West yet again, on an
issue even closer to its heart, in an effort to push the envelope.

The ayatollahs know this all too well, and will be encouraged to continue their
mad drive for atomic power, confident in the knowledge that they have little to
fear.

It is therefore essential that strong and immediate measures be taken to punish
Russia for its Georgian adventure and strip it of any illusions it may have
about a lack of Western resolve. These might include moving quickly to bring
Georgia formally into NATO, suspending Russia's membership in the "Group of 8"
leading industrialized nations and freezing talks recently launched with the
European Union on a new EU-Russia agreement.

Whatever course is decided upon, Moscow must be made to pay a heavy economic,
political and diplomatic price for its actions, lest it persist in causing still
greater harm.

As the crow flies, the road from Tbilisi to Teheran is more than 1,100
kilometers long. But if the West now fails to act, it may soon find that the
distance between the two is far less than it imagined.

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Power, gravity and the state of nature

BYLINE: GERALD M. STEINBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 869 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is executive director of NGO Monitor and chairman of the
Political Studies Department of Bar-Ilan University.

The speed with which the Russian army crushed Georgia is a stark reminder of the
fundamental role of raw military power. Power in politics is the equivalent of
gravity in physics - an immutable natural law that can be avoided temporarily,
but eventually reasserts its dominance.

There has been no change in what political philosopher Thomas Hobbes described
as the immutable "state of nature war," in which survival requires the ability
to defend vital interests. History did not end with the fall of communism, and
international law is often abused to justify the brutality of major powers.

From the beginning, Georgia was hopelessly overpowered by Russia, and President
Mikheil Saakashvili's strategy, which relied on wide international support for
an embattled democracy and quick intervention by NATO, was never realistic.
Vladimir Putin's resurgent Russia has been steadily eating into Georgian
territory by supporting breakaway movements, and Saakashvili sought to reverse
this process and gain international sympathy. He thought Georgia could make its
move during the Beijing Olympics, when Putin would not want to be seen as a
ruthless attacker. This was a foolish and costly mistake - Putin had no interest
in protecting his image.

At the same time, Washington is focused on nuclear threats from Iran and the
ongoing war in Iraq. Both require some cooperation from Moscow, and the
Americans have no interest in a confrontation in the Caucasus.

IN PARALLEL, European envoys shuttled uselessly among various capitals, wringing
their hands and talking about diplomatic solutions as Russia's armored columns
rolled across the border and its air force bombed targets in Tbilisi. In the
"old Europe," following the catastrophe of two world wars and the Holocaust,
military power is ridiculed (and confused with militarism), Hobbes and political
"realism" are disdained or not even discussed, and nothing has been learned from
the failed deterrence that led to war in Serbia and Kosovo. Europeans cling to
the myth they can always buy the oil to maintain their economies, whether from
the Arabs or from Russia, and so there is no need to defend vital interests with
an army.

Similarly, the much heralded use of "soft power" as a modern globalized
substitute for military and economic force was shown again to be irrelevant,
particularly where democracy and liberal norms are absent. The two international
human rights superpowers said to embody the soft power of international norms -
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch - issued a few limp and carefully
phrased press statements which "called on all sides to respect the absolute ban
against targeting civilians or carrying out attacks that indiscriminately harm
civilians."

Although four days of fighting in Georgia have reportedly resulted in more
casualties than the six-week Lebanon War in 2006, these self-proclaimed moral
watchdogs were far more active in the latter, mostly in repeating false reports
from Hizbullah operatives and condemning Israel for "disproportionate response"
and "war crimes." For the officials that control the agendas of Amnesty and HRW,
Israel- and America-bashing are far more lucrative in money and in promoting
their own power and influencethan taking on Putin's Russia.

The centrality of power (real, not soft) in the UN Security Council was also
apparent. Russia, a nuclear power and permanent member of the council, has
vetoed all resolutions that hinted at criticism of its aggression in Georgia.
Here as well, it is far easier to get a consensus to condemn Israel and appease
the Islamic powers and oil producers that can devastate the European and Asian
economies, regardless of the issue at hand. In the UN and other international
institutions that use the faade of morality and international law, such as the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and where Russia can
prevent any action, it is old-fashioned Hobbesian power that counts.

HOWEVER, THIS realistic analysis, albeit quite bleak, should not be taken to
mean that there is no role for ethical principles such as democracy and human
rights. Instead, to go beyond empty slogans and the manipulation of NGO
officials, realism requires the use of power in the service of these principles.
In the past, America has been able to use its dominance and power to defeat
totalitarian regimes and advance democracy and human rights. These were also the
main goals behind the intervention in Iraq, but these were undermined by
America's weakness in implementing a simplistic policy as well as an economic
crisis. These developments also encouraged Russian and Chinese resurgence.

For Israel, the speed and brutality of the Russian attack on Georgia are another
reminder that our survival in the Middle Eastern "state of nature" requires a
realistic assessment of the power balance in the region. In Lebanon and Gaza,
the hope that European and UN forces will prevent Hizbullah and Hamas from
acquiring and using weapons is dangerously naive. In the case of Iran's nuclear
program, America may still act effectively to insure its own interests, but
Israel's own power and ability to defend against and deter attacks remain the
most effective forms of insurance.

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Letters

BYLINE: Hannah Sondheim, Yoel Nitzarim, Andrew Franklin, Shalom Helman, Bernard
Natt, Nomi Kalisch, Rebecca Raab, Jonathan Topper

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1139 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Missed the train

Sir, - As sorry as I feel for the Jerusalem merchants, now is not the time for
them to be demonstrating ("Jerusalem merchants disrupt city council meeting over
light rail construction," August 12). They've known about the plans for the
light-rail system for several years and should have protested before, not now
when the infrastructure on Jaffa Road has begun.

HANNAH SONDHELM

Jerusalem

Why Darwish's work

is not for Israeli kids

Sir, - A wide expanse extends between the soul of the Palestinian and the soul
of the Israeli Jew. After so many years of suffering, so many tears, so many
lost dreams for the Palestinians and two intifadas and seven wars for the Jewish
Israelis: Are Jewish Israeli children ready to study the Nakba? ("Should
Darwish's poetry be taught in schools?" Ehud Zion Waldoks, August 11.)

As an Israeli, I would have to aver no; as a language educator having taught
literature for more than 30 years, both in Israel and the US, I would have to
assert no.

Children living in a situation of uncertainty regarding their neighbors'
threatening intentions and, therefore, their own future need to read literature
of meaning to them, not literature demeaning their very existence.

Although Mahmoud Darwish is considered the Palestinian poet laureate, his take
on reality should not be taught to Israeli children, whose very existence is
impugned by his every poetic nuance.

YOEL NITZARIM

Skokie, Ilinois

Offensive to art

Sir, - I am the British publisher of Raja Shehadeh's book Palestinian Walks,
which was the subject of the most extraordinarily offensive and objectionable
article by Zalman Shoval ("'The Economist' rewrites history," August 3). His
assertions were almost consistently false.

The author is not "portrayed as a lawyer and writer." He is a lawyer with a
successful commercial and human rights practice based in Ramallah. He is, for
example, the legal counsel for the International Finance Corporation of the
World Bank.

His book is not a "blatant political pamphlet" but a series of meditations based
around walks in the Occupied Territories conducted over a number of years.
Inevitably - and this is one of the themes of the book - everything in the
Middle East, reflections on the landscape, the process of exploring the
landscape and seeing how it has changed, is in part political.

The Orwell Prize is awarded for "making political writing into an art." The
Economist and the judges acknowledged - as have many other reviewers around the
world - that this is "a superbly written book." So why Shoval's twisted irony
around the phrase?

It is offensive fantasy to suggest that the author is "something of a political
extremist for whom even Yasser Arafat was too moderate." The author, like his
father before him, has always been in favor of a two-state solution. He was a
vocal and significant critic of Arafat for his failure to adhere to the rule of
law (once again showing the author's experience as a lawyer).

This kind of ad-hominen attack poisons any serious discussion of the underlying
crisis in the Middle East.

ANDREW FRANKLIN

Profile Books

Friend of Jerusalem Award

London

Likud's sea change

Sir, - A Likud-led unity government may be a possibility, but any government
headed by Binyamin Netanyahu would reflect a sea change from current policy
toward the Palestinians, and a grasp of what can realistically be accomplished.
It is misleading to downplay differences between Likud and the other major
parties on negotiations to establish a Palestinian state ("Kadima unvarnished,"
Editorial, August 6).

Netanyahu's position is that there is no current Palestinian partner for peace,
and that the Palestinian Authority cannot keep commitments. He advocates an
economic peace which focuses on institution-building and improving the lives of
Palestinians, and not on land concessions which will just create a third Iranian
base on our doorstep.

In the absence of an effective, self-governing PA committed to peace, Netanyahu
would involve Jordan and Egypt in arrangements that would stabilize Palestinian
population areas and the region. Netanyahu therefore opposed the Annapolis
summit and the negotiations with Abbas that it launched. He views the Jordan
River as Israel's eastern security border, would maintain Israeli sovereignty
over all of Jerusalem, and would not withdraw from territory that would put
Israel's population centers and critical security sites in danger from
short-range missiles.

He also advocates military action to topple Hamas in Gaza, and would not
negotiate with Hamas, even to establish a temporary cease-fire.

SHALOM HELMAN

Jerusalem National Director

Likud Anglos

Jerusalem

Peculiar primacy

Sir, - Re "Rabbinical judge urges religious Zionists to accept haredi primacy in
conversions" (August 7): Why should they? The haredim are only a small minority
among Jews here in Israel and among world Jewry. Why should they decide such
matters? The Halacha was written long ago. Surely some of the rulings cannot be
applied to our modern world.

Conversions done some years ago or recently cannot be cancelled or declared
invalid. Any signed contract is binding for both sides.

And what about the children born after conversion, would they not be Jewish any
more if the conversion was declared invalid ? In my opinion, this would be
completely illegal as well as illogical.

BERNARD NATT

Ra'anana

Panic in the...

Sir, - Re "Water wisdom" (Letter, August 10), about the authorities shutting off
our water for an hour every day:

Unfortunately, knowing most Israelis, they'll fill up countless containers in a
panic. Then, when the hour is over, they'll throw out what's left.

People in general haven't absorbed the seriousness of the water situation. One
sees water being wasted everywhere.

NOMI KALISCH

Givat Ze'ev

...wrong place

Sir, - There are public fountains all over the country wasting large amounts of
water every day. I see public areas where the flowers are being replanted, using
lots of water. Why not put in pretty rocks and Astroturf?

When we lived in Florida and had a water shortage, the authorities did not raise
our water usage fees, but went around giving out tickets and fines if you washed
your car or watered your lawn on days when you were not allowed.

Maybe it is true what people are saying: that the government can make tons of
money off its citizens by raising our costs, instead of truly having us conserve
water, and that is the real reason for our "water shortage."

REBECCA RAAB

Ma'aleh Adumim

If the cap(tion) fits...

Sir - The caption under the photo illustrating "US relay team makes incredible
comeback to keep Phelps on course for 8 gold medals" (August 12) said the
swimmer and his teammate "cerebrate winning the gold in the men's 4x100-meter
freestyle relay."

Was someone not thinking, or was it because the games are being held in China?

JONATHAN TOPPER , Jerusalem

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You want that degree? Sleep with the professor

BYLINE: ELANA MARYLES SZTOKMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1300 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Ben-Ari affair may become a watershed event in the revelation of
abusive practices on campus. The writer is an educator, writer, researcher and
activist.

I will never forget the day I first learned that no matter how much I develop my
mind, to some people I am just a woman.

The year was 1996, I was a young, obviously naive master's student in Jewish
education at Hebrew University, and my adviser suggested that I meet with a
certain professor - call him Y - about taking a tutorial with him. Since I was
nearly done with my course work, starting my thesis and in need of some specific
guidance as well as two course points, this seemed like a reasonable plan. But
as I sat there with Y trying to make this arrangement, he had different ideas.

"What does your husband do?" he asked after I described my work to him. Taken
aback and unsure where he was heading, I replied simply that my spouse was in
marketing.

"But what is his degree in?" he persisted.

"Psychology," I said.

Hmm. He sat there and contemplated this. "But doesn't he want to go into Jewish
education?"

I said, no, not really, and tried to steer the conversation back to me - after
all, I was the one working in Jewish education, I was the master's student and I
was the one waiting for guidance, not my husband. Turns out, this professor guy
was on the payroll of someone somewhere in the Jewish world searching for
candidates for a turbo career track in Jewish education. So we sat there for 15
minutes as he asked me about my husband and ignored my requests for attention.

Rather than see me as my own person, a potential student and educator, he saw me
only as wife of someone with potential, even if my husband, whom he never met,
had absolutely no connection to or interest in the subject. When Y realized that
my husband was of no use to him, the conversation was over. We never even
discussed the tutorial. I left feeling completely invisible, nonexistent. When
all was said and done, I was nothing more than a woman.

THIS IS unfortunately one of many disillusioning experience I've had at Hebrew
U. and other institutes of higher education in Israel. The culture of
exploitation, back-stabbing, self-serving, intellectual theft and cutthroat
competition saturates universities here, frequently reaching appalling degrees.
I could probably write a book about this culture based solely on my own
accumulated experiences from 13 years as a graduate student and employee. But
for women at the university, this ruthless culture is compounded by the inherent
sexism entrenched in every corner of the institution, a sexism so cemented that
only women who are savvy about navigating its pitfalls ever really get ahead.

This shocking reality is finally starting to come to light, through not without
some painful casualties. Over the past few weeks, women have started to speak up
about the most horrific forms of aggression and manipulation around, including
their "sleep with me to get your degree" situations. Last week, Ma'ariv
published interviews with 10 women filing formal complaints against Eyal Ben-Ari
from the Sociology and Anthropology Department, who was recently arrested for
sexual misconduct, and since then additional stories about other male professors
are finally coming to light.

These stories have prompted other women, those who have seemingly fought the
system and won, to speak out as well. Prof. Orit Kamir wrote a sharp essay about
the dynamics involved in manipulations of female students by male professors,
and explained the complexities of how women get trapped. Dr. Na'ama Carmi offers
a brilliant textual analysis of the reply of senior administration, revealing
how the powers that be come to support abusive practices. The Ben-Ari affair may
potentially become a watershed event, with the dam protecting men finally
breaking down.

BUT NOT all is good news. This weekend, Haaretz reported that following the
university's ongoing ineptitude in dealing with issues of sexual harassment and
the status of women, the Committee on Gender Issues is breaking up. Prof. Rachel
Elior, one of the senior women at Hebrew U., resigned because, she said, "we
feel there is no way to change the university's discriminatory policy."
Patriarchy is so deeply embedded that the struggle is getting nowhere. After
four years, the committee has given up hope.

Indeed, the statistics about women at universities paint a pretty gloomy
picture. According to Nina Toren, author of Women in Israeli Academy: Images,
Numbers, Discrimination (2005), there is an inverse pyramid in the progress of
women in academia. That is, while there are more women bachelor's degree
students than men, at each level of advancement, men progressively outnumber
women. That is 36.8% of lecturers are women, 26.2% of senior lecturers are
women, 21% of professors are women and a mere 16% of senior professors are
women. In other words, women are consistently passed over for advancement at
each stage of their career development.

Elior, the head of the Department of Jewish Thought at Hebrew University, is
both a role model for women on getting ahead, and an example of the struggle of
women to get noticed. She is a brilliant scholar with an unparalleled amount of
knowledge at her fingertips, a woman who can give a riveting two-hour lecture
without a single note, wrote 10 books on different periods of Jewish mystical
creativity, edited five books, authored some 100 scholarly articles and won some
of the most prestigious international prizes for her work, including the
Friedenberg Award of Excellence of the Israel National Academy of Sciences and
Humanities, Bracha-Yigal Allon Prize for Academic Excellence, AVI Fellowship -
Geneva, Warburg Prize, Federman Foundation, State University of New York
Research Foundation, The Littauer Fund, Oxford Jerusalem Trust Visiting
Fellowship, Wolfson Foundation and Memorial Foundation for Jewish Studies
Fellowship, and The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Gershom Scholem
Prize for Research in Kabbala.

Impressive, indeed - but trying to get men to notice is a problem. I cannot
count how many times an all-male faculty or all-male presenters were justified
on the grounds of "there are no women of high enough caliber." It's not that
women are not good enough - it's that good women are not valued enough.

IN A recent encounter of this type, I sat in the office of a director of a
center for Jewish education who runs seminars for principals. I pointed out to
him the dominance of men as lecturers for the principals in his program - even
men who were barely out of school themselves or had questionable experience.
None of the lecturers in his roster comes anywhere close to Elior's knowledge,
eloquence and scholarly achievements. But they are, for the most part, men.

In fact, in a book they published to compile lectures from these seminars, not
one woman writer is included. The director's response to my comment was classic:
"There are not enough women qualified to teach the principals." I told him that
I could easily provide a list of very well- qualified women. "Like who?" he
asked. I actually mentioned Elior, whom I had recently had the privilege of
hearing. "Who is she?" he asked, and clearly had never heard of her.

Later that day, I e-mailed him a list with the names and titles of more than 30
senior female scholars who have knowledge and experience in areas of Jewish
thought and education, women whom Jewish educators should find fascinating.
"Thanks," was the e-mail I received in reply and, as far as I know, that was the
end of the conversation.

Women academics have serious reason for concern. If after all these years, Elior
has given up hope, what will be for the rest of us? Women, it seems, have to
keep fighting to be respected for our work. Maybe if women continue to speak up,
we will eventually be seen and heard for who we really are.

Oh, and anyone who wants that list of top women, I'm happy to share.

www.elanasztokman.com

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Tisha Be'av, the aftermath

BYLINE: STEPHEN GABRIEL ROSENBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1491 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is a fellow of the W.F. Albright Institute of
Archeological Research in Jerusalem.

In the Orthodox calendar, Tisha Be'av, which we observed on Sunday, is the
culmination of three weeks of mourning that started with the 17th of Tammuz,
when the Babylonians made the first breach in the walls of Jerusalem. After the
ninth of Av, we relax and some celebrate the festival of the 15th, when the
daughters of Israel were first permitted to marry outside their tribe, and which
also counts as the annual wine harvest festival.

But should we not remember the great suffering that must have followed the
terrible events of Tisha Be'av? In the case of the Roman destruction of
Jerusalem, we have been assured that life went on in Israel outside Jerusalem,
and Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was able to set up a new center of learning at
Yavne. It became a powerhouse of scholarship and the beginning of the talmudic
period of Jewish Orthodoxy, when the ideas of the Pharisees became enshrined in
Halacha, or Jewish law. Thousands of Jews had been killed in the revolt and
hundreds taken into slavery to Rome, but Jewish life continued in Israel and
indeed intensified when the Sanhedrin reconvened at Yavne.

BUT WHAT of the aftermath of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the
First Temple, what happened then to Jewish life? There are conflicting accounts
of the numbers taken into exile: the Book of Kings says it was 10,000, while
Jeremiah counts a total of 4,600 in three waves. But both agree it was the cream
of society that was deported.

The peasants struggled on, taking over the fields of the departed middle-class
under a Babylon-appointed governor, Gedaliah ben Ahikam. A well-meaning and
fair- minded civil servant, he lacked royal charisma, was hated by the jealous
royalist party and was murdered by them.

As a result turmoil was expected, and many Jews fled to the relative safety of
Egypt, taking Jeremiah with them. But anarchy did not ensue, and direct rule
from Babylon restored some sense of order and economic stability. But the Temple
had gone and so had the kohanim, its priests.

Jeremiah, who always opposed rebellion against the Babylonians, advised the
exiles to accept their fate in Babylon, "Build yourself houses... plant
garden... take wives... have children... multiply there and do not succumb"
(29:5). He had predicted a stay of 70 years, but it was only to be 50 for those
who came back at the earliest opportunity, when Cyrus II issued his cylinder of
"human rights" in 538 BCE. For others who only came back with Ezra, it was to be
100 years longer, and for many there was to be no return at all.

THE FIRST thing that must have happened to the unfortunate exiles was a forced
march of 1,300 kilometers. Their path was along the Fertile Crescent, north to
Syria, then east to the Euphrates and south down the river to the heart of
Babylonia. It must have been a heartbreaking march, the march of the barely
living, harassed on all sides by guards and hostile locals. Their transport may
have been camels and horses for the lucky few, and some may have ridden on
donkeys and asses, carrying their few goods on rough carts drawn by oxen; but
the majority would have trudged on foot.

One can get a picture of such exiles from the wall reliefs of the Assyrian
capture of Lachish, whose refugees were deported from their city 100 years
earlier than those of Jerusalem. They carry their pathetic bundles on their
shoulders and their babies balance on kitchen pots on the carts.

The route taken by the exiles may well have been the main caravan trail, with
regular way stations, but their numbers would have been overwhelming, causing
great food shortages. Fights would have broken out over water from wells
controlled by others. Women would have been abducted on the way for immoral
imprisonment and children captured for abuse and slavery. Many hundreds must
have died of starvation and exhaustion. To have attempted to escape would have
meant certain death in the desert. It may be that the numbers in the Book of
Kings were of those who left, and those recorded by Jeremiah - less than half -
were those that arrived.

Arrival at Babylon, after months of trekking, would have been a relief. We can
imagine that the first set of exiles, who had been deported 11 years earlier and
included King Jehoiachin, could have prepared some kind of accommodation for the
second wave of refugees. We know from the Babylonian annals that Jehoiachin was
released from prison and given rations from the royal table. The Babylonians
treated our royals with respect, and hopefully they in turn gave help to the
later arrivals.

We presume that they took Jeremiah's advice and settled down to marry and to
build. Judean women would have been in short supply, as not many would have
survived. Taking local wives was the norm, as we know from Ezra many years
later, who frowned on the practice. But in Babylon it was necessary for
survival, and it would have been considered that the act of marriage, in
whatever form, was equivalent to conversion of the woman, as it had been for the
Patriarchs.

AND THAT leads us to ask, what was the status of the Jewish religion during the
first 50 years of exile? There can be little doubt that the exiles kept alive
the hope of seeing the Temple rebuilt in Jerusalem. But what was there in
Babylon, when they wept by its waters, to keep them focused on the Temple? The
traditionalists claim that in Babylon the exiles created the synagogue, without
sacrifice and priests, to compensate for the lost Temple. But there is no
evidence for that, and little likelihood, as the priests and the sacrifices
persisted and appeared again 50 years later in Jerusalem.

The synagogue as such was not known until the third century BCE in the Egyptian
exile. It developed as a new form of community center and prayer and continued
without the benefit of priest and sacrifice. But Babylon was different; it had
legitimate priests and they were ready to practice their skills for a future
Temple.

It is likely that there was a form of temple in Babylon that trained the kohanim
and the Levites in their duties in readiness for the return, and it would have
served, as any temple did, to unite the people in the worship of their God. Such
a situation had applied in Egypt, when the military colony of Jews built their
small temple on Elephantine Island in the sixth century BCE. It had an altar for
sacrifices and a small shrine for the Shehina, the presence of God. Such a
building was considered necessary for the small community on the island near
Aswan, and so too it would have been for the much larger and more educated group
of Jews in Babylon.

The prophet Ezekiel ben Buzi, himself a kohen of the Zadokite line, who came
with the first deportees in 597 BCE, told his people of the abominations being
performed in Jerusalem and showed them, by his vision of the heavenly chariot,
that God had accompanied them to the waters of the Khebar, a tributary of the
Euphrates. In his own words he describes how the Lord had provided them with a
mikdash me'at, or miniature temple (11:16). That is exactly what the shrine at
Elephantine was, at this same period, more like the Tabernacle than the Temple,
and that is probably how it was in Babylon.

EZEKIEL TALKS about the Levites who went astray, having to bear their iniquity
(44:10). Where did they go astray except in a temple in Babylon? In the eyes of
Ezekiel, they went astray because they usurped the posts of the kohanim, of the
line of Zadok, and that must have been in the service of some form of temple.

The famous passage in Zechariah, the prophet of the return, accuses Joshua the
high priest of wearing filthy clothes (3:4), which sounds mightily like his
performing, without the correct ritual garments, in a temple away from
Jerusalem. Zechariah also alludes to the unorthodox building of "a house in the
land of Shinar" (5:11). The word "house" stands for temple and Shinar is Sumer,
the ancient name for Babylon.

The evidence from Ezra is more positive. He mentions that Levites for the Temple
in Jerusalem should be brought from Casiphia "hamakom" (the temple?), a village
near Babylon, where they were serving under a Levite called Iddo (8:17). It
seems that Casiphia was the site of a Jewish temple, and Ezra was happy to bring
Levites from there to serve in Jerusalem.

The evidence is inconclusive and ambivalent as is to be expected when it might
have embarrassed later readers. Thus the temple at Elephantine was never
recorded in our sources and only came to light from local papyri documents and,
100 years later (10 years ago), by the turn of the spade.

Could a Jewish temple in Babylon ever be excavated in our time? That is unlikely
in the present state of war-torn Iraq, but inscriptions abound. The great
museums of the world house hundreds of unread cuneiform tablets from
Mesopotamia. One day surely, one will be deciphered that will give us the
necessary evidence, and then we will have something to celebrate as the
aftermath of Tisha Be'av.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 3 photos: A PICTURE of the Judean exiles can be imagined from the wall
reliefs of the Assyrian capture of the biblical city of Lachish, whose refugees
were deported from their city 100 years earlier than those of Jerusalem. A
section of the relief showing th storming of the beseiged city of Lachish, with
Jewish prisoners emerging from the main gate.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 12, 2008 Tuesday

Putin's pique

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 716 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Russia has been teaching Georgia a bloody lesson on the consequences of crossing
the Kremlin. Having reportedly forced Georgian forces out of contested Abkhazia
and South Ossetia, will Moscow now accept an EU cease-fire proposal?

Moscow may also have wanted to teach Europe and the US a lesson about the limits
of their influence in Russia's "near abroad" - the Caucasus included. For
instance, it may be signaling the futility of circumventing Russia by using
Georgia to pipe natural gas and oil originating in Central Asia and bound for
Europe.

It may also be teaching the world a lesson about the consequences of forcing its
ally Serbia to acquiesce in Kosovo's independence. Finally, by making an example
of Georgia, Moscow may be sending this not-so-subtle message to Poland and the
Czech Republic: Don't let the US install an anti-missile shield on your soil.

How the fighting in Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia was ignited isn't easy
to determine; nor is it, at this stage, of paramount importance. Maybe President
Mikhail Saakashvili was keeping his promise to impose Georgian rule on the
separatist areas, and Russia acted only after its peacekeepers in South Ossetia
were attacked. Maybe, by responding to alleged provocations in those areas,
Saakashvili was, foolishly and impetuously, giving Vladimir Putin a pretext to
invade.

THE AREA'S intricate and complex history suggests that today's political
conundrums are deeply rooted and intractable. Long under Persian and Turkish
domination, (Christian) Georgia was grateful, in 1801, to be incorporated into
Czarist Russia. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Georgia became independent,
but was forcibly annexed by Russia in 1921.

It was during the Soviet period that the stage was probably set for the ethnic
and national tensions now playing themselves out. The old Soviet Union
encompassed 53 administrative and territorial subdivisions reflecting the
complexity of its ethnic and national mishmash. The Communist Party
gerrymandered Georgia's borders to include the autonomous republics of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia - Stalin's way of playing off various ethnic groups against
each other to protect the center's power.

The Abkhaz always wanted to be part of Russia. The Georgians, fighting to
preserve their own culture and language, saw them as tools of Moscow. In order
to diminish the influence of the Abkhaz within their autonomous area, Georgia
settled its people there. Paradoxically, the Abkhaz are also worried about being
smothered by Russia's embrace.

Ossetia's story is similar. Stalin divided the Ossetians into two regions and
placed South Ossetia inside the borders of Georgia.

Thus was created a situation in which the Georgians constantly worried that the
minorities in their midst were a fifth column, while those minorities found
themselves under unwanted Georgian jurisdiction.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the autonomous areas sought to join
Russia. Bloody conflicts were waged in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia during
the early 1990s. Ultimately, Russia brokered a cease-fire that was policed by
its forces acting under the rubric of the Commonwealth Independent States.

That left the situation, as James Traub, a contributing writer for The New York
Times Magazine put it, with Russia threatening Georgia, and Georgia threatening
both Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

THE DISQUIETING question of the day is: What will now satiate Putin? Not only
have his forces defeated Georgia in the separatist areas; by taking the war into
Georgia proper, the Russian leader seems intent on humiliating Saakashvili and
perhaps driving him from office.

Though Georgia is a US ally, Putin must be taking with a grain of salt Dick
Cheney's admonition that Russian "aggression" will not go unanswered. No one
imagines that the US would go to war with Russia over Georgia - even if America
were not tied down in Iraq, Afghanistan and also worriedly focused on Iran.

Putin may have set out to make an example of Georgia. But in the process he has
also brought relations with the US to a post-Cold War nadir and provided useful
instruction to, among others, Europe and the Ukraine that a resurgent Russia
will not hesitate to use disproportionate force to achieve its political
objectives.

These lessons may yet come back to haunt him.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 12, 2008 Tuesday

Astronaut heaven

BYLINE: ELI MINOFF

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 885 words

HIGHLIGHT: Right of Reply. The writer made aliya with his wife and son in 1962
directly to Safed, and works in the metallurgical field.

As a resident of Safed for almost 47 years, I feel obliged to comment on the
article written about my town by Melinda Ribner ("Ode to Safed," August 7). It
was by far the most nauseating column I have encountered in the many years I've
been reading The Jerusalem Post.

However, Ribner is correct when she says she "entered a time machine."

In 1880 Colonel Sir Charles Wilson, the British explorer, wrote of his visit to
Safed: "Being situated on the top of a hill, one would expect to find the town
reasonably clean. On the contrary, the streets are filthy, and there does not
appear to be any desire to improve them."

Those words are even more true 128 years later. For those of us who live here in
one of the most dysfunctional cities in Israel, Safed is terribly unkempt, with
litter everywhere. Wherever one looks there are piles of garbage. Once a year,
prior to the Klezmer Festival, the city is cleaned up, at least where the
tourists are expected. The photo that accompanied the Ribner article is one of
those "spic-and-span" publicity shots. And remember, Safed is not only the Old
City; it sprawls out over a huge area, and it is doubtful that Ribner took the
time or trouble to see the larger reality.

Ribner goes on to say: "Little happens externally in Safed. There are few
distractions; no movies, no theaters, no cafes, no music that I know of." That's
simply because she did not bother to look. Most of us would disagree with her.

UNFORTUNATELY, RIBNER belongs to a group affectionately known to the locals as
"astronauts." The name is very fitting; they float high above the common man in
a "sea of spirituality," completely oblivious to their surroundings. Some even
have uniforms. Men don white robes, turbans and tallitot. The women dress in
layers of hand-me- downs that testify to their "holiness."

As Ribner herself writes: "I feel elevated to live in such a holy place. I can
walk through its streets and feel blessed with a taste of life beyond this
physical world." The garbage in the streets, the broken pavements, the
construction litter strewn all about is apparently invisible to her as she
floats along. Nor does she mention the hoards of beggars, or the squads of young
Chabadniks that line Rehov Yerushalayim, our main street, pestering one to put
on tefillin, especially on Fridays.

She mentions the Breslovers and Chabad. What she fails to note is that almost
every bare wall in the city is covered by "Na Nah Nahman from Uman" graffiti.
Those walls too small for Breslover graffiti are plastered with portraits of
Chabad's messiah. I wonder if in her eyes this contributes to the beauty and
spirituality of the city, though the cars with loudspeakers on their roofs
blaring (over and over and over) that the late Rebbe is the Messiah must
certainly give her a lift.

THE GRAVES in the area were once small tombs (of very questionable origins)
visited occasionally by some locals and passing tourists. At one time we lived
near the grave of Rabbi Nahum Ish Gamzu, and rarely saw anyone visiting.

Then "kever crawling" became big business. No longer are the original tombs
visible; huge grotesque structures have been built over them, no doubt at public
expense. And make no mistake, there is big money to be made. Organized tours,
and outings for the spiritually inclined have become a sacred cash cow. The same
can be said of the tomb of Shimon Bar Yochai.

It is interesting to note that Ribner is apparently engaged in one of the most
successful commercial operations in modern times - Kabbala. Becoming an instant
kabbalist is the "in" thing. It is important for the newly initiated to be seen
with a copy of Kabbala for Dummies (yes, there is such a book) tucked under
their arms or placed on the table at one of the cafes Ribner claims do not
exist. A half-hour lecture by one of Safed's so-called kabbalists will make one
an instant expert.

Ribner's article has done great damage to the true image of my city Safed. The
vast majority of the population are not kabbalists or even hassidim. The local
population consists primarily of secular and traditional Jews trying desperately
to cope with an indifferent municipality controlled by elements who don't seem
concerned that Safed is becoming another city living on welfare and soup
kitchens. On weekend nights there is nothing for the majority of secular
youngsters to do, so they gather in large groups, make noise and vandalize
property. This is apparently of little interest to our mayor; let the police
handle the matter.

AS MORE and more haredim and "spiritually gifted" people are attracted to Safed,
the city becomes poorer and poorer because less taxes are collected from these
sectors. Meanwhile, the more affluent secular residents are leaving for
friendlier parts of the country.

Regardless of the mayor's campaign slogans, the town is providing fewer and
fewer services such as keeping the streets clean.

To attain "spirituality" one does not have to come to a dump like Safed.
Countless numbers of our co-religionists find sufficient spirituality in the
Diaspora. Otherwise they would all be living here.

Ribner would have made a bigger contribution to our city if she had truly opened
her eyes and written about what is really going on here. As it is, she did not
write an "Ode to Safed," but rather a "Requiem for Safed."

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: STAIRS TO Gan Habanim public park in Safed. The historic town is
now strewn with rubbish. (Credit: Eli Minoff)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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895 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 12, 2008 Tuesday

Letters

BYLINE: Aharon Goldberg, Rachel Saperstein, Rahel Feldman, Ella Berkovits, Ze'ev
Portner, Rina Prager, M. Van Thijn, Ellen Minaker, Myriam Arazi-Guy

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1164 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

What Darwish was...

Sir, - "Palestine national poet Darwish dies in Texas" (August 10) contained
some misleading statements, such as "Darwish was born in a village near Haifa
that was destroyed in the War of Independence. He has since lived in several
Arab countries." The AP report then qualified this, telling us that Mahmoud
Darwish did not leave immediately after the war, but "left the country in the
early 1970s to study in the Soviet Union."

Darwish's village was destroyed because its inhabitants fought against the newly
declared State of Israel. Other villages whose inhabitants did not fight against
Israel survived and prospered.

Darwish went and joined a terrorist organization and fought and defended its
ideals. He was a poet who glorified terrorism. He refused to accept the Oslo
Accords, which called for accepting Israel and living in peace with it.

AHARON GOLDBERG

Hatzor Haglilit

...and what we are

Sir, - You wrote in your editorial "A day of responsibility" (August 10) that
the forced expulsion of the Jews of Gush Katif should not be included with the
many catastrophes that occurred on Tisha Be'av.

As one of the Gush Katif refugees, I say it is fitting to include us because we
were not expelled by a foreign power but by a Jewish army, aided by Jewish
police sent by a Jewish government. We were physically forced from our homes,
watched Jewish-operated bulldozers destroy all we had built, and witnessed the
burning of our beautiful synagogues by our Arab enemies.

The result was the unrelenting rocket attacks in the south, and the Second
Lebanon War in the north.

The entire Jewish world was traumatized by these events. So how can you say the
expulsion does not deserve to be commemorated on Tisha Be'av?

RACHEL SAPERSTEIN

Nitzan

Exercise in hypocrisy

Sir, - I was angered by "No more settlers will be allowed to attend parties at
British Embassy, minister vows" (August 7). This from a country that sent its
troops to die for its "rights" in the Falkland Islands, 1,000 miles from its
shores; not to mention how long it exploited its far-flung empire.

Can't it be made clear that this geographically tiny area close to our homes was
captured in a war of self- defense? Perhaps the British would have preferred
that the Arabs win the genocidal war they waged against us in 1967.

No nation returns to the aggressors what they lost in their wars of aggression -
except the Jews, of course!

Judea and Samaria were never part of a Palestinian state, since no such entity
ever existed.

RAHEL FELDMAN

Jerusalem

Sir, - If it weren't so pernicious, it would be funny. Britain, whose sons
sailed the seven seas in search of land belonging to others, grabbing it in the
name of the king or queen for colonization and subduing the indigenous
populations, has the nerve to call Jews building homes in their ancestral
homeland "colonists."

It seems that the building of thriving communities is an "obstacle to peace,"
but raining Kassam rockets down on innocent civilians in their homes, schools,
cafes, buses and streets is not. Israel, in its foolish belief that making Gaza
Judenrein would encourage our neighbors to live peacefully with us, has endured
nothing but terror from the evacuated area.

The only obstacle to peace is the unrelenting hatred of our Arab neighbors for
the State of Israel and their continued refusal to accept its presence here in
the Middle East.

ELLA BERKOVITS

Haifa

Sir, - Is British Member of Parliament Crispin Blunt going to propose that all
British Embassy receptions throughout the world be vetted to ensure that all
invitees are "kosher" according to British government policy? That would be
truly absurd.

In China, there are Chinese groups invited to British Embassy receptions who
actively support China's policy in Tibet - but that does not mean any weakening
in Britain's opposition to China's policy in Tibet, or tacit approval of it.
Similarly, I do not see how it is possible to deduce that by inviting a couple
of settler leaders to a reception to mark the queen's birthday, there is a
weakening in Britain's long-held policy that the settlements are contrary to
international law and an obstacle to peace. What I find so hypocritical about
Mr. Blunt's attack is that during the past year he has, in his official capacity
as chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council, met with with members of
Knesset including David Rotem and Alex Miller of Israeli Beitenu. The former
advocates the expansion of settlements, while the latter actually lives in a
settlement.

Perhaps Mr. Blunt should propose barring himself from chairing such meetings!

ZE'EV PORTNER

London

Sir, - As a British-Israeli citizen, I am at a loss to understand why this
business matters. Britain has "lost the plot" on so many levels: While it has no
problem with harboring would-be terrorists for fear of infringing their civil
liberties, it has no qualms about pontificating to others on matters about which
it has a very limited understanding and an extremely biased view.

Tea anyone?

RINA PRAGER

Petah Tikva

Honest 'ex-gay'

Sir, - David Benkof's "'Ex-gay' isn't kosher" (August 11) was honest,
courageous, well written and well argued. His plea for "a Torah-true
organization for same-sex- attracted Jews who on their own seek help in
following Judaism's guidelines for family and bedroom life" is long overdue.

I know many guys here in Israel who would profit from such an association.

I truly hope he will succeed, especially given his plans to make aliya next
year.

M. VAN THIJN

Jerusalem

Water wisdom

Sir, - As the "Knesset gets down to brass tacks of water conservation" (July 22)
there are simple ways to conserve water.

I go to the beach daily and witness the huge amount of water wasted at the
freshwater shower-foot wash located there.

Adults have five-minute discussions while they stand under adjoining showers.
Children attempt to make all the showers run simultaneously, creating rivulets,
small lakes and moats for sand play. Teenagers hold water fights using the flow
of the water.

All this, within a short distance of the sea.

Minimally, multilingual signs need to be posted reminding people not to waste
water. Those who work on the beach - lifeguards, concessionaires, etc. - need to
tell people to stop this waste of water. Optimally the showers should either be
removed or fitted with a meter and coin- collection box.

When a shower costs a shekel per minute, adults will cease conversing and be
quick.

ELLEN MINAKER

Netanya

Our mom, Georgie

Sir, - My brother, sister and I were very moved that Judy Montagu mentioned our
late mother, Georgie Arazi, the Post's letters editor for over a quarter of a
century, in "The story behind 'Dear Sir,'" (July 30).

Georgie was blessed with great wisdom and foresight. She was also the queen of
sceptics and a master of cynicism. She would have guffawed at the idea that she
would be remembered in the Post nearly 11 years after her death. We would
naturally have concurred.

For showing us otherwise, we thank you.

MYRIAM ARAZI-GUY, Mevaseret Zion

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The Jerusalem Post

August 12, 2008 Tuesday

This is apartheid?

BYLINE: WARREN GOLDSTEIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1506 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is chief rabbi of South Africa.

Two weeks ago the editor of the largest newspaper in South Africa, The Sunday
Times, wrote an article saying that Israel applies apartheid to Palestinian
Arabs. In this scandalous accusation, he joins Jimmy Carter and others who have
defamed the Jewish state.

The apartheid label is very dangerous. If it sticks, Israel's ability to defend
itself diplomatically and militarily will be severely weakened. International
pressure on South Africa's apartheid government eventually played a major role
in ending its power. The apartheid label is calculated to break the resolve of
the Israeli people, who are called upon to make terrible sacrifices for our
Jewish state. Who wants to die for apartheid?

As Jews, we must fight this kind of mass defamation of our people. Israel's
security and Jewish lives all over the world depends on it, as well as our
historic God-given mission of being "a light unto the nations." To say that
Israel is an apartheid state is as wildly outrageous as the blood libels of
Europe.

To answer the editor of South Africa's Sunday Times, I wrote an article which he
kindly published in last week's newspaper. Here follow its arguments:

TO ACCUSE Israel of apartheid is to diminish the victims of the real apartheid -
the men, women and children of South Africa, who suffered for centuries under
arrogant, heartless colonialism, and then for decades under the brutal policies
of racial superiority, oppression and separation inflicted by the National
Party. If everything is apartheid, then nothing is apartheid.

In the State of Israel all citizens - Jew and Arab alike - are equal before the
law. Israel has none of the apartheid legislative machinery devised to
discriminate against and to separate people. It has no Population Registration
Act, no Group Areas Act, no Mixed Marriages and Immorality Act, no Separate
Representation of Voters Act, no Separate Amenities Act, no pass laws or any
other of the myriad apartheid laws.

On the contrary: Israel is a vibrant liberal democracy which accords full
political, civil and other human rights to all its people, including its one
million-plus Arab citizens, many of whom hold positions of authority throughout
the Jewish state - including that of cabinet minister, Knesset member and judge
at every level of the judiciary, the Supreme Court included.

All citizens vote on the same voters' roll in regular, multiparty elections, and
there are Arab parties and Arab members of other parties in the Knesset. Due to
Israel's proportional representation system, Arab voters, although a minority,
have often been partners in various coalition governments and influenced major
long-term decisions affecting the country.

Arabs and Jews live and work together, share all public facilities, including,
importantly, hospitals and schools, and also malls, buses, cinemas and parks.
Israel protects religious freedom and has been very sensitive and respectful in
its management of the holy sites of all religions, granting easy access to
everyone.

Arab Israelis, like all their compatriots, can express themselves and act freely
as members of a transparent and open, democratic society, where criticism of the
government in an aggressively free press is the norm.

IN FACT, Israeli Arabs enjoy more freedom and rights than do any other Arabs in
the Middle East, where autocratic governments suppress democracy and freedoms,
such as freedom of expression and of association, including outlawing labor
unions. Israel is the only truly free democracy in the Middle East.

If there is apartheid in the Middle East, then it is the apartheid in Arab
states against Jews, Christians and women, who are all denied the most basic
human rights and treated as second-class citizens.

Most Arab governments do not even allow Jews to visit, let alone live. In fact,
more than 800,000 Jews have been expelled from Arab countries over the last five
decades, where they lived peacefully for centuries, albeit with inferior status.

In 1967, as a result of a defensive war thrust upon it, Israel captured the
territories known today as the West Bank and Gaza. Since then the status of
these territories and their occupants has been unclear. It is incorrect legally,
factually and even morally to speak of an occupation, which implies there was
once a Palestinian entity in these territories, and that this is now occupied by
Israeli forces.

Before 1967 the West Bank was controlled by Jordan, and Gaza by Egypt. We should
not speak of the "occupied territories," but more accurately of "disputed
territories."

THERE HAS never been a Palestinian state in all of history. By contrast, the
State of Israel is the third Jewish state on the same land, the first dating
back 3,280 years to when Joshua led the Jewish people into the land of Israel.
Furthermore, Israel has strong claims to the West Bank, which is part of the
biblical Israel that the Jews have always lived in. One of the holiest sites of
Judaism is there - Hebron, where the founding fathers and mothers, Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah, are buried.

Apart from the city of Jerusalem, the ancient capital of the Jewish people from
the times of King David, the West Bank and Gaza were never annexed, pending the
resolution of their status. For decades Israel tried to negotiate with various
parties to permanently resolve the future of the disputed territories, but is
still in search of a genuine peace partner to represent the Palestinian Arabs.

Yasser Arafat demonstrated his inability to relinquish his dream of destroying
Israel when he rejected prime minister Ehud Barak's incredibly generous offer at
the Camp David talks in 2000 - a rejection which even Prince Bandar, the
official representative of Saudi Arabia at the talks, described as a crime.

And now Hamas, which states in its founding constitution its aim of destroying
Israel completely, is the democratically elected majority party of the
Palestinian people.

AS AN example of what they are talking about, the apartheid accusers point to
Israel's security fence and checkpoints, which limit the movement of people from
the disputed territories into the internationally recognized borders of the
State of Israel. In this they are also wrong.

After the collapse of the Camp David talks, Arafat and other Palestinian groups
dispatched suicide bomber after suicide bomber into Israel, targeting Jewish
civilians. In the past eight years, terrorist attacks have led to more than
1,300 civilians being murdered and 10,000 wounded by the human guided missiles
of the Islamic suicide bombers.

Given Israel's relatively small population, proportionately, such carnage in
South Africa would mean more than 10,000 murdered and more than 80,000 injured.
What would we South Africans do if so many of our fellow citizens were blown up
by suicide bombers? Appreciate for the moment what this would mean in the
context of the US, where the murder of about 3,000 people at the World Trade
Center bombings led to the invasion of two countries. Proportionately, had the
US sustained similar causalities to those suffered in Israel, almost 80,000
Americans would have been killed and about 600,000 injured.

THE TRAUMA inflicted on the Israeli people from the relentless barrage unleashed
by the Palestinian leadership, enjoying widespread support from its people, is
indescribable. Israel erected a security fence to shield it from the attacks
launched from the disputed territories across its internationally recognized
borders. Every sovereign country is legally and morally entitled to erect a
fence to defend its people from attacks launched from the outside.

The fence has been remarkably successful and has reduced successful suicide
bombings by up to 90 percent. Israel relies on the most fundamental moral and
legal principle - the right to self-defense. Never before in recorded history
has any nation endured such civilian casualties and responded with such
restraint.

The security fence is a defensive instrument, and the most humanitarian one
possible in a situation where the alternative is heavy military action which
would result in the death of thousands.

None of this has anything to do with apartheid, and everything to do with an
ongoing war over the disputed territories, and over the very existence of the
Jewish state. After nearly 2,000 years of exile, persecutions and genocides, the
Jewish people are surely entitled to a tiny strip of country to call their own.

If there is an analogy to the South African situation, it is that Israel is like
the African National Congress, which was forced into the armed struggle because
it had no partner for peace. As soon as the National Party came around to
wanting genuinely negotiations, the situation was resolved. Our South African
experience has taught us that you cannot make peace unless both parties to the
conflict wish to resolve it.

When the Arab world is ready to make peace, Israel will be there. Let us all
pray to God that this happens soon so that the misery and suffering of all can
be brought to an immediate end.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: CAVE OF the Patriarchs, Hebron. Before 1967, Jordan controlled
the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza, so these are not occupied territories,
but disputed territories. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The Jerusalem Post

August 12, 2008 Tuesday

Bear claw on the trigger

BYLINE: DAVID STROMBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 820 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is editor of Zeek: Russified, a volume of works by
contemporary Russian Jewish writers, poets and artists.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was Russia's last voice of conscience, binding it morally
to the horrors of its Stalinist period. Josef Stalin, born Dzugashvili, was of
course Georgian, but was famously ashamed of his ethnicity and, like
Solzhenitsyn, was a believer in the greatness of Russia. And while it's
difficult to overstate Solzhenitsyn's role in exposing the brutality of the
Gulag, the Russia that reemerged and eventually embraced both him and Stalin has
again become an imperialist aggressor.

Less than a week after Solzhenitsyn's death, Russia has entered into its first
post-Soviet armed conflict outside its borders. Did Solzhenitsyn see this
coming? He might have: In February of this year, Dmitry Rogozin, Moscow's
representative to NATO, threatened the use of armed force in support of Serbia
during the riots surrounding Kosovo's declaration of independence. An alarming
statement, though it would have been complicated for Russia to navigate tanks to
Belgrade through the former Eastern Bloc, more than half of which is now part of
the European Union. Russia barked, but couldn't bite. And so it waited.

ON THURSDAY night, Russia got the provocation it needed: Georgian troops
launched a surprise attack in a bid to take control of Tskhinvali, the capital
of South Ossetia, a region that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili had
promised to reintegrate into Georgia's territory. This time, the maneuver was
much simpler: Reinforcements for the peacekeeping troops already stationed there
had only to travel through a long tunnel that connects the breakaway region to
North Ossetia, which is part of the Russian Federation.

And it seems that the bombers shown off at last year's air show in Moscow were
also standing by. They struck the Georgian city of Gori, the outskirts of the
capital of Tbilisi and the Black Sea port of Poti - which are, respectively, 13,
91 and 189 kilometers from South Ossetia. Parts of Russia's Black Sea fleet are
converging on the coast of Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia. All of which
Solzhenitsyn might also have seen coming.

The decidedly westward-leaning Saakashvili gained power in the Rose Revolution
of 2004, posing trouble for Russia with his proclaimed alliance with the US. In
March 2006, after many tough words, Russia banned the import of Georgian wine
and sparkling water - two key revenue producers for the country. This was done
on the pretext that the products were of poor quality.

But Saakashvili wasn't intimidated, and in October of that year Georgia arrested
and deported four Russian military officers it accused of spying. Russia severed
all ties and enforced a total land, air and economic embargo. Then it started
harassing all Georgian nationals in a hunt for illegal workers. In a
Solzhenitsyn-like twist, there were reports that police called public school
teachers asking them for the addresses of children with Georgian last names,
whose parents they would then arrest. Georgians started to be deported by the
planeload.

SAAKASHVILI FACED calls from the opposition to step down because of the great
economic and social distress caused by his policies, and so in 2007 he called
early elections, which he won by a slim margin. This gave him confidence to
continue the pursuit of yet another campaign goal: to make Georgia a NATO
member. Georgia's candidacy was raised at a NATO summit in April, only two
months after Rogozin's warning to NATO about Russia's readiness to use force.
Russia stated that it would regard Georgia's entry into NATO as a direct threat.
The US backed Georgia's bid, while France and Germany made up the main
opposition. Ironically, as a NATO member, Georgia would never have been able to
mount this week's arguably misguided offensive.

And like several other conflicts in the world, this one also involves oil: The
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which runs from Azerbaijan through Georgia and
Turkey, brings oil directly from Central Asia to Europe, bypassing Russia. The
issue isn't just Russia's monopoly and the subsequent danger of lost revenue.
Russia uses its status as Europe's main supplier of natural gas to exert or
divert diplomatic pressure, so any energy inputs it doesn't control threaten
that power.

As small as it is, Georgia is the first country in the world to take a stand
against Russia. From Russia's point of view, a pipeline in Georgia would be less
dangerous if its leader kowtowed to Vladimir Putin - the same president-
turned-prime minister that Solzhenitsyn befriended toward the end of his life,
implicitly and explicitly approving Russia's intentions of imperialist, Eastern
Orthodox-tinged aggression.

And while Solzhenitsyn earned the status of a saint for protesting the
repression he experienced in the Soviet Union, by supporting the current Russian
authority - and being blind to its tightening grip on Mother Russia and its
neighbors - he has forfeited the possibility of being called a prophet.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: A GEORGIAN WOMAN is calmed by her husband. Ironically, as a NATO
member, Georgia would never have been able to mount this week's arguably
misguided operation. (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The Jerusalem Post

August 12, 2008 Tuesday

Turkey's abandonment of the West

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1890 words

HIGHLIGHT: OUR WORLD

Russia's invasion of Georgia should serve as proof that there are some regimes
that simply cannot be considered strategic allies of the West. And as the US and
NATO try to assess the wreckage of their attempt to forge a post-Soviet alliance
with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, another erstwhile ally is showing that it
too, cannot be trusted.

On Wednesday, Iran's genocidal, nuclear weapons- seeking leader, President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will arrive in Istanbul for a "working visit" with Turkish
leaders. This visit represents a diplomatic triumph for Teheran. Since assuming
office three years ago, Ahmadinejad has feverishly pursued diplomatic ties with
Western-allied states in an effort to weaken the West's will to take action to
prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Turkey is the first NATO member to
welcome him to its territory.

According to media reports, during his visit Ahmadinejad is scheduled to meet
with President Abdullah Gul and with Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan. On the
agenda are Iran's nuclear program and Turkish-Iranian financial ties. Turkey
favors advancing both.

In recent months, the Turkish government has become one of the most outspoken
advocates of Iran's nuclear program. At least publicly, Turkish leaders
credulously accept Iran's dubious assertions about the peaceful intent of its
nuclear program - which it refuses to fully expose to the UN's International
Atomic Energy Agency's inspectors.

As for financial ties with Iran, Turkey is working feverishly to expand them.
From 2002, when Erdogan's and Gul's Islamic fundamentalist AKP party first
assumed leadership of the country through 2007, Turkey's trade with Iran
expanded from $1.2 billion to $6.7 billion. In July 2007, Turkey signed a $3.5
billion deal to develop one of Iran's oil fields. Over US objections, Turkey is
planning to finalize that deal with Ahmadinejad this week. Trade between the two
countries is expanding so quickly that most Turkish businessmen will tell you
that Iran is their hottest market.

TURKEY'S WARM ties with Iran are matched by its embrace of Iranian satellites
and proxies like Syria and Hizbullah. Turkey was the first Western-allied state
and NATO member to host Syrian President Bashar Assad on a state visit after
Assad's regime assassinated former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.
In 2006, Turkey sided with Hizbullah in its war against Israel. It even allowed
Iran to transfer weapons to Hizbullah through Turkey.

Then there is Turkey's open support for Hamas. After Hamas's victory in the
January 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Turkey became the third non-Arab
state after Iran and Russia to openly embrace Hamas. Hamas's Syrian- based
leader Khaled Mashaal paid an official visit to Ankara where he met with then
foreign minister Gul and senior AKP party officials a month after his Iranian-
sponsored terror group's electoral victory.

The Turkish government's support for Hamas is complemented by its support for al
Qaida financiers. In the summer of 2006, Erdogan endorsed his top advisor's
donations to senior al Qaida financier Yasin al-Qadi after they were exposed in
the Turkish media. And since entering office, Erdogan, Gul and their AKP
colleagues have repeatedly accused Israel and the US of committing genocide
against Muslims in Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq.

While both the US and Israel have voiced their displeasure with Turkey's embrace
of their enemies, neither country has taken any steps to either discredit Ankara
or to distance themselves from the Turkish government. To the contrary, both
Israel and the US continue to praise Turkey as a strategic ally. Both insist
that under the AKP, Turkey is demonstrating that it is possible to be Islamic
fundamentalist and pro-Western. And both are enabling and indeed encouraging
Turkey to act as an intermediary between them and their sworn enemies.

In Israel's case, Turkey has been mediating the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's
negotiations with Syria. And in the US's case, it appears that Turkey has played
a mediation role between Washington and Teheran. On July 17, both US National
Security Advisor Steven Hadley and Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mouttaki
just happened to be visiting Ankara on the same day. Two days later, US
Assistant Secretary of State William Burns met with Iran's nuclear negotiator
Saeed Jalili in Geneva.

In both cases, it is far from clear that either Israel or the US have benefitted
from Turkey's increasingly prominent role in their foreign policy. In fact, in
both cases, Israel and the US have weakened their position by allowing Turkey to
serve as a mediator between them and their adversaries.

IN THE case of Syria, as Assad's recent visit to Teheran showed clearly,
Israel's attempt to use negotiations with Syria to pry Damascus away from its
strategic alliance with Teheran has failed. To date, the only thing its decision
to hold indirect negotiations with Syria in Turkey has done is end Syria's
isolation from the West.

As for Iran, the Bush administration's decision to allow Turkey to mediate
between it and the ayatollahs has arguably emboldened Turkey to move forward
with its Iranian oil deal. Beyond that, Turkey's success in convincing the
Americans to actively pursue diplomacy with the Iranians paved the way for the
US's humiliation in Geneva last month. During that meeting, Jalili made no
attempt to reach an agreement with the US and its partners. And by joining the
Europeans and the Russians in directly engaging Iran, the US facilitated
Russia's announcement last week that it sees no reason to impose additional UN
Security Council sanctions against Iran for its failure to agree to temporarily
suspend of its uranium enrichment activities.

Like Russia under Putin, Turkey under Erdogan's leadership has masked its rapid
transformation from a flawed but pro-Western democracy under its previous
governments into an anti-Western - and in Turkey's case Islamist - regime by
paying lip service to the West even as it has taken steps to purge its power
structure of pro- Western voices. Just as Putin's popular government has taken
brutal action against his political, intellectual and financial foes, so too,
Erdogan's popularly elected Islamic fundamentalist regime has worked steadily to
discredit, criminalize and intimidate its pro-Western rivals.

SINCE TAKING office in 2002, the AKP under Erdogan has taken control over
Turkey's bureaucracy. It has weakened women's rights. It has launched brutal
campaigns against its foes in the media, taking over opposition television
stations and arresting and intimidating anti-Islamic editors and reporters. It
has taken over the Turkish secret police and regular police forces. It has
stacked the Turkish courts with its loyalists. It has enabled the opening of
radical Islamic madrassas. It has penetrated the military and demoralized and
intimidated the senior officer corps. It has ignored court judgments against it.

Through the police, it has launched a massive wire tapping campaign against its
political opponents and has leaked embarrassing transcripts of these tapped
phone calls to its loyalist press to humiliate and intimidate its rivals. It has
used wiretaps of opposition journalists in police interrogations of their
editors.

The only remaining secular check on Erdogan's government is Turkey's
Constitutional Court. Last week, the court narrowly rejected the court's chief
prosecutor's lawsuit calling for the outlawing of the AKP party on the grounds
that it is seeking to overthrow Turkey's secular constitutional order. In their
ruling, ten out of eleven judges did agree that the AKP is seeking to weaken
Turkey's secular identity and ruled that it be denied government funding.

In an apparent bid to both distract the public from the court case and to
further delegitimize its opponents, the government claims that it uncovered a
conspiracy by senior opposition officials, including leading journalists,
businessmen and generals, called the Ergenekon plot to overthrow the government.
It alleges that most of the terror attacks carried out by Islamic terrorists
over the past several years were actually carried out by members of this
secularist cabal. Last month the police arrested two retired generals, a
prominent industrialist and a respected journalist along with 17 others in its
prosecution of the Ergenekon plot.

In all of this, of course, Erdogan and his associates are mirroring Putin's
actions in Russia since he assumed office in 2000. Like Putin, the AKP replaced
a deeply corrupt, unpopular pro-Western government. While Putin has built his
popularity on xenophobia and hatred of the West, Erdogan and the AKP have built
their popularity on a rejection of secular Turkish nationalism in favor of pan-
Islamism and hatred of the US and Israel. And as they have moved their countries
away from the West, both Putin and Erdogan have managed to maintain good
relations with Washington by going through the motions of supporting its war
against terror even as they have both embraced terrorists and their state
sponsors.

THE LESSON moving forward from all of is not that Israel and the US should turn
their backs on Turkey. In an international environment that is increasingly
hostile to liberal democracies, there is no reason to cut off ties with hostile
regimes just because they are hostile. But at the same time, neither the US nor
Israel should delude themselves by thinking that Turkey remains their strategic
ally. It is not. And there are consequences to this fact.

For the US, beyond ending immediately Turkey's role as an intermediary with
Iran, it would make sense to float the notion of removing Turkey from NATO due
to its expanding ties with Iran. Just the suggestion of such a move would no
doubt have a profound effect on the Turks. Certainly, the US should be reaching
out to regime opponents and calling for Erdogan and his associates to end their
attempts to repress the anti-Islamic media and secular politicians, businessmen
and military commanders.

If the US is concerned about inflaming Turkish sentiment against it through such
moves it should consider that since Erdogan took power, and as the US has bent
over backwards to be nice to him, anti-US sentiment in Turkey has risen steeply.
According to a recent Pew international opinion poll, today the Turks are the
most anti-American society in the world.

For its part, Israel should reassess its willingness to sell sensitive military
equipment to Turkey given its close ties to Israel's enemies. It should
certainly stop its Turkish-mediated talks with Syria and reject Turkish offers
to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians.

Like Russia, Turkey's anti-Western regime is promoting itself to the West by
pretending not to be anti-Western. And as was the case with Russia up until it
decided to invade defenseless Georgia over the weekend, the US and its allies
have been willing to endanger their strategic interests to believe this lie.

It can only be hoped that the West will abandon this policy before it
inadvertently paves the way for a new Iranian-allied axis of evil populated by
the likes of Russia, Turkey and Pakistan. All of these governments owe much of
their power to the West's willingness to believe that their anti-Western regimes
could be trusted as strategic allies until it was too late.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: TURKEY'S LAND Forces Commander Ilker Basbug. Might the
suggestion of removing the country from NATO scare it out of pan-Islamism?
(Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The Jerusalem Post

August 12, 2008 Tuesday

Those obscene Holocaust analogies

BYLINE: M.J. ROSENBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1341 words

HIGHLIGHT: In Washington. The writer is the director of Israel Policy Forum's
Washington Policy Center.

Is it possible to discuss Iran and Israel without invoking the specter of
another Holocaust? It seems that it isn't. Israeli officials, US presidential
candidates and journalists all invoke the possibility of a second Holocaust with
reckless abandon.

Reckless it is, too. Once the possibility of another Holocaust is posited, there
can be no alternative but to take action, no matter how extreme, to prevent it.
Historian Benny Morris is so hysterical about the Iranian threat that he would
use nuclear weapons to prevent it.

That's right. On July 18, in perhaps the most ridiculous op-ed I've ever seen in
The New York Times, Morris called for a conventional military strike to prevent
Iran from developing a nuclear bomb and inflicting a holocaust on Israel. He
predicted the strike would fail, and concluded that the only alternative left
would be a nuclear attack against Iran.

In other words, he called for a holocaust to prevent a holocaust.

The approach taken by Morris is not only hysterical, it also negates the
existence of the State of Israel. After all, if Jews today remain so vulnerable
to annihilation - by a second-rate power like Iran, no less - then who needs
Israel? If Israel's existence cannot protect Jews from holocaust, then why was
Israel created in the first place?

A LITTLE Holocaust education is in order.

The Holocaust took place because the world's second most powerful nation made
the destruction of the Jewish people its number one priority. The Final Solution
almost succeeded in destroying all the Jews of Europe, some six million men,
women and children.

The reason total annihilation almost succeeded was because Europe's Jews were
defenseless. They had no country of their own, no army and - it goes without
saying - no weapons. They had no ability to fight back. The Nazis were able to
kill them, but the Jews could do nothing or - during the course of several
revolts - very little in response. The Nazis were able to destroy the Jews of
Europe with near total impunity.

Imagine for a minute if the Jews of Germany, Poland, Hungary and the rest could
have fought back. Imagine if they somehow had hugely powerful weapons that could
destroy Berlin and Frankfurt and Munich. Imagine if they had an army, air force
and navy that was powerful enough to inflict on the Nazis what the Nazis were
inflicting on them.

What would have happened then?

Simple. There would have been no Holocaust. If the Jews had the power to take
the Nazis down with them, the Final Solution could not have occurred. It is only
because the Jews could not fight back - because they had no army, no weapons
and, above all, no state of their own - that the Holocaust could happen.

And that, as everyone knows, is why the State of Israel was created. That is
what "Never Again" means. It means that never again will a defenseless,
stateless Jewish people be led to slaughter. It means that any power considering
annihilation of the Jews will pay a fatal price.

That is why all this talk about another Holocaust is so insulting to Israel.
There cannot be another Holocaust. A powerful nuclear-armed Israel is the
ultimate deterrent.

THOSE WHO insist that another Holocaust is imminent believe that this form of
deterrence - known as "mutually assured destruction" - would not work with
Iranians. Unlike say the Nazis, Soviets, North Koreans and pretty much everyone
else on the planet, Iranians are said not to care if their own civilization is
destroyed in the process of destroying their enemy.

Here's Benny Morris in The New York Times: "Given the fundamentalist,
self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that
deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men
who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war. They are likely to use
any bomb they build... Thus an Israeli nuclear strike to prevent the Iranians
from taking the final steps toward getting the bomb is probable. The alternative
is letting Teheran have its bomb. In either case, a Middle Eastern nuclear
holocaust would be in the cards."

In other words, the only way to prevent a nuclear war is to initiate one.

NOW I may be na·ve, but I have yet to hear of any civilization that would choose
to go down in flames just to take out the enemy. The Imperial Japanese were as
fanatical as any people on the planet, but once they saw the destructive power
of the atomic bomb, they surrendered. The Soviets, under Stalin ("comparatively
rational," according to Morris) knew they could not defeat the United States, so
they decided on coexistence, preferring a cold war to a suicidal hot one. The
Red Chinese, in their fanatical mode, developed nuclear weapons at a moment when
they considered themselves in a life-and-death struggle with both the United
States and the Soviet Union but chose not to use them. The same goes for the
Indians and Pakistanis who have been engaged in a bloody struggle for 50 years.
They both have nuclear weapons.

Iran is different, the hawks say. Sounding like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad describing
the Jews, Transportation Minister and candidate for prime minister Shaul Mofaz
says that "the Iranians are the root of all evil." Morris agrees. There is no
one like the Iranians. Only Iranians are willing to give up their cities, their
children and their civilization to destroy the enemy.

(Believing that one's adversaries don't love their children is nothing new. In
every war it is said that the other side is willing to sacrifice its own kids
which proves that they - unlike us-are essentially not human.)

I don't buy it. I don't believe that the Iranians would sacrifice Teheran to
take out Tel Aviv. Yes, they would sacrifice soldiers at the front (look at the
mass carnage of the Iran-Iraq War) but not their civilization. And certainly not
their children.

Those who insist that they would are precisely the same people who told us that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that, in the words of
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, we must invade Iraq rather than wait for a
"smoking gun" which would likely be a "mushroom cloud." It's hard to believe
that anyone would heed these people twice.

THERE CAN be no doubt that the Iranian threat has to be addressed. Although
President Ahmadinejad has to answer to the mullahs, his obscene threats need to
be taken seriously. But that means using every means at our disposal to contain
the Iranian threat, starting with diplomacy without preconditions. The worst
thing that can happen is that no agreement would be reached and other plans
would have to be made. But to assume, as Morris does, that we need to trigger
the apocalypse in order to prevent it is nothing short of nuts.

I'm not saying Morris wants a nuclear war, only that he thinks that there are
worse things - like diplomacy, an option he dismisses in his op-ed. Here is what
he says about nuclear war: "It is in the interest of neither Iran nor the United
States... that Iran be savaged by a nuclear strike, or that both Israel and Iran
suffer such a fate. We know what would ensue: a traumatic destabilization of the
Middle East with resounding political and military consequences around the
globe, serious injury to the West's oil supply and radioactive pollution of the
earth's atmosphere and water."

"Traumatic destabilization." "Serious injury to the West's oil supply." And
"radioactive pollution of the earth's atmosphere and water." That's all! He
doesn't even mention the dead.

Imagine this is what a noted historian thinks is preferable to talking to Iran.
As for Israel, the Promised Land to which Jews have dreamed of returning for
2,000 years, it supposedly would survive both nuclear devastation and the
world's awareness that it triggered nuclear war. What planet does Morris live
on?

The good news is that there is a Jewish state. It is strong. It has nuclear
weapons. And it isn't going anywhere. Declaring otherwise to advance the same
neoconservative agenda that has already done America, Israel and the world so
much damage is inexcusable.

And this time it's not working.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: ISRAEL AIR Force fighter plane. If Israel's existence cannot
protect Jews from annihilation, then why was Israel created in the first place?
(Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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All Rights Reserved

900 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 11, 2008 Monday

The Russian riddle

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 725 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

It was Russia's use of disproportionate force against Georgia, its relatively
defenseless neighbor - and not the Beijing Olympics - that dominated the weekend
news.

In the wake of a roadside bombing that killed six of its police officers,
Georgia sought to retake the disputed enclave of South Ossetia. The Russian
military is forcing it to withdraw. Russian-supported rebels in another
contested region, Abkhazia, have meanwhile launched a separate assault against
Georgia.

As in many international flare-ups, neither side is completely right nor
completely wrong. Yet the world may be witnessing a resurgent Russia attempting
to reassert influence over territory it lost with the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991.

AS FATE would have it, the bloodshed comes days after the death of Nobel
laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, at age 89. Solzhenitsyn was as fierce an
opponent of Soviet Communism as he was a champion of Russia nationalism.

He left a testament of astonishing power that bears great relevance today - even
after the tyranny he helped defeat lies in the dustbin of history.

In 1945, after serving in the Red Army, Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to a labor
camp for making a disparaging reference to Stalin in a letter to a friend.
Horrified by his glimpse into the dark heart of the Soviet Union, he resolved to
tell its terrible secrets. In his eight years of imprisonment, he committed tens
of thousands of lines to memory.

After he was released, but still under the most difficult conditions, he penned
a series of searing novels - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward
and The First Circle - that illuminated the horrors of the prison camp hell
which devoured tens of millions of his fellow citizens.

But what finally destroyed Western illusions about the Communist experiment was
Solzhenitsyn's monumental non- fiction expose, The Gulag Archipelago.

Writing in impenetrable solitude, its dissident author said he wished to carry
"the dying wishes of millions whose last whisper, last moan, had been cut short
on some hut floor in some prison camp." In doing so, he added, "it seemed as if
it was no longer I who was writing; rather, I was swept along, my hand was being
moved by an outside force."

The masterpiece was smuggled to Paris, where its publication got Solzhenitsyn
expelled from the USSR in 1974 - but not before it had sensational effect. "My
face was smothered in tears," one Russian wrote to the author. "All this was
mine, intimately mine, mine for every day of the 15 years I spent in the camps."

LIKE ANY hero, Solzhenitsyn had his flaws. In the 18 years he lived reclusively
outside Cavendish, Vermont, certain reactionary habits of mind came to the fore.
He found Western democracy "weak and effete" and regarded Westerners as
afflicted by shallow materialism, moral flabbiness and complacency. "Excessive
ease and prosperity have weakened their will and their reason," he intoned.

When Solzhenitsyn returned after the Soviet collapse, such sentiments, together
with a heavy dose of Slavophilia and Russian Orthodox piety, would eventually
endear him to Vladimir Putin. The former KGB man admired the writer's idea that
after the struggle with the Communist state there loomed a greater challenge
still: resurrecting the Russian spirit and reviving its national memory.

The Russian leader also applauded Solzhenitsyn's insistence that Russia was a
world apart. "Any ancient, deeply-rooted autonomous culture... constitutes an
autonomous world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking,"
Solzhenitsyn said. Last June, Putin visited Solzhenitsyn's home to give him
Russia's highest award, the State Prize.

His fervent support of Israel notwithstanding, Solzhenitsyn was sometimes
accused of anti-Semitism. In his last book Two Hundred Years Together, a history
of the Jews in Russia, he emphasized the prominent contribution of Jewish
revolutionaries to the Bolshevik seizure of power.

Yet, in the end, Solzhenitsyn presents us with the example - urgently needed
just now - of a writer of the highest moral seriousness, a man of unyielding
honesty whose decision to expose injustice and identify evil carried enormous
personal risk.

Today's Russian leaders, no less than their Soviet predecessors, could benefit
from a patriot-prophet to remind them that war-making is an unhealthy basis for
national renaissance.

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August 11, 2008 Monday

'Ex-gay' isn't kosher

BYLINE: DAVID BENKOF

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 831 words

HIGHLIGHT: Torah-committed homosexuals should be wary of reparative therapy .
The writer is working on a PhD in Jewish History at New York University and
plans to make aliya in 2009. A version of this article appeared in the Los
Angeles Jewish Journal.

Since 2002, when I started becoming open about my personal religious choice to
stop having same-sex relations, liberals on gay issues have repeatedly accused
me of being a Jewish "ex-gay." But I am no such thing, because Torah Judaism
doesn't have a concept of an "ex- gay." I have no doubt that some people's
sexualities change. I have met many people who say it has happened to them. But
I'm skeptical of the ones who credit their "reorientation" therapists. I just
don't see the evidence that it works.

In the process of writing Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View,
the most important (really the only significant) full-length study of
homosexuality and Jewish law, Rabbi Chaim Rapoport asked Jews Offering New
Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) if he could speak to some "success
stories" - and he was unsatisfied with its meager response.

I have had much the same experience; while I have spoken to about two dozen
JONAH men on the Internet, on the phone and in person, I have never encountered
a single Jew who was gay (not bisexual) and became straight (not bisexual) due
to the techniques recommended by JONAH. If its approach was effective, shouldn't
there be at least five or 10 men and women I could speak with who say that JONAH
did for them what it claims to be able to do?

CAN PRAYER change one's sexuality? I don't see why not. As an Orthodox Jew, I
certainly support people praying for any change they want, from a new sexuality
to more patience. If I didn't believe God listens to prayers (although not
always responding like a genie), I wouldn't see the point in praying at all. And
anyone struggling to bring his behaviors in line with his values could benefit
from a good therapist.

But that's not the focus of the "reparative therapy" promoted to many Jews
struggling with same-sex attractions. People pay hundreds of dollars to poseurs
who tell them their homosexuality stems from problematic parenting, but that
they can release their inner heterosexual through resolving trauma that exists
only in the therapist's imagination, hypermasculine or hyperfeminine role
playing, "gender-appropriate" activities like baseball and sewing and other
mucky-muck I don't have the stomach to describe. Even the largest "ex-gay"
group, Exodus International, no longer has much use this type of discredited
therapy.

If the Jewish "ex-gay" advocates knew anything about Judaism and homosexuality,
they wouldn't endorse Christian psychoanalytic ideas such as "healing same-sex
attractions" and "becoming heterosexual" and the "false identity of
homosexuality." Their offer to help gays "recover their heterosexual potential"
is clearly lifted from Catholic natural-law philosophy.

While Jewish law certainly calls for sexuality to be channeled into opposite-sex
relationships, no notion that we're all inherently straight appears in any
Jewish text. The Torah knows no sexual orientations - which is the point of
Rabbi Joel Beasley's important 1998 Jewish Spectator article "Why Neither
Homosexuality nor Heterosexuality Exist in Judaism."

MANY OUTSPOKEN Jewish supporters of the "ex-gay" movement are non-observant
Jews. One Jewish woman who wanted to encourage me to become "ex-gay" sent me an
e-mail - on Shabbat - to suggest some reparative therapy Web sites. I wrote her
back to let her know that (and I confirmed this with an Orthodox rabbi) if she
had to violate one commandment, it would have been better for her to engage in
lesbian sex than for her to e-mail me on Shabbat. She became very hostile. No
serious practicing Jew would let such people supervise their kosher meat, so why
should we trust them with Jews struggling with same-sex attractions?

JONAH's confusion about Judaism and homosexuality is most evident in its comfort
pointing Jewish gays and lesbians toward learning about Christian ideas about
homosexuality. For example, eight times jonahweb.org recommends a book called
Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth by a Jewish psychiatrist named Dr.
Jeffrey Satinover. I read that book in 2002 when my rabbi told me it was
JONAH-endorsed. Satinover quotes the New Testament far more than any Jewish
source. The views of the apostle Paul (the founder of Christianity, who
Satinover told me in an e-mail had "remarkably many deeply Jewish
characteristics") appear on more than a dozen pages.

The executive vice president of one organization JONAH has promoted used to have
a policy (until I demanded its reversal) of refusing to talk to any Jews, no
matter how observant, unless he was allowed to evangelize them for Christ.
Indeed, I met one young man at a Jewish conference who confided in me that he
had participated in many of the "ex-gay" organizations promoted by JONAH and now
accepts Jesus as his personal savior.

I would love to see a Torah-true organization for same-sex-attracted Jews who on
their own seek help in following Judaism's guidelines for family and bedroom
life. Alas, such an organization does not yet exist.

DavidBenkof@aol.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: WHILE WRITING his ground-breaking study of homosexuality and
Jewish law, Rabbi Chaim Rapoport was dissatisfied with the 'success stories.'

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August 11, 2008 Monday

The 'halo effect' shields NGOs from media scrutiny

BYLINE: NAFTALI BALANSON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 710 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is managing editor of NGO Monitor.

A familiar scenario: A non-governmental organization (NGO) issues a report on
alleged Israeli human rights violations, and it's instantly and automatically
newsworthy. The Israeli and foreign media uncritically, even eagerly, promote
the NGO's politicized agenda, regardless of the NGO's credibility or the
veracity of the allegations.

This "halo effect," whereby the claims of human rights groups are accepted
without a modicum of scrutiny, often results in Israel's vilification on the
international stage for violating "international humanitarian law" or demonized
as an "apartheid state" to be shunned and boycotted. By publishing these
stories, the media reinforces the halo effect and becomes partner to the damage
done.

The typical article on Israeli "violations" has a number of common denominators.
Beyond the ubiquitous headline championing a human rights NGO and condemning
Israel, the NGO's "evidence" and sensational accusations are repeated, left
unchallenged by the reporter. By dint of its presumed independence and stated
lofty goals, the NGO is considered more truthful than the government. The media
pits universal human rights against Israel, leaving it to respond on the
defensive. This might make for "good" journalism, but does it tell the whole
story?

IN RECENT weeks, local, highly political rights groups - funded by the EU and by
European governments - have received worldwide coverage for their attacks on
Israel. Consider the publicity afforded to Physicians for Human Rights - Israel
(PHR-I) when it accused the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) of denying Gazans
life-saving health care in Israel unless the patients informed on family and
friends. PHR-I's report was published in hundreds of major media outlets, and
Israel was portrayed as cruel and inhumane, as opposed to genuinely concerned
for the security of its citizens.

Yet, despite the importance of this story, did reporters question PHR-I's
reliability? Rather, the halo effect shielded it from past mistakes. Three
months ago, PHR-I reported that a cancer patient in Gaza died while awaiting a
permit to receive treatment in Israel, only to admit days later that the
"deceased" was still alive. The patient was attempting to evade a security
check. Even if we give PHR-I the benefit of the doubt, that it was unknowingly
misled by the patient's family, surely similar self-serving "evidence" from
Palestinians and provided by PHR-I should be taken with a healthy dose of
skepticism. But it was not.

A TELLING, but more subtle form of the halo effect was also manifest in The
Jerusalem Post's coverage of Yesh Din during the last week of July. The Post
published no less than three articles on the same data sheet alleging a failure
by the IDF to report, investigate and indict soldiers for crimes against
Palestinians ("Israeli rights group: IDF fails to indict soldiers," July 29;
"IDF refutes report on misconduct claims," July 30; "Yesh Din renews complaint
of IDF probes," July 31). The second in the series added value to the story,
including a previously unavailable official IDF response and a subsequent reply
from Yesh Din. However, the third article provided nothing more than Yesh Din's
perspective on its back-and-forth with the IDF. This repetition failed to
provide the reader with any fresh information. Needless to say, none of the
articles assumed a critical point of view regarding Yesh Din's speculative
conclusions drawn from an absence of data. The media merely served as a pawn in
Yesh Din's politicized war against the justice system.

Should journalists report allegations of human rights violations by Israel?
Absolutely, they have a duty to do so. However, journalistic integrity demands
an equal duty to ask tough questions of NGOs and critically examine their
claims. Human rights groups deserve the same scrutiny as any other actor in the
theater of the Arab-Israeli conflict - no more, but certainly no less. A truly
effective media should lead civil society in discussing the implications of
security policy, and even suggest viable alternatives. However, this valuable
role is jeopardized by blind repetition of NGO allegations without obtaining
independent verification or giving due consideration to their political agendas.

www.ngo-monitor.org

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: BASSAM WAHEIDI, as reported by Physicians for Human Rights,
refused sight-saving medical treatment unless he agreed to spy for Israel. Why
didn't reporters question the NGO's credibility despite its previous mistakes?
(Credit: AP)

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903 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 11, 2008 Monday

Why men like John Edwards cheat

BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 954 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is the host of a daily US radio show on Oprah and Friends.
He recently published The Broken American Male and How to Fix Him.
www.shmuley.com

The outrage over John Edward's admitted affair with a filmmaker transcends what
we have seen with most recent sex scandals. This partly results from his
repeated denials of the affair. Much more important, of course, is the fact that
it took place while his wife was battling cancer. The two of them had already
dealt with the tragedy of losing a teenage son, and the public is furious that
Edwards caused his wife, who agreed to campaign for him even after being
diagnosed with incurable bone cancer, more pain.

Why, people want to know, do men who have it all like John Edwards throw away
their blessings? Why, when they have wives who will do everything for them, is
it still never enough? The answer is that men who cheat do not do so because
they don't love their wives but because they hate themselves. It's not that
their wives are uncaring but because their perforated sense-of-self is immune to
affection. Were their wives to shower them with all the love in the world, it
would simply seep through the broken shards of their shattered egos.

When asked about the affair last year by the media, Edwards denied it, saying,
"It's completely untrue, ridiculous. I've been in love with the same woman for
30- plus years and, as anybody who's been around us knows, she's an
extraordinary human being, warm, loving, beautiful, sexy and as good a person as
I have ever known. So the story's just false."

The form of his denial should have been a red flag. Men do not refrain from
cheating because they have special wives, but because they have a commitment to
moral behavior and righteous action.

Men today feel like failures. Immersed as they are in a hyper-competitive
culture that makes them feel like they are valuable only through external
achievement, they nurse a lifelong feeling of anonymity and insignificance. That
gnawing insecurity becomes the very engine of their success. Thus, they reason
to themselves: If I become a rich trial lawyer and get invited into high
society, I'll be important. Oh wait. That happened and I still feel like a
failure. Time to become a senator. Okay, I did that, and I still don't feel
fulfilled. Let's go for the gold, president. But all that attention and power
will never make these men feel like they matter because it's being pumped
straight into a black hole. There is no bottom to their low self-esteem.

ONCE YOU make a man's ego dependent not on the love he gets from his family but
on the adoration he gets from crowds, he transfers the locus of his self-esteem
away from his intimate circle to a fickle public. His need for public validation
becomes an addiction. The wife cannot make him feel good about himself because,
he reasons to himself, if he is a great big nothing, the woman dumb enough to
marry him, however virtuous and accomplished, is an even bigger loser than he
is. The wife is unwittingly punished for her devotion.

And that's where you see great men becoming susceptible to affairs. It is
specifically the woman to whom they are not married, the one that has not been
devalued through a merger with a failure, that can make him feel consequential.

Edwards practically admitted as much in the statement he released admitting to
the affair: "In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was
special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic. If you want to beat
me up - feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up
myself."

The egocentrism and narcissism to which he confesses are always the hallmark of
the broken American male who mistakenly believes that ephemeral attention is an
adequate substitute for intimate love. Fractured males always beat themselves
up, whether they succeed or fail. The irony, of course, is that he was always
special. He always had a wife and children who loved him. But like so many
successful men, it still wasn't enough to make him feel unique. No, it took the
adoration of the crowds and the compliments of complete strangers, to make him
feel unique.

Why not his family? Because men who feel like nothing see their families as
impoverished extensions of their own nothingness. They requite external
validation to become a somebody.

AMERICA WITNESSED the same tragic error with Bill Clinton. The most powerful man
in the world needed the ego boost of feeling desirable to a 20-something intern.
External accoutrements, however grand, are always a poor substitute for
authentic self-regard. Elliot Spitzer followed suit by throwing his career away
with a high-class call girl. A woman who is so desirable that a night with her
can set you back a thousand dollars can make a guy feel like a million bucks.

Far from judging Edwards, my heart goes out to him. His is an American tragedy.
Every day hundreds of millions of Americans go to work believing that what they
do in the office will be more central to determining success than what they do
at home, that impressing the boss is more important than keeping your wife off
Prozac and your kids off the streets. But are you a success in life if the
people who mean the most to you think the least of you?

When Edwards announced in a press conference that he would continue seeking the
nomination of the Democratic party for president despite his wife's
metastasizing cancer, Elizabeth Edwards, who is universally admired by
Americans, announced that she supported the decision because she did not want
her children to believe that they had to give up their lives when faced with
difficult battles.

True enough.

But perhaps an even more important lesson to the convey to our children is that
what will truly make them special in life is not becoming president but being
committed and loving family members who always put each other first.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: THE EDWARDS on the campaign trail, April 2007. Do men refrain
from cheating because they have special wives, or because they have a commitment
to moral behavior? (Credit: Bloomberg)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 11, 2008 Monday

Letters

BYLINE: Jeremy Weiss, Jack Cohen, Sharon Altshul, Irene Berman, M. U. Milunsky,
Jacob Kimchy, Sarri Singer, Todd Sukol, Gary and Susan Fike, Abdikadir Elmi,
Jerusalem Post staff

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1139 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

One world, one dream

Sir, - Re "Israel should boycott the Olympics opening ceremony" (August 8):

Jeremy Last's argument for the boycott pointed at China's poor human rights
record and its high pollution levels. Were Israel to not attend the opening
ceremony, he wrote, questions would be asked and something might be done.

But he missed the point of the Games, which is about bringing people from around
the world together - maybe for the one time in their lives - and putting aside
political and racial differences, hopefully resulting in "one world, one dream."

Let us focus on all the positive things China has brought the world and, for the
duration of the Olympics, not criticize it. There will be plenty of time for
that afterwards.

I would like to wish China all the best in the amazing job it is doing in
producing one of the finest Olympics in history. If the opening ceremony was
anything to go by, it will be the greatest Olympic Games for a long time.

JEREMY WEISS

Israel

Sir, - I noted that "Palestine" is represented at the Beijing 2008 Olympic
Games. But Palestine is not a recognized country and is not a member of the UN.
I am curious, what other non-UN countries are represented at the Beijing 2008
Olympics?

If Palestine is at the Beijing Games, what is to prevent Tibet being represented
at the London Olympic Games in 2012?

JACK COHEN

Jerusalem

Elephants in Monaco?

Sir, - On page 1 of your August 10 issue, a Hamas official was quoted
complaining that "people are dying every day in the Gaza Strip because they
can't travel to Egypt and other Arab countries for medical treatment" ("Hamas
plans to breach Sinai border crossing today amid tensions with Egypt).

Then on page 5 we read "It's just a matter of time until they make a tunnel that
an elephant can walk through" ("Lions, monkeys take underground route to Gaza
zoo," August 10).

The temptation to make an elephant joke is great, but the situation is not
funny.

Three years after the Palestinians were handed everything for nothing, there
could be a thriving agriculture and tourist economy in Gaza; instead, tunnels
are used to smuggle in tons of arms.

When will Gaza's leaders stop blaming everyone else and take on the
responsibility of helping their own people? By developing their beautiful
beaches and stopping the killing, they could have another Monaco. Doctors would
flock to it.

SHARON ALTSHUL

Jerusalem

Bit too optimistic

Sir, - Ruthie Blum's interview with Michael Medved reminded me of the wonderful
Shabbat provided us by the members of the Pacific Jewish Center in Venice,
California, in the 1980s. Under the tutelage of Rabbi Lappin, the community had
developed the practice of welcoming Jewish travelers for full room and board,
gratis, for the duration of Shabbat.

With only two days' notice and no questions asked on their part, we were given
home hospitality by two families, and among the many people we were introduced
to was Medved, who personally came to invite us to the Shabbat afternoon "third
meal" at the synagogue. We found the community warm, well-educated,
sophisticated and anything but cultic.

Then a few years ago, we spent Shabbat in Florence, Italy. Our meals were
generously hosted by the Chabad rabbi and his wife. Dinner took place in a
locked room, hidden behind what appeared, from the street, to be an unoccupied
shop.

Another Chabad rabbi, a visitor from Israel and a native speaker of Italian,
related that the previous day he had been walking past a cinema in Florence
where The Passion of the Christ was playing when a man and his son emerged from
the theater. The son pointed to the rabbi and asked his father: "Is that man a
Jew?" "Yes," replied the father. "Then if he's a Jew, why does God let him
live?" the boy asked.

The rabbi, amazed and distressed, retorted, "The people of Israel lives!"

I would like to think that Medved was right in his belief that the film would
not encourage anti-Semitism, but I doubt that the above incident was an isolated
one, especially in places where Jews feel they have to congregate for a meal in
a camouflaged room ("Right off the charts," August 7).

IRENE BERMAN

Shoham

Strange forgiveness

Sir, - If there is one country in the world that should not be coerced into any
form of animosity or hatred toward Israel - i.e., the Jewish people - it is
Spain ("Israel battles Spanish arrest warrants," August 8).

If I recollect correctly, there was an appeal for forgiveness by the King of
Spain for the horrors his country perpetrated against the Jews in 1492 by
forcibly expelling them from the country and instituting the nightmare of the
Inquisition - Spain's killing machine - in which thousands of helpless Jews were
burnt alive at the stake.

Memories of this terrible period in its history appear to linger on in the
Spanish mind-set as anti-Semitism again rears its ugly head in the country.

So much for forgiveness!

M.U. MILUNSKY

Netanya

Fun for the affected

Sir, - We were happy to read "Israelis to join in international project for
terrorism-affected youth from all over the world" (August 6). We also wanted to
note that One Heart Global (www.oneheartglobal.org), an organization working
with victims of terrorism globally, worked directly with Tuesday's Children to
bring the Israeli kids to the camp as well sponsoring them in New York City for
five days for some fun and relaxation and meetings with politicians, first
responders from 9/11, and various business people in the New York area before
returning to Israel.

Both organizations are proud to work together to be a part of this wonderful,
first-time experience.

JACOB KIMCHY

AND SARRI SINGER

Co-Founders, One Heart Global Foundation

TODD SUKOL

Executive Director

Koby Mandell Foundation

New York/Jerusalem

The love is here

Sir, - My wife and I are not Jewish, but the love is here for you and your
beloved country and your people. We belong to the Zola Levitt ministry. We are
supporters. We back you and your love for Israel. As Americans, we are carefully
watching, through The Jerusalem Post every morning.

GARY AND SUSAN FIKE

Reno, Nevada

Write to me

Sir, - I am a native Somali student living in Kenya, who enjoys reading The
Jerusalem Post. I'd love to hear from readers, and thank you in advance.

Please write to P.O. Box 71154-00622, Nairobi, Kenya.

ABDIKADIR ELMI

Nairobi

CORRECTIONS

Our August 7 editorial, "Kadima, unvarnished," said , adima was founded as a
political vehicle by former prime minister Ariel Sharon to implement the 2005
Gaza Disengagement plan. The party was, in fact, founded in the wake of
disengagement.

Our August 10 editorial "A day of responsibility" said the Wannsee Conference
took place on Tisha Be'av. In fact, Herman Goering's letter charging Reinhard
Heydrich to prepare "the complete solution of the Jewish question" was issued on
the eve of the eighth of Av. The conference didn't take place until January 20,
1942.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 10, 2008 Sunday

Defending a Jerusalem oasis

BYLINE: GIL TROY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 889 words

HIGHLIGHT: The battle to save Baka and the German Colony is a skirmish in a
long-overdue struggle. Center Field

Jerusalem's German Colony is an architectural jewel, a magnificent urban oasis
offering historic houses, soothing visual harmony, intimate settings, and even
the sound of birds chirping amid the hurly burly of Israel's capital.
Neighboring Baka, while less sculpted, is also delightful, offering an equally
alluring sense of community. While the Emek Refaim cafes serving both
neighborhoods attract crowds, Baka and German Colony residents are also blessed
by a friendly, not-yet-overdone shopping strip along Derech Beit Lehem.

Alas - surprisingly, tragically, foolishly - the delicate urban ecology of the
German Colony, Baka and Beit Lehem shops is now endangered. And the threat comes
from civil servants who should be committed to preserving such urban gems.

In launching the light rail system, Jerusalem's bureaucrats plan to divert as
many as 1,000 cars an hour from Derech Hebron to Derech Beit Lehem. Private cars
will be banned from Remez Street near the old train station so huge buses can
whisk commuters downtown from the outlying neighborhoods. But independent
traffic engineers have confirmed what any intelligent person can see - this
well- intentioned but poorly thought out automotive invasion will turn Beit
Lehem into what one resident calls "the autostrada," and bring urban blight to
these lovely neighborhoods. The result will be traffic snarls, constant noise,
polluted air, impossible parking, ruined shops, plummeting property values and,
most disturbing, hundreds of pupils walking to the areas' schools every weekday
morning and afternoon.

HAVING HAD the privilege of living in the German Colony since last July, and
having regularly escorted my children back and forth to their schools, I have
watched in horror as this fiasco develops. I have seen the work crews install
the infrastructure for traffic lights and turning lanes, despite the
municipality's promise last year to freeze the plan. I have seen a small, noble
group of concerned citizens try to alert their neighbors, while others flail
about trying to get heard by someone in the vast urban bureaucracy. Last March,
launching my own test of Jerusalem's supposedly responsive bureaucracy, I
contacted the authorities regarding this dumb plan. Identifying myself as an
occasional columnist, I sought an official comment.

I'm still waiting.

Fortunately, there are enough engaged residents to launch a grassroots campaign.
Recently, some locals led by Itay Fishendler and Jonathan Kalman started raising
money and awareness to save their community. They understand that to fight an
indifferent city hall they will need a comprehensive campaign of public protest,
attracting supportive media coverage. This is especially necessary because the
bureaucrats are surprisingly gung-ho about this project despite the feared
fallout. This campaign has been fully co-ordinated with the local community
center and the head of the community council. These urban heroes can be
contacted at bakaa.s.o.s@gmail.com

IF MORE neighbors weighed the pending threat to their quality of life and
property values against what many of them spend on renovations, they would flood
the activists with cash.

Frankly, residents have yet to respond as generously as they should with their
time, passion, and money. Still, in other neighborhoods threatened by equally
ridiculous plans the locals do not even have the resources to fight.

This debacle-in-the-making reveals a deeper problem. The legendary American
politician "Tip" O'Neill famously said "all politics is local." O'Neill
understood that although citizens in a democracy judge their government on the
big things such as defending the country and managing the economy, the little
things also loom large. Unfortunately in Israel the national issues are
overwhelming, the entire political system is too centralized. The residents of
the German Colony and Baka - along with Israelis from Metulla to the Negev -
miss the local representation that makes so many other democracies function. If
city councils and the Knesset had some locally selected district-based
representatives, at least one national politician and one local politician could
represent grievances effectively, passionately, independently. In this case, two
leaders - each beholden to the people - would wake up every day, wondering how
to preserve, protect and defend Baka and the German Colony.

TRUE, A locally based system risks people shouting "Not In My Back Yard" and
ignoring broader community concerns. But in a functional democracy, the local
and the national balance each other in an ultimately constructive dance. All too
often in Israel, the big overwhelms the small. We see this when traffic
engineers arrogantly impose harmful plans on neighborhoods. We see this when
educational bureaucrats prevent parents from raising money in a particular
school to lower student-teacher ratios or block principals from doing what is
best for their students.

The battle to save Baka, the German Colony and the Beit Lehem shopping district
is, then, a small skirmish in a long-overdue struggle. Israel desperately needs
a more responsive political system, along with more responsive, responsible
officials at all levels. These public servants would understand that democracies
- like the threatened neighborhoods - are delicate ecosystems requiring
thoughtful tending.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: DERECH BEIT LEHEM. If city councils and the Knesset had
district-based representatives, at least two leaders would wake up every day
wondering how to preserve and protect the neighborhood. An island of serenity in
the chaotic capital. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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906 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 10, 2008 Sunday

A day of responsibility

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 707 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Tisha Be'av, which began last night, is the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av.
On it we commemorate the destruction of the First and Second Temples in
Jerusalem, in 586 BCE and 70 CE, respectively, and the expulsion of the Jewish
people from Israel.

Along with Yom Hashoah and Remembrance Day, Tisha Be'av is one of the most
melancholy days in the Jewish calendar. Beyond the destruction of the two
Temples, the Ninth of Av has the distinction of being inauspicious in other
ways. On that date:

In 1096, the First Crusade began, destroying Jewish communities in Europe. In
1290, the Jews were expelled from England, and, in 1306, from France. In 1492,
the Jews were thrown out of Spain. In 1648, thousands of Polish Jews were
murdered in the Chmielnicki massacres. In 1882, pogroms swept Russia. In 1914,
World War I broke out. In 1942, the Nazis convened at Wannsee, Germany to
finalize plans for the Final Solution.

Today we cannot but also reflect upon the existential threats facing the Jewish
state.

THE DAY is traditionally marked by fasting and recitation of the Book of
Lamentations, the Prophet Jeremiah's heart-wrenching narrative of Jerusalem's
fall:

O how the city once so populous

Remained lonely like a widow!

She that was great among nations,

A princess among the provinces,

Has become a tributary.

BEYOND THE sacred and historical significance of Tisha Be'av, the day is replete
with contemporary relevance. Our attention is called to the Temple Mount, which,
hundreds of years before Muhammad was born or Jesus preached, was the epicenter
of Jewish civilization.

Too bad, then, that even relatively moderate Palestinian leaders such as Mahmoud
Abbas and Ahmed Qurei will not acknowledge the Jews' ancient link to this place.
Their refusal makes efforts to reach an accommodation immeasurably more
complicated.

Most relevant of all is how we Jews behave toward one another. A minority in the
settler movement have chosen to conflate the uprooting of 8,500 Jews from Gaza
and northern Samaria during the disengagement with the Jewish loss of
sovereignty in ancient Israel and the ensuing 2,000 years of exile. This
newspaper is sensitive to the spiritual suffering of those who lost their homes
and communities in the summer of 2005, only to see them turned into launching
pads for attacks against Israel. Yet to draw a parallel between the decision of
sovereign Israel to relocate its citizens from Gaza to elsewhere inside the
country and the Roman expulsion of the Jews from the Land of Israel is
inexcusable, arrogant and simply wrongheaded.

Just as elements on the Left co-opted Yitzhak Rabin's memory and made approval
of his Oslo policies synonymous with a desire for peace, some on the Right have
made opposition to disengagement a litmus test of Jewish fidelity. Isn't it
obvious that such closed-mindedness and self-righteousness fosters a disunity
that our enemies do not hesitate to exploit?

Have we forgotten that even as the Romans massed ominously on the horizon, Jews
of the Second Temple period were riven with factionalism, each camp clinging to
its false certainties? Unable to put their differences aside, they contributed
to the undermining of the Jewish commonwealth. As the historian Josephus
records, 1.1 million Jews were killed during the ensuing siege and destruction
of Jerusalem. Tens of thousands were taken captive or sold into slavery.

SOMETHING remarkable was set to happen last night in Beijing. President Shimon
Peres, in China with other world leaders for the Olympics, was to attend Ninth
of Av services and participate in reciting from the Book of Lamentations. Even
as we mark this day with solemnity, let us not lose sight of how far we have
come. Across the millennia of the Jewish people's exile, our ancestors could
scarcely bring themselves to dream of a day when the Jewish people would be
sovereign again in their beloved Zion - let alone an Israeli team competing in
the Olympics in China.

This generation has merited witnessing the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in
the land, and a thriving capital in Jerusalem. Our political, theological and
social differences notwithstanding, we have a responsibility to the generations
to cultivate the cohesion upon which the Third Commonwealth depends.

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August 10, 2008 Sunday

Tisha Be'av in the shadow of Auschwitz

BYLINE: ELI KAVON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 847 words

HIGHLIGHT: We must find a new theology of covenant that takes into account the
enormity of the disaster. The writer, based in Florida, is an adjunct lecturer
on Jewish history at Broward Community College.

On Tisha Be'av, Jews the world over mourn in commemoration of the destruction of
the Temples in Jerusalem, the great centers of sacrifice destroyed by the
enemies of Israel in ancient times. The Ninth of Av was the day, according to
the rabbis, on which both great edifices were destroyed, the first by the
Babylonians in 586 BCE, the second by the Romans in 70 CE. On the eve of the day
of mourning and fasting, religious Jews read the Book of Lamentations (Eicha),
ascribed to the prophet Jeremiah who witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem by
the Babylonians.

Lamentations is a moving dirge that memorializes a city abandoned by man and
God. Modern Hebrew Bible scholars have debated Jeremiah's sole authorship of
Lamentations; however there is little doubt that the prophet inspired composite
authorship of the work.

It really matters little to me, as a religious Zionist, whether Jeremiah
authored Lamentations or not. What does matter - I find it most disturbing - is
the prophet's theology that serves as the foundation for Jewish mourning on the
Ninth of Av. The traditional theology of Jewish exile and redemption, expressed
by Jeremiah in the prophetic book in the Bible that bears his name, is that God
manipulated the Babylonians to destroy the Temple to punish the people of Israel
for their sins.

In Chapter 27, the prophet urges the denizens of Judah and King Zedekiah to "put
your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon," otherwise "you will die
together with your people." In other words, the Babylonians are God's tool to
chastise Israel. The prophet transforms geopolitics and the integrity of Judah's
independence into a morality tale in which the Jews are to blame for their
tragedy.

Jeremiah's theology has served as the basis for traditional rabbinic views of
Jewish suffering in history, whether it be the destruction of the Temples in
Jerusalem, Jewish martyrdom in the Rhineland during the First Crusade, the
Spanish Expulsion in 1492 or the Chmielnicki massacres in Eastern Europe in the
early modern period. After the Holocaust, I would argue, this theology is a dead
letter.

TODAY, MOST Jews - whether religious or secular - would never apply Jeremiah's
theology to the Holocaust, the worst tragedy in Jewish history. A Jew who
believes Hitler was a tool of God to destroy European Jewry for its sins is
desecrating the memory of the dead and defaming them. Yet there are still Jews
in the world who refuse to abandon the outmoded and ancient theology of
Jeremiah. Rabbi Joel Moshe Teitelbaum, the most influential Satmar Rebbe, blamed
the Zionist movement for the "calamity" of the Shoah.

To me, this outrageous worldview indicates a serious denial of reality of the
history of the Jewish people in the modern epoch. The Zionist pioneers who
rejected the passivity of Europe's rabbis were "holy rebels" whose actions saved
Jewish lives and provided an environment in which Jewish life and faith could
flourish. The irony is that anti-traditional Zionist socialists, overturning the
theology of waiting for divine intervention through the coming of the messiah,
provided a haven for the Jewish people's "saving remnant" and were the
harbingers of the renaissance of both the Hebrew language and the study and
propagation of Torah and Jewish faith.

In certain haredi circles, the Shoah is remembered on either the minor fast day
of the 10th of Tevet or on the Ninth of Av, rather than on Holocaust Remembrance
Day. This practice places the Holocaust within the same theology as the other
tragedies of Jewish history, the theology that Jews were exiled and persecuted
because of their sins.

I would argue that the Holocaust is a series of events without precedent in
Jewish history - the German attempt to wipe out every Jewish man, woman and
child has no predecessor in the chronicle of the Jews - and, therefore, we
cannot commemorate the mass murder through the lens of traditional theology. The
Shoah demands that we, as Jews, either find a new theology of covenant that
takes into account the enormity of the disaster - or we completely relegate the
Nazi genocide to the realm of the secular.

The Ninth of Av is not an appropriate day to remember the dead of Auschwitz,
Babi Yar and the Warsaw Ghetto. Religious Jews must find a way to create a
theology for Holocaust Remembrance Day that will transform a Knesset- mandated
commemoration into a day of mourning with religious significance. The theology
of Jeremiah and the rabbis - even a theology that confirms that a God who
punishes His people will also redeem them - does not fit the contours of modern
historical reality.

The State of Israel is not the demonic kingdom of Rabbi Teitelbaum, but neither
is it a harbinger of the messiah. The old theological categories and terms do
not take into account the Holocaust and the creation of a Jewish state in recent
history. We, as Jews, must either discover a new religious template to address
the unprecedented events of our time - or move beyond theology and abandon the
attempt to place the Holocaust and the State of Israel within a religious
framework.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: THE PROPHET Jeremiah. Transforming the reality of geopolitics
into a morality tale in which the Jews are to blame? (Credit: Michaelangelo)

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August 10, 2008 Sunday

Letters

BYLINE: Jerry Glazer, Endre Mozes, Thelma Blumberg, Nachama Kanner, Tamar H.
Kagan, Daniel Abelman, Chaya Heuman

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 911 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Peace fantasia

Sir, - When 8,000 law-abiding, taxpaying, army-serving Jews are struggling
mightily to put their lives together after the government detached them from
their properties, jobs and communities, Larry Derfner proposes shoving this
unprecedented trauma on an exponentially higher amount of Jews ("Quicksand in
Yesha," August 7).

Moreover, Mr. Derfner, in his fantasy, believes the day will come when the
Palestinians put down their arms and become law-abiding citizens.

He fails to realize that our peace "partners" are not ready for peace, and that
attempts to force peace only draw the noose tighter around us. Sadly, he fails
to acknowledge that true peace ought to mean our Arab neighbors accepting a
Jewish presence anywhere.

JERRY GLAZER

Modi'in

Weighing wishes

Sir, - In "The once and future child murderer" (July 21) Frimet Roth explained
why Israel must not release Ahlam Tamimi, the murderer of her daughter Malki and
several other children. This is the holy wish of a bereaved mother. But the
Schalits' wish to get their son Gilad back from Hamas custody as soon as
possible is no less holy.

So Israel faces a terrible dilemma - if one assumes that only these two wishes
need to be weighed. This is not the case.

To recall the infamous Ahmed Jibril prisoner exchange: When Israel released
6,000 Lebanese fighters and 70 convicted terrorists with the blood of civilians
on their hands for our five captured soldiers, everybody approved the release of
the fighters; nobody the release of the 70. Beyond the terrible injustice and
pain caused to their victims' families, later surveys indicated that in the
first two years after their release, those 70 men, foreseeably, killed many more
Israelis.

This mustn't happen again. Israel and its leadership must summon up the strength
of character and readiness to exert the pressure necessary to demand the release
of Gilad Schalit at a reasonable price, without a wholesale throwaway of
Israel's moral and security values.

ENDRE MOZES

Haifa

Fresh air and foul

Sir, - Daniel Pipes's "Samir Kuntar and the last laugh" (July 21) was a breath
of fresh air following the frightening release of the terrorist who murdered a
four- year-old. Thus it was with sadness that I read his "May an American
comment on Israel?" (July 28) in which he felt obliged to defend himself against
those who criticize him, as an American, for expressing his learned opinions.

Pipes is a gifted writer whose columns I search for in The Jerusalem Post. He is
a distinguished scholar who very capably defends himself without any assistance
from me.

Moreover, he has an uncanny understanding of the background and current
challenges facing Israel, in addition to a devotion to the survival and success
of his people - perhaps beyond that of some Israelis.

How dare any Israeli castigate a friend such as he!

THELMA BLUMBERG

Kiryat Arba

When major is minor

Sir, - I fully agree with David Herz that the bagrut system is detrimental to
our education system ("Eliminate the bagrut," August 7). I would add that the
"megama" aspect of secondary school education here is equally problematic.

I've long objected to forcing our high-schoolers to choose a subject in which to
"major." Many schools allow two such majors and consider that it will attract
top- quality students. In my opinion, it seriously compromises students' basic
education.

With each "megama" utilizing five weekly class hours, for three years of high
school our students are deprived of five to 10 hours of other subjects. This
forces the schools to limit the teaching hours devoted to literature, history,
art, music, etc.

It is absurd, for example, that students squeeze both Hebrew and world
literature into two or three hours a week (unless someone "majors" in
literature); the same with history, geography, etc. Given the fact that many
students do not continue on to university after national service and those who
do are not exposed to a liberal arts education, we are severely limiting our
youth's general knowledge instead of broadening their horizons as we should.

With the bagrut system (among its many faults) stifling curiosity and
discouraging students from developing critical thinking, and the megama system
reducing the availability of general subject matter, I shudder to contemplate
the impact on future generations.

NACHAMA KANNER

Rehovot

Taps off, briefly

Sir, - I'm not a scientist, engineer or health official, but I do have an idea
which I think could work, at least in the short term, to lift us out of our dire
emergency water situation ("Knesset orders commission of inquiry into water
shortage," July 29).

Couldn't the water in the whole country be shut off for an hour a day, every
day? If people knew when that hour was they could easily prepare for it.

It seems to me that an enormous amount of water could be saved in this way.

TAMAR H. KAGAN

Jerusalem

A lake?

Sir, - You reported that Jerusalem's regional planning council has authorized
the building of a large artificial lake in the Motza Valley (J'lem panel okays
Motza park, lake," August 7). What do they plan to fill it with?

DANIEL ABELMAN

Jerusalem

Room with a view

Sir, - I often wondered why my nephew chose to live in an apartment with large
picture windows not only facing the beautiful mountains of Meron, but also with
a prominent view of the cemetery below. After reading Melinda Ribner's "Ode to
Safed" (Thursday, August 7) the answer became clear, and I find myself quite
jealous.

CHAYA HEUMAN , Ginot Shomron

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August 8, 2008 Friday

China's Olympic challenge

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 727 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.

- Confucius

It's not just how you play the game, or even whether you win or lose. In Olympic
diplomacy, it's also how you shmooze. And there will be plenty of talking on the
sidelines of the 2008 Olympic Games, which open tonight in Beijing. World
leaders, among them US President George W. Bush, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin and French President Nicholas Sarkozy will be doing more than watching the
events.

President Shimon Peres is also in Beijing, primarily to encourage world leaders
to back punitive sanctions that will encourage Iran to reexamine the benefits vs
the costs of building a bomb.

Peres's efforts will be directed mostly at the Chinese themselves. He will meet
with business leaders, newspaper editorial boards, appear on television and
"chat" with surfers on one of the country's popular Internet portals.

The Chinese have graciously arranged for our 85-year- old president to stay at a
special hotel inside the Olympic compound and within walking distance of the
Olympics' opening ceremony, which takes place tonight after the onset of
Shabbat.

Peres will find China a complicated mix of freedom and repression. Starting in
1978, under Deng Xiaoping, the country evolved from doctrinaire communism to a
freer economy. The Communist Party managed to turn itself into a vehicle for
upward mobility and entrepreneurship, maintaining political control while
remaining sufficiently adaptive to co-opt rather than repress, where possible.
It freed the economy yet continues to control the energy, communications and
finance sectors.

Hosting the Olympics is a massive achievement for the Chinese, coming as it does
despite international opposition from critics of Beijing's human rights record,
Tibetan unrest, a devastating earthquake in Sichuan and, just this week, Muslim
violence in Xinjiang. Most Chinese are bursting with nationalist pride at
hosting the Games. They should know that most Israelis, this newspaper included,
opposed calls to boycott the games.

THE MOST important 30 minutes of Peres's 72-hour visit are scheduled for this
morning, when he is to meet with President Hu Jintao. Iran will top the agenda.

China's relationship with Teheran, its permanent seat on the UN Security
Council, and its status as a first-tier world power position Beijing as a key
player in international efforts to block Iran from producing nuclear weapons.
Conversely, if China joins Russia in helping Iran play for time, it will
effectively remove the UN from efforts to solve the crisis via diplomacy.

China faces a dilemma. A country of 1.3 billion people, it accounts for about 40
percent of the world's recent increase in oil demand (though the US remains the
world's foremost oil consumer). While China is a major oil producer, the needs
of its galloping economy far outpace what it can pump domestically. That's why
China is one of Iran's biggest oil customers and why it imports 58 percent of
its petroleum from the Middle East - 11% from Iran.

China does not want to see a nuclear-armed Iran. At the same time, it has never
been a strong believer in sanctions because a major pillar of Chinese foreign
policy is "non-interference" in the internal affairs of another country.

Iran, however, is a special case and we hope that Hu Jintao will be open to
Peres's entreaties. It is not in China's interest to see a regime that embraces
the Islamist culture of death along with nascent Persian imperialism equip
itself with nuclear weapons. The mullahs would feel themselves emboldened to
spread their extremism worldwide - including to China.

Blocking potent sanctions is the equivalent of taking them off the table and
painting Jerusalem into a corner, making the military option more likely. That
would be setting the stage for a destabilizing scenario with the potential to
disrupt oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

The people of China deserve to reap the bounty of their country's extraordinary
achievements without the unprecedented threat to world stability posed by
Iranian fanaticism, hegemony and bellicosity.

Beyond self-interest, 21st-century China has another reason to block the Iranian
bomb: Chinese ascendancy on the world stage. With world leadership come
responsibilities. President Hu must now summon the courage to define his
country's interests within the global context.

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August 8, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Jack Cohen, Barbara Shamir, Hilary Gatoff, Israel Pickholtz, Terry G.C.
Ting, Elie Feuerwerker

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 560 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Sink this 'cruise'

Sir, - I disagree with Yehudit Collins ("Memorable cruise," Letter, August 7).
This "cruise" by international leftist dupes to supposedly break the Gaza
blockade is a publicity stunt intended to embarrass Israel and provide support
to the Hamas terrorist regime that is the occupying power in Gaza (according to
the PA in Ramallah).

Israel should do what any self-respecting country would do: respond seriously
and definitively, in a way that will put a stop to any further such attempts.

Let them see we mean business, otherwise we will forever be partners in the
continuing process of trivialization of the Palestinian war against us.

JACK COHEN

Netanya

Nail on the head

Sir, - Arieh Eldad hit the nail on the head in "It's embarrassing to be an
Israeli" (August 7). The people of Israel deserve better than a system where
Kadima's candidates for prime minister are currently buying votes.

BARBARA SHAMIR

Beit Horon

Livni and Meir

Sir, - After I submitted a lighthearted letter about Tzipi Livni's personal
appearance (which, admittedly, is not vital to her ability to be prime minister)
I was amused to see an experienced journalist like Hillel Halkin write "Livni is
a blandly personable woman who keeps tossing the hair out of her eyes"
("National elections, now," August 6).

But, in all seriousness, is she really of the caliber of Golda Meir?

HILARY GATOFF

Herzliya Pituah

No give, no get

Sir - It seems to me that people who object to the removal of organs because
brain death may not be sufficient should certainly object to having their own
failing organs removed in order to replace them with healthy ones.

If you take a deliberate step to prevent your organs from being used for
transplant, logically and automatically you should thereby disqualify yourself
from receiving organs should you need them ("Edah Haredit to distribute "Card of
Life' to reject organ donations," August 7).

ISRAEL PICKHOLTZ

Jerusalem

Chinese Taipei

Olympic team

Sir, - Today, we are witnessing a time when relations across the Taiwan Straits
are moving in a positive direction, after being in high tension for many years.
After May 20, when Dr. Ma Ying-jeou was inaugurated as our new president, and
especially after July 4, when weekend direct charter flights between Taiwan and
mainland China started operating regularly, both sides have demonstrated good
will.

With the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games today, the Chinese Taipei
Olympic Team is in Beijing with its 80 athletes, 44 men and 36 women, who will
participate in 15 Olympic events.

We wish them all success and hope the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games will be
smoothly successful ("Great first impression," Allon Sinai, August 6).

TERRY G.C. TING

Representative

Taipei Economic &

Cultural Office

Tel Aviv

Aunt Rose, hero

Sir, - When Iread "'Exodus' passenger finally makes aliya" (July 23) it made me
think of my aunt Rose Warfman (her maiden name was Gluck), who lives in
Manchester, England.

Together with Abbe Joseph Glasberg, a Jew who had become a Catholic priest - and
who saved thousand of Jews during WWII, becoming a Righteous Among the Nations -
she made up, in France, false identity cards for the passengers of the Exodus
1947.

Herself a survivor of Auschwitz and of Gross-Rosen, she helped other Jews return
to their homeland. Her work and dedication live on.

ELIE FEUERWERKER , Highland Park, New Jersey

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August 8, 2008 Friday

Ignoring failure in Gaza

BYLINE: Caroline B. Glick

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1936 words

HIGHLIGHT: COLUMN ONE

Monday will mark the third anniversary of the forcible expulsion of the Jews of
Gaza and northern Samaria from their homes. Those expulsion were followed weeks
later by the withdrawal of IDF personnel from the Gaza Strip.

Unlike the Rabin-Peres government's decision to embark on the Oslo peace process
with the PLO in 1993, Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza did not take years to
be discredited. It took moments.

As the last IDF personnel left Gaza, the Palestinians began torching the
synagogues Israel abandoned. Within minutes of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza's
border with Egypt, the Palestinians blew up the border wall. They immediately
began transferring unprecedented quantities of heavy weaponry into Gaza - a
practice that has continued to this day.

Another important distinction between the Oslo policy and the withdrawal policy
is that at least Oslo asked the Palestinians to give Israel something in
exchange for the land, money, arms and political legitimacy Israel lavished on
them. As events would show, Israel asked the Palestinians for too little. But at
least Israel asked them for something. The withdrawal policy, in contrast,
demanded nothing from the Palestinians. It was simply an unconditional surrender
of land. As a result, Hamas, the terror group which has distinguished itself
from Fatah by refusing to even pay lip service to peace, was the chief
beneficiary of Israel's retreat.

The first harbingers of Hamas's ascendance to power came the day after Israel
completed its withdrawal. Tens of thousands of armed Hamas terrorists, clad in
spanking new uniforms, goose-stepped through the streets of Gaza in their
victory parade. The then-ruling Fatah government's own parade was dingy and
poorly attended in comparison.

Hamas's pageantry was followed with the jihadist group's decisive electoral
victory over Fatah in January 2006. This led to the further weakening of Fatah
in March 2007 with the signing of the Mecca accord that rendered Fatah a junior
member of Hamas's ruling coalition. The Mecca accord also signaled a shift in
the Arab world's sympathies from Fatah to Hamas. That agreement then paved the
way for Hamas's violent ouster of Fatah forces from Gaza in June 2007 and its
rising challenge to Fatah's leadership in Judea and Samaria.

It should be pointed out that Hamas's victory over Fatah was not a victory of
extremists over moderates in any real sense of the terms. Both Hamas and Fatah
share the aim of destroying Israel. This was made clear most recently in the
lead-up to the Annapolis conference last November. As US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice announced the coming of peace, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas
refused to recognize Israel's right to exist.

Moreover, there is little to distinguish between the groups' embrace of
terrorism as a means of achieving their aim of destroying Israel. Fatah forces
have carried out more attacks against Israel than Hamas has.

Hamas's refusal to even pretend that it is willing to live at peace with Israel
is what distinguishes it from Fatah. And the Palestinians' embrace of Hamas
after Israel withdrew from Gaza demonstrated that the withdrawal increased the
popularity of the prospect of continuous war against Israel among the
Palestinians.

Hamas's rise to power has changed the nature of the Palestinian conflict with
Israel in a fundamental way. It is not simply that Hamas has abandoned the
rhetoric of Arab nationalism for the rhetoric of Islamic jihad and so changed
the nature of the Palestinian war from a limited struggle to an unlimited war
for Islamic domination.

Unlike Fatah, which was beholden to several Islamic countries at once, Hamas is
a wholly-owned Iranian proxy. Consequently Gaza, like Lebanon, has become an
Iranian colony. And as Hamas's star rises in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and
within the Israeli Arab community, Iran's influence over events in those
quarters rises. This was made clear this week with the revelation that Khaled
Kashkoush, an Israeli Arab from Kalansuwa, last month became the latest Israeli
Arab arrested for spying for Hizbullah.

GIVEN THE absolute, obvious failure of the Gaza withdrawal, what is most
distressing about the initiative is that three years on, Israeli society has
managed not to discuss why it failed or to learn the lessons stemming from its
failure. There has been no chastening of the political leaders involved. No
heads have rolled. There has been no official inquiry into how decisions
regarding the withdrawal were made. Indeed, many of the plan's chief proponents
have prospered.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert succeeded Sharon to power due in large part to his
support for the plan. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni built her entire political
career on her role as one of the architects of the expulsion of Israeli
civilians from their homes. And today she is the frontrunner to succeed Olmert
as head of Kadima and replace him as prime minister until the next elections are
held. Her chief opponent, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, was defense
minister during the operation and an active participant in implementing the
ill-conceived initiative.

In contrast, those who opposed the withdrawal remain in the opposition. They are
never recognized for their attempts to divert their country from this disastrous
course. Indeed, they continue to be castigated as somehow extremist for the fact
that they oppose basing Israel's national strategies on capitulation and faith
in other people's willingness to defend us.

There are three main reasons that there has never been an accounting for the
failure of the withdrawal from Gaza. The first reason is luck. Sharon got
"lucky." He was felled by a debilitating stroke and slipped into a coma before
the dimensions of the failure of his most significant policy became widely
understood.

Since Sharon pushed the withdrawal plan through against the wishes of his
government colleagues, his voters and his party by turning the plan into a
popularity contest that pit himself against his opponents, once he was gone,
there was no way to hold him to account. And his incapacitation itself made
discussing the failure of the withdrawal somehow unseemly. After all, it was
said, the poor man can no longer defend himself, how dare you add insult to
injury by noting that his most significant action while in power imperiled the
country? In this manner, not only Sharon, but all his supporters in his
government, were immunized from criticism and the need to account for their
strategic imbecility.

Israel is presented with a similar situation today with Olmert. Like Sharon,
Olmert has not had to face the voters to account for his failures in the Second
Lebanon War; for his refusal to act against Hamas's Iranian-backed regime in
Gaza; or for his apparent willingness to expand on those failures by seeking to
withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and so enable
Iranian proxies to surround Israel on all sides.

And now, with his announcement that he will leave office not for his substantive
incompetence but for his suspected criminal activities, Olmert has removed the
substantive causes of his failure in office from the national agenda. In so
doing, he has immunized his cohorts, and particularly Livni and Defense Minister
Ehud Barak, from the need to account for their continued strategic imbecility.

IT IS the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's serial incompetence that ironically
serves as the second reason that there has been no accounting for the failure of
the Gaza withdrawal plan. Quite simply, the government has moved from failure to
failure so quickly that there has been no opportunity to confront the results of
the last failure before the next one is spun out of the government's policy
chop-shop.

The most recent example of this high-speed bungling is the government's penchant
for releasing terrorists from prison. The public has scarcely had a chance to
digest the colossal stupidity and inherent danger of the government's
terrorists-for-dead-hostages swap with Hizbullah last month. No serious review
of that policy - which enhanced Hizbullah's popularity sufficiently to compel
the Lebanese government to formally accept its right to attack Israel at will -
has been conducted. And already on Wednesday, fresh from that failure, Olmert
announced his intention to expand it by releasing another 150 terrorists from
prison by the end of the month.

THE FINAL reason that the failed Gaza withdrawal has not led to any change in
either the public discourse or in the general tenor and direction of government
policy is because of the debilitating impact the withdrawal had on Israeli
democracy. In order to build the public's support for his inhumane and
strategically irredeemable decision to expel 10,000 Jews from their homes and
destroy their communities in Gaza and northern Samaria in exchange for nothing,
Sharon and his colleagues worked systematically to demoralize, disenfranchise
and criminalize his political opponents.

He demoralized them by castigating them as criminals, extremists and enemies of
the people in general. He disenfranchised them by ignoring the results of the
Likud's referendum on his plan that he himself initiated.

In all his activities, Sharon received crucial assistance from the law
enforcement system and the media which were themselves corrupted by his plan. As
Ha'aretz's left-wing military commentator Amir Oren noted five months after the
plan was carried out, Sharon was given a free ride by Israel's elites due to
their common "hatred of the settlers."

To enable Sharon to carry out the expulsions they so desired, the state
prosecution, backed by the Supreme Court, was willing to close corruption probes
of Sharon. As retired Supreme Court justice Michel Cheshin explained, "If Sharon
had stood trial, there would have been no disengagement."

More egregiously, as public protests against the withdrawal gained force,
Israel's law enforcement system became a tool of political repression, and the
media became apologists for that repression. The police conducted mass arrests
of law-abiding demonstrators, used brutal force against them and suspended the
civil rights of opponents of the plan. The state prosecution and the courts sent
thousands of protesters - including children - to jail for weeks and months
without filing charges against them.

Then too, Sharon's personalization of the withdrawal distorted the country's
public discourse by moving it from substantive discussions of government
policies to superficial discussions of personalities. And this transformation
has remained in effect until today. It was most recently in evidence in the
media's rendering of the debate over the terrorists-for-dead-hostages swap as
the personal struggle of the Goldwasser and Regev families against the
government.

Sharon's successful repression and castigation of his opponents, and Olmert's
successful repetition of Sharon's behavior both in the brutal repression of
demonstrators at Amona in February 2006 and in his dismissive attitude towards
the protest movement in the wake of the Second Lebanon War, have imbued the
public as a whole with a sense of powerlessness. This sense manifested itself
with the historically low voter turnout in the 2006 elections.

Israel's prolonged failure to reckon with the disastrous outcome of the Gaza
withdrawal bodes ill for the country's prospects. Until the country reckons with
the mistakes that led to that withdrawal, and forces those responsible to
account for their failings, we will be doomed to repeat those mistakes with
those same incompetents leading us over and over and over.

www.CarolineGlick.com

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August 8, 2008 Friday

That elusive balance

BYLINE: DAVID HOROVITZ

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 2316 words

HIGHLIGHT: The lessons of this week's Fulbright fiasco and Gaza influx. EDITOR'S
NOTES

Internalizing its security vulnerabilities in the years since 9/11, the United
States has gradually tightened its vetting procedures for issuing entry visas.
The process can still be relatively straightforward for those wishing to visit
the US from our conflict zone, but it can also prove to be an immensely
time-consuming and frustrating affair if extensive personal checks are deemed
necessary.

I happen to know of a recent case involving a teenage Israeli Arab who, perhaps
simply because he has a very common Arabic first name, had to wait many weeks
for his application to be vetted. He was ultimately able to participate in a
summer program in the US - a program, moreover, specifically designed to foster
constructive dialogue among Jews, Christians and Muslims - only after the
intervention of senior American politicians, and still only got his visa several
days after the program had begun.

Unfortunately, given the lengthening record of Muslim extremists exploiting any
and every means of access, such careful procedures are all-too necessary and
appropriate.

And yet, evidently, even the increased care that the US now takes with
applicants from our area is not always adequate - as evidenced by the latest
extraordinary twist in the saga of the "Fulbright Seven."

The plight of the Fulbright scholars, it may be recalled, sparked a diplomatic
spat between Israel and the US, after seven Gaza candidates for this most
prestigious of US educational exchange programs had their scholarship grants
withdrawn by the State Department in May because Israel was raising security
objections to letting them out of Gaza for their visa interviews.

In fact, Israel was refusing to allow anyone out of Gaza except for humanitarian
emergency cases, and the impact of this policy on the Fulbright students made
headline news. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice personally intervened,
reportedly even contacting Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni over the affair. "If you
cannot engage young people and give complete horizons to their expectations and
their dreams," Rice declared bitterly, "I don't know that there would be any
future for Palestine."

The Prime Minister's Office objected that it maintains an official specifically
charged with handling such special cases as the Fulbright applicants, and
insisted - as a PMO official reiterated to me on Thursday - that it had not been
approached by the US authorities about the seven, and that the first it heard of
American frustration at their plight was when a New York Times reporter called
up to inquire. It may well be, in turn, that the American consular staffers
handling the matter were unaware of this official and his mandate.

The scholarships were reinstated in June and Israel reluctantly agreed to let
four of the seven leave the Strip for their visa interviews. In an editorial at
the time, The New York Times lectured that this change of course was "a welcome
victory," but one that should not have required State Department muscle-flexing:
Israel "should want to see more of Gaza's young people follow a path of hope and
education rather than hopelessness and martyrdom." Hundreds of other foreign
fellowship winners are "still trapped in Gaza by the same Israeli policy," it
went on. And while Israel "has a right and a duty to defend itself against Hamas
terrorism," the newspaper concluded, "punishing students... will only sow more
anger and hate."

With Israel still refusing to let the remaining trio - Zuhair Abu Shaaban, Fidaa
Abed and Osama Daoud - leave Gaza for their interviews, US visa officials took
the unprecedented step last month of going to the Gaza border and meeting the
students there, using portable equipment specially flown in from Washington to
take the necessary fingerprints.

Here, plainly, was a case of intransigent Israel, citing dubious allegations
about ties to Hamas, needlessly depriving these bright young prospects of a
once-in-a- lifetime educational opportunity, and the US driving heroically to
the rescue. The baselessness of the Israeli security concerns was ostensibly
confirmed, moreover, on July 30, when, at the conclusion of those stringent US
security checks, all three Gazans were indeed granted their US visas.

Except that this week, those visas were revoked. US officials did not
immediately explain why, although unnamed sources have said the belated
realization of a potential risk relates to the self-same issues that had
prompted Israel to bar the trio from leaving Gaza.

There have been suggestions that had Israel communicated all its intelligence
about the three earlier in the process, the visas would never have been issued.
An official in the Prime Minister's Office told me that "Israel gave
information" to the Americans "before the visas were issued and after the visas
were issued. There has been an ongoing process. We left no doubt all along that
there were very serious concerns here." Given that these were Fulbright
students, he said, Israel might have put aside its concerns if they weren't
acute - "if this had been in the gray area. But it was black and white, and we
told this to the Americans."

So urgently concerned did the Americans become this week that Fidaa Abed, who
had already made the journey to the US (via the Erez crossing and the Allenby
Bridge to Jordan, accompanied by officials from the American Consulate) unaware
that his visa had been cancelled, was actually stopped at the airport, flown
back to Amman and ordered home to Gaza - a man who the Americans had criticized
Israel for not allowing to cross into our own country, now turned back at the
crossing into theirs. One can only imagine the raised voices in the relevant
Washington offices at so dramatic a volte face - and one can only speculate as
to the gravity of the security concerns that impelled it.

WHETHER OR not this fiasco was a consequence of an Israeli failure to
communicate the extent of its concerns in an efficient manner, it is not the
first time that the US has seemed to underestimate some of the potential dangers
associated with the entirely admirable effort to enable deserving young Gazans
to enjoy the benefits of the Fulbright program.

A previous incident had fatal consequences: Traveling in a convoy into the Gaza
Strip to interview Fulbright candidates five years ago, American officials were
the targets of what Rice's predecessor Colin Powell described at the time as an
outrageous terrorist attack. Detonated under the diplomatic convoy shortly after
it had begun its progress into Gaza, a massive remote-controlled bomb killed
three US security personnel and injured a US diplomat. Yasser Arafat condemned
the attack. Powell condemned Arafat's Palestinian leadership, insisting on "the
need to move urgently to end terrorism."

What these specific incidents suggest more fundamentally, however, is that
America, which understands the challenges Israel faces and the threat of Islamic
extremism better than just about any other international player, nonetheless can
both err itself on occasion and would have Israel err too when it comes to
finding the elusive balance between enabling freedoms that can boost moderation
and maintaining restrictions that can prevent terrorism.

Another immensely significant effort in finding that balance between encouraging
Palestinian moderation and thwarting violence has been playing out over recent
months in the West Bank, where hundreds of members of the Palestinian
Authority's security apparatus are gradually being deployed after returning from
months of US-financed training in Jordan.

Disagreements over how much responsibility to entrust to them have not generally
flared into the kind of open argument that swirled around the Fulbright
candidates, but there are certainly tensions rumbling beneath the surface.

Broadly speaking, the Americans, having invested their best efforts and tens of
millions of dollars in the training, are encouraging Israel to give these troops
a chance - to stand back a little, both literally and figuratively, and see if
these properly equipped, thoroughly trained, hopefully highly motivated and,
yes, stringently vetted (by Israel and the US) recruits are capable of imposing
a workable security framework in the areas where they are stationed.

When Hamas secured its hold on power in Gaza last June via a violent coup
against the PA's forces, this US- financed Palestinian troop-training project
was derisively branded a failure by many in Israel - unfairly so, given that the
project had, at that stage, not yet received its funding and begun operations.

But Israel is still deeply wary about relinquishing too much authority and
independence to the PA forces. Individual IDF commanders are necessarily anxious
to ensure that terrorist attacks are prevented in their particular areas of
responsibility, and thus reluctant to halt operations of their own in
potentially hostile districts even if the newly trained PA forces are deployed
there. The greater the IDF's presence, however, the more neutered the PA forces
feel, and the less likely they may prove to act firmly and decisively against
extremism.

Earlier this week, senior IDF officials held a "coordination meeting" with their
Palestinian counterparts precisely to discuss an appropriate division of
authority and responsibility that would, on the one hand, encourage the
development of the PA's own capabilities and, on the other, avoid exacerbating
security risks to Israel. According to an IDF statement issued after the talks,
"the Palestinians expressed appreciation for having the ability to act
independently as part of the recent campaign for improving public order" in the
area of Jenin and northern Samaria.

Has the appropriate balance now been found? Time will tell. Past experience does
not encourage optimism.

BEYOND THE specific area of security, moreover, the Americans have been leading
the "friendly" international pressure on Israel to seize the moment, take
reasonable risks for peace and reach an accord with the PA's Mahmoud Abbas - an
accord that may not be implementable now but can constitute the "political
horizon" to bolster Palestinian moderates and begin to roll back the Hamas
extremists' inexorable gains.

Here, too, though, the question is whether those who are seeking to press for
progress overestimate the risks that Israel dare take and the willingness and
capability on the other side. President Bush, Secretary Rice, Prime Minister
Brown, President Sarkozy et al insist that an accord is there for the signing.
But is Abbas a viable partner? In large part because of his failure to reform
Fatah, he continues to hemorrhage domestic support, has already lost Gaza and is
consistently losing ground to Hamas in the West Bank. But he has also done
precious little to reverse the strategic delegitimization of Israel so
effectively pursued by his predecessor Arafat, who assured the Palestinian
people that there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and no legitimate Jewish
claim to sovereignty in Palestine.

Israel has a vital interest in a workable accommodation with the Palestinians.
But how does that interest stack up against the possibility that concessions
made in negotiations with Abbas will merely be banked by a subsequent, more
extreme Palestinian leadership? And who is most capable of answering that
question, of finding the appropriate, elusive balance - the international
community, however well-intentioned, or Israel itself?

IN ITS original conception, 2005's disengagement from Gaza was intended to
relieve Israel of responsibility for 1.3 million Palestinians, reducing a degree
of demographic pressure, demonstrating Israel's commitment to viable compromise,
freeing up at least part of the IDF while giving it greater international
legitimacy to act against Gaza extremism where necessary, and providing the
Palestinians with the opportunity to build a model state.

In fact, Israel has not been able to disown Gaza, the strain on the IDF has been
exacerbated by the incessant rocket attacks, Hamas has cemented its hold on the
Strip, and the nature of the Israeli relationship to Gaza is becoming ever-more
surreal.

Israel supplies fuel to Gaza - and has its fuel delivery men shot dead by Gaza
gunmen. It supplies electricity to Gaza - and has its power station targeted by
rockets manufactured with that electricity. And this week, Israel rescued some
of its enemies from Gaza, saving them from likely murder at the hands of even
worse enemies, and we witnessed scenes of utter absurdity in which Gaza gunmen,
injured in their violent struggle with Hamas, sat up in their Israeli hospital
beds and told the TV crews that they thanked the lord that the Jewish state had
been there to save them. (Some international TV reports disseminated a rather
different narrative, in which brutal Israel had taken dozens of Palestinians out
of Gaza, handcuffed and humiliatingly stripped down to their underwear. But
that's a whole other, familiar, story...)

In June, The New York Times headlined its Israel- upbraiding editorial "The
Lesson of the Fulbright Seven." And indeed, Israel should and does "want to see
more of Gaza's young people follow a path of hope and education rather than
hopelessness and martyrdom." It, too, has to struggle to find the right balance,
as it has essentially acknowledged by allowing several dozen Gazans with foreign
study grants to leave the Strip since the Fulbright row erupted.

But there are two other lessons of the Fulbright saga, and of this week's
world-upside-down influx to Israel of terrified, desperate Palestinian gunmen
from Gaza. First, that Israel is the sole reliable guarantor of its own security
and can only be thoroughly cautious in relinquishing aspects of that role, even
as it seeks to empower relative Palestinian moderates. And second, that where at
least some Palestinians are concerned, Israel is the best guarantor of their
security as well.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Scenes of utter absurdity. Israel rescued some of its enemies
from Gaza this week, saving them from likely murder.

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August 8, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Z. Harrison, Yehudit Hubner, Liora Minka, Naomi Leibler, Dina Hahn,
Zehave Bazak, Renee Becker, Dr. Carol Golding

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 286 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

ADMIRABLE CARE

As I have been a volunteer at the Jerusalem Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals in Atarot, I wish to comment on the article "Petty dispute,"
July 25.

Contrary to the picture of the caged door in the article, this section of the
compound is reserved for quarantined animals, and it is always very clean with
abundant food and water at all times. And recently a large canvas cover was
installed to protect the animals from the sun.

The majority of dogs are kept in the yard, which has abundant space and,
although a bit overcrowded, is adequate under the prevalent conditions. The
"cattery" is in a separate building with the necessary shade and roaming room.

The staff - Chaya Beilei, Dr. Tamar, Yoran, Eniv and Lannie - are to be praised
for their care and devotion, which they give to the JSPCA on a daily basis.

Z. Harrison

Jerusalem

CORRECTION

Re: "Holier than thou?" August 1.

In the article concerning the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews,
you publicized Mina Fenton's position and her actions regarding that
organization.

Fenton was (and not for the first time) mistakenly presented as head of Emunah
in Jerusalem.

We therefore feel obliged to point out that Fenton is not in a position to speak
for Emunah, and that her actions, as well as her statements on that issue,
reflect her private position only, and not that of Emunah.

Yehudit Hubner, president, Emunah Israel

Liora Minka, chairperson, Emunah Israel

Naomi Leibler, president, World Emunah

Dina Hahn, chairperson, World Emunah

Mina Fenton does not head Emunah, the religious women's organization in
Jerusalem, and she does not represent our views.

Zehave Bazak, Renee Becker, Dr. Carol Golding, Co- chairmen, Emunah Jerusalem

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August 8, 2008 Friday

Mailbag

BYLINE: Barry Newman, Rena Rosen, Shivta Wenkart, Harold Blumberg

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 570 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Behind every successful athlete...

Re: In the swing of things (August 1)

Dear editor,

Israeli athletes who managed to overcome the physical and emotional challenges
brought about by severe handicaps are not rare. On the contrary, they are not
infrequently the subject of discussion and featured in a dedicated web site.
Indeed, a significant source of national pride comes from our achievements in
international competitions, and despite budgetary stinginess on the part of our
government, we're still expecting Hatikva to be repeatedly played during the
upcoming Paralympics. So while Zohar Sharon should indeed be lauded for the
courage and determination required to become a world-class sightless golfer,
achievements in water as well as on basketball courts and football fields have
been no less remarkable.

Not enough, though, has been said of those like Shimshon Levi, Zohar's "caddy
and constant companion." They - the coaches, trainers, encouragers, pushers -
are the ones who provide the support athletes like Zohar cannot do without.
They're the ones who, with infinite patience and astuteness, recognize and know
how to develop potential, something considerably more difficult to do than with
able- bodied sportsmen. But men and women like Shimshon do much more than
provide instruction on how to compensate for paralysis, amputated limbs, mental
acuity or, as in Zohar's case, sightlessness - they instill in the athletes they
work with confidence, purpose and focus. And unlike the coaches of
non-handicapped athletes for whom winning is the bottom line, Shimshon knows all
too well that for Zohar, competing and completing is no less important.

I propose, then, that Israel initiate an annual Annie Award (named for the famed
teacher of Helen Keller, Annie Sullivan) to recognize and honor an individual
who, during the previous year, helped a handicapped athlete develop the skills
and self assurance required of athletics. High time, I think, that Israel make
greater effort to bring the handicapped in from the periphery and to acknowledge
the synergy created between those who can walk and those who can't, on and off
the playing field.

Barry Newman,

Ginot Shomron

Quicker than traffic

Re: The seashore shuffle (July 25)

Dear editor,

Kol Hakavod to Steven D. Lazarus for the well- researched and informative
article on the new seashore promenade, and Kol Hakavod to Metro for quality
articles like this.

One wonders if walking the 13.7 km from Herzliya to Bat Yam during rush hour
will be quicker than driving bumper-to-bumper down the Ayalon highway.

Rena Rosen,

Ra'anana

First step is a doozy

Dear editor,

All these years since the last elections for the local authorities nobody cared
much about the greenery in Beersheba. Now, out of the blue they started to plant
trees and shrubs and grass along the boulevards, even annuals next to the old
cacti, which never need much water. Anyway, they planted like in Chelm, next to
a bus stop. From the bus you get off into the mud!

Shivta Wenkart,

Arad

Kudos to the medical staff at Laniado

Dear editor,

I recently sustained a bone injury early one morning while climbing the steps
from Kiryat Sanz beach. I want to thank the kind lady who witnessed my
predicament and immediately phoned Laniado Hospital. Within minutes I was in the
hospital, x-rayed and receiving treatment. I say Kol Hakavod to all at Laniado
for their outstanding care and treatment.

Harold Blumberg, Netanya

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August 8, 2008 Friday

Visner announces candidacy for mayor, blasts Huldai

BYLINE: Compiled by Miriam Bulwar David-Hay

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 2847 words

HIGHLIGHT: 'Smelly socks need to be changed at some time,' says Greens faction
leader

TEL AVIV

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai was expected to run unopposed in the municipal
elections due to take place this November, but now deputy mayor and Greens
faction leader Pe'er Visner has thrown down the gauntlet and announced his
candidacy for mayor, according to a new local news website run by the Yediot
Aharonot news group, www.mynet.co.il. And Visner has launched an unprecedented
attack on Huldai, saying that "smelly socks need to be changed at some time" and
that the mayor has been uninterested in helping Tel Aviv residents.

According to the report, Visner has had numerous conflicts with Huldai since
joining the mayor's Labor-led coalition five years ago, and has now announced
that he will run against him. Visner acknowledged that Huldai, who has been
mayor for the past 10 years, had a large lead in opinion polls, but said that
with "the right work" he could win the public's confidence. He said Huldai was
more interested in helping visitors to Tel Aviv than in helping the city's
residents, and he was pleased that his faction had acted "like an opposition
party inside the coalition" and had been able to stop a number of "dangerous"
plans from going ahead.

"He needs to vacate the ground," Visner said.

Visner said that, unlike Huldai, he was a native of Tel Aviv who understood the
needs of residents and who was raising his children in the city.

"Huldai is not a mayor for Tel Aviv residents. He is a mayor for all Gush Dan.
All that he does is aimed at serving those who come to Tel Aviv, not those who
live in it," Visner said. He cited the widening of various roads, the building
of towers and the holding of events and shows as examples of actions that
benefited visitors more than residents. No response was reported from Huldai.

Committee considers vehicle entry fee

A Knesset committee has begun considering a plan to impose an entry fee on every
vehicle driving into Tel Aviv as a way of reducing traffic congestion and air
pollution in the city, reports www.local.co.il. Transport Ministry officials
drew up the plan and presented it to the Knesset's Interior and Environmental
Protection Committee last week, and will supply the committee with more details
within the next three months.

According to the report, the plan would see every vehicle entering Tel Aviv pay
a fee ranging from NIS 25 to NIS 50, starting from the end of 2009. The fee
would be introduced in stages throughout the city, with the first stage being a
two-kilometer square around Rehov Allenby.

A Transport Ministry official said the plan was designed to encourage greater
use of public transport and to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution in
Tel Aviv, and the money raised by the fee would be used directly for the
improvement of public transport.

The Knesset member in charge of the Interior and Environmental Protection
Committee, Ophir Paz-Pines (Labor), responded hesitantly to the plan. He said a
fee had first been proposed by an inter-departmental committee in 1999 and since
then there had been "a lot of talk and little action," and the current plan was
still in its initial stages and "very far from realization."

Paz-Pines said that reducing air pollution should be the dominant goal of the
plan, not just an adjunct to the reduction of traffic. He also said the main
drawback of the fee was that it would perpetuate inequality, with the wealthy
paying it without a second thought and the poorer sectors being left to manage
as best they could.

"This fee will be realized only if by its side there will be a clean and
efficient public transport system," Pines said. He added that the committee had
asked the Transport Ministry to provide more specific details for an "integrated
plan" within the next three months.

Ministry loses fight against giant posters

The gigantic advertising posters that once graced the buildings along the Ayalon
Freeway are set to return within the next three months after the Transport
Ministry lost its two-year struggle against them last week, reports
www.local.co.il. Some 27 Knesset members voted in favor of a law allowing the
massive advertisements to return to the Ayalon, while 10 Knesset members opposed
the law. The report did not mention where the remaining 83 Knesset members were
for the vote.

According to the report, the Transport Ministry's long battle against the
posters was complicated by the police's issuing of "misleading figures" about
the accident rate on the freeway caused by the signs, an action that ended up
with police issuing a letter of apology. A poster industry forum fought fiercely
for the return of the signs, placing strong pressure on Knesset members and
saying the industry had lost "millions of shekels" in revenue and hundreds of
workers had lost their jobs because of the posters' removal.

Now the Knesset has approved a law that will allow the posters to return to the
Ayalon within three months, although a ban remains for now on posters on other
inter- city highways and freeways. The new law will also allow local planning
and construction committees to decide on posters in their jurisdiction, rather
than letting district planning and construction committees decide, as has been
the case until now.

Kfar Shalem wins reprieve

The controversial evacuation of residents from Kfar Shalem in Tel Aviv will be
delayed until the end of November in a temporary peace deal brokered in the
Knesset last week, reports www.mynet.co.il. Knesset Finance Committee head Gilad
Erdan (Likud) oversaw an agreement with the Israel Lands Authority, the city of
Tel Aviv, the Halamish building company and residents to delay the evacuation
until November 30 while the sides discuss fair compensation.

As reported in Metro in January 2008, residents in the impoverished neighborhood
have been fighting for more than 10 years against plans to remove them and build
new residential units in their place. Last December, hundreds of police swarmed
on the area and forcibly evacuated a number of residents amid great controversy.
Now the remaining residents have won a reprieve until the end of November aimed
at enabling the sides to reach an agreement on fair compensation. The report
emphasized that the delay would not apply to any new squatters moving into the
area.

SHARON

Residents create a stink over sewerage connection fees

Residents of a Herzliya apartment building are furious that the city is charging
them sewerage connection fees of NIS 5,000 to NIS 9,000 each, even though their
building is not connected to the municipal sewerage system, reports
www.local.co.il. And the residents were even angrier to learn that the charges
stem from a sewerage line that was laid some 15 years ago, although it was never
connected to the building.

According to the report, the building on Rehov Tchernichowsky has always been
serviced by a sewage pit, and residents have paid, and still pay, privately for
its cleaning and maintenance. About one year ago, the residents decided to ask
the city for information on how they could connect to the municipal sewerage
line. One month later, they were surprised to receive sewerage connection bills
for sums ranging from NIS 5,000 to NIS 9,000, depending on the size of their
apartments.

A residents' representative said that when the residents went to the municipal
sewerage department to ask for an explanation, they were surprised to be told
that the fee was for work already done, although none of the officials they saw
knew what the work was or when it had been carried out. The representative said
that since then, the city had added interest to the fees, and recently some
residents who have not paid have had their bank accounts frozen. He said the
residents learned only last week that the work was apparently done 15 years ago,
but despite their complaints about being charged for old work, city officials
were still saying they had to pay up. The representative said many of the
residents had bought their apartments in recent years, and they had official
documents from the time of purchase stating that the apartments were free of
debt, so if the city wanted to make anyone pay for the work, it should pursue
the former residents.

"We think the city has no right to freeze our accounts, especially in light of
the fact that it doesn't even have a clear and appropriate explanation of what
we are supposed to be paying for," the residents' representative said.

A municipal spokesman responded that the sewerage line had been laid "a number
of years ago" and that residents could have connected the building to it at any
time. The spokesman said the building was on high ground and required a special
pump, and the fees were charged only after the residents asked to be connected.

Drop-out rate highest in Herzliya

Herzliya has the highest high-school drop-out rate of any city in the Sharon
area while Ra'anana and the small town of Kochav Yair have the lowest rates,
reports www.local.co.il. Figures released by the Education Ministry for the last
two academic years show that 2.3 percent of high-school students dropped out in
Herzliya, while just 1.2% dropped out in Ra'anana and 0.3% dropped out in Kochav
Yair.

According to the report, the ministry's figures covered seventh to 12th grades,
although the vast majority of drop-outs took place from ninth grade onwards. The
report said that in Hod Hasharon, 84 out of the 4,013 students in seventh to
12th grades, or 2.1%, dropped out during the two-year period, giving it the
second-highest drop-out rate in the Sharon area. Kfar Saba had the third-
highest rate, with 112 of its 6,406 high-school students - 1.7% - dropping out.
In Ra'anana, 73 out of 6,300 high schoolers dropped out, giving it a rate of 1.2
percent.

But the honors went to the small town of Kochav Yair, which saw just five out of
1,440 students in seventh to 12th grades dropping out, a rate of just 0.3
percent. No comments were reported with the figures.

Sewage plant reprimanded on phosphate release

The Ministry for Environmental Protection is considering shutting down the Ramat
Hasharon sewage purification plant after discovering that it is releasing large
quantities of dangerous phosphates into the Yarkon River, reports
www.mynet.co.il. The ministry sent a sharply worded letter to the plant last
week, saying that it was operating in breach of its business license and that
the phosphates endangered the ecology of the river.

According to the report, samples analyzed by the ministry found 7.2 milligrams
of phosphates per liter in the water released by the plant into the river, even
though the legally permitted maximum is just 2 mg per liter. The phosphates
apparently originally entered the sewerage system from agricultural pesticides.

A spokesman for the Yarkon River Authority said Ramat Hasharon had been asked
repeatedly to reduce the amount of phosphates it used, but nothing had been done
in response. The spokesman said such quantities of phosphates in the river were
harmful to plants, fish and other local animals.

A municipal spokesman responded that the purification plant needed to be
upgraded to clean it of phosphates, but this had not yet been done because of a
"division of opinions" between the city and the franchise-holder over who should
pay for the upgrade. "We are hopeful that a solution will be found soon," the
spokesman said.

Warning on West Nile Fever in Netanya area

Mosquitoes carrying the potentially lethal West Nile Fever virus have been found
in north-east Netanya and west of Taibeh, and Health Ministry officials fear an
outbreak of the disease in the north Sharon area, reports www.mynet.co.il. The
virus was identified during routine tests done by specialists from the Ministry
for Environmental Protection, and led to immediate warnings being issued to
local authorities to take action against mosquitoes, which transmit the disease
to humans.

According to the report, the Health Ministry and the Ministry for Environmental
Protection are together responsible for the early identification and prevention
of West Nile Fever, which has claimed a number of lives in outbreaks in Israel
over the years. With the virus now having been identified in the Netanya and
Taibeh areas, the Ministry for Environmental Protection has sent urgent letters
to local authorities in the north Sharon area, urging them to act against
mosquitoes and their breeding grounds.

A ministry spokesman said the required actions include spraying pesticides
wherever mosquitoes were seen, drying out any standing pools of water, and
removing weeds and grasses floating in canals. The spokesman said most of the
infected mosquitoes had been found in the Taibeh area, with fewer in north-east
Netanya, but mosquitoes "do not recognize municipal borders and their flight
range is up to 15 kilometers." He said the city of Taibeh had asked for help to
get rid of the insects, and officials had offered immediate assistance.

HAIFA

Conflict over synagogue compensation money

A new Sephardi-Ashkenazi conflict is brewing in Haifa after the city's chief
rabbi decided that NIS 150,000 paid as compensation for the destruction of an
old Sephardi synagogue should be used for the upgrading of an Ashkenazi
synagogue, reports www.mynet.co.il. A Shas councilor said it was unclear why the
Ashkenazi chief rabbi had even been consulted over what should be done with the
money, when the destroyed synagogue was a Sephardi one and the money should have
gone to the Sephardi community.

According to the report, the old synagogue on Rehov Bilu in the Hadar area
served the Sephardi community for many decades, but in recent years has been
abandoned and has fallen into disrepair. With the building standing in the way
of the city's current transport improvement project in the area, the planners
sought to have it removed, and last week Mayor Yona Yahav met with Haifa Chief
Rabbi She'ar Yashuv Hacohen and representatives of the Yafeh-Nof municipal
building company to discuss compensation. The meeting agreed on NIS 150,000 as a
fair sum, and the building was pulled down. The chief rabbi, himself Ashkenazi,
said the compensation money would go to the main Ashkenazi synagogue on Rehov
Herzl.

But Shas councilor Avi Witzman said he did not know why the Ashkenazi chief
rabbi had even been consulted, and said another Sephardi synagogue should have
been given the money. "It looks like the Sephardis build and the Ashkenazis
destroy and on top of that they take the money," Vitzman said.

But the chief rabbi said Vitzman's complaints were "misplaced." He said the
destroyed synagogue had become disused long ago, and he did not see the intended
target of the funds as an Ashkenazi or a Sephardi synagogue, "but as a synagogue
for all the residents of Haifa." Nevertheless, he said he would be willing to
reconsider the designation of the money and find a synagogue agreeable to all
sides.

Coffee shop grinds to a halt

Residents of the Romema neighborhood in Haifa have finally won their long battle
against a coffee shop operating out of a nature reserve in the heart of their
neighborhood, reports www.mynet.co.il. The National Council for Planning and
Construction's Appeals Committee decided that the building should be pulled
down, saying that legitimizing it retroactively would only encourage further
building breaches.

According to the report, the coffee shop began operating out of a small building
in the center of the nature reserve back in 1986. As the years passed, the
building expanded and became a pub and restaurant, but following residents'
complaints, the courts prohibited any further construction and the building
became a coffee shop once again. In 2005, the coffee shop's owners sought
approval for the building, and the District Planning and Construction Committee
decided that it could continue to function within a limited space, with the
extra construction to be pulled down. But the Adam, Teva Ve'din organization and
residents were unhappy with this decision and submitted their objection to the
Appeals Committee, which has now decided that the coffee shop should not gain
retroactive legitimacy.

A residents' representative said residents welcomed the decision and would be
"delighted to get their quality of life back" and to retain some greenery in the
center of the city. No response was reported from the coffee shop.

New project approved for Neveh Sha'anan

An Interior Ministry Planning and Construction Sub- Committee has approved an
18-dunam building project in the Neveh Sha'anan area, reports www.local.co.il.
The "Ganei Hen-Hagalil" project calls for a total of 70 residential units to be
built, most of them semi-detached houses, with two apartment buildings of four
stories each.

According to the report, residents of surrounding streets lodged objections to
the plans, mostly on the grounds of expected traffic and parking problems, and
the sub-committee made some changes to the plans to help prevent these problems.
The builders were also ordered to upgrade a park bordering the area. A committee
spokesman said the project would help strengthen the neighborhood through the
efficient use of land available for development.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 5 photos: DIFFERENT PRIORITIES? According to Pe'er Visner, current Tel
Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai is more interested in helping visitors to Tel Aviv than in
helping the city's residents. TEMPORARY PEACE. The evacuation of residents from
Kfar Shalem in Tel Aviv will be delayed until the end of November. In photo: A
protester is forcibly removed by police from the neighborhood. HERZLIYA HAS the
highest high-school drop out rate out of Sharon area schools, Kochav Yair the
lowest. UNEVEN FLOW. The Ramat Hasharon sewage purification plant may be shut
down because it is reportedly releasing large quantities of dangerous phosphates
into the Yarkon River. WHAT'S NEW? Haifa's Chief Rabbi She'ar Yashuv Hacohen is
at the center of a Sephardi-Ashkenazi conflict over synagogue funds. (Credit:
Ariel Jerozolimski; Mati Milstein; Illustrative photo, Jerusalem Post Archives;
Courtesy)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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All Rights Reserved

916 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 8, 2008 Friday

A request from the editor

BYLINE: Oren Klass

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 158 words

Dear Readers,

I consider living in Israel a priviledge.

However, life here often tends to challenge us with frustrating and sometimes
mind-boggling experiences. Bureaucracy; a seeming absence of order, planning and
organizaation; lack of accountability; baffling business practices - these are
but some of the unfortunate day-to- day issues we meet.

You are hereby cordially requested to share with us your own personal
experiences - from wherever you reside - so that we at Metro can get to the
source of the problem, get answers, and hopefully help bring about a solution.
Ultimately, we can make a difference, but your participation is needed.

Please send us by email a concise account of your experience - including all the
actors involved, when and where it took place, as well as suggestions for action
- and we'll contact the appropriate authorities for explanations.

Sincerely,

Oren Klass

Editor, Metro

You may email your stories to orenk@jpost.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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917 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 8, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: J. Prager, Shlomo Goren, Yehudit Spero, Amnon Goldberg, Irene Levi,
Helga Dudman and Ruth Kark, Kenneth Besig

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1110 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Risible rodent

Sir, - Amid all the gloomy news and prognostications, it was like a breath of
fresh air to read "Requiem for a rat" by Calev Ben-David (August 1). I actually
laughed out loud as I followed this imaginary tale. What a brilliant idea to
make fun of the Arabs' ridiculous claim that we Israelis are using rats to harm
them. It was much wiser than constantly refuting their spiteful accusations.

More strength to Calev's pen (or computer), and let's have more such
lighthearted articles to raise our spirits.

J. PRAGER

Petah Tikva

A cynical campaign?

Sir, - In "The view from Nahariya" (August 1) Barbara Sofer spoke out against
possibly over-harsh criticism of the families of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev
in their two-year campaign to bring their sons home.

Perhaps Ms. Sofer is right that it is unfair to consider the Goldwassers'
campaign "cynicism" or "manipulation." However, it is not unfair at all to so
describe the media's, army's and government's parts in the affair. In fact, the
Goldwassers could themselves be considered victims of that cynicism and
manipulation.

We now know that the army had reason to believe, almost from the beginning, that
neither soldier survived the attack. While this was mentioned in passing by the
press in the first week, we heard no more of it from any army spokesperson,
government official or investigative journalist. All this while our government
took us to bloody, ultimately unsuccessful war; quailed before an increasingly
pressuring campaign to "bring the boys home," whatever the cost; and finally
concocted a deal in which Israel proved "vulnerable" and "gullible."

The term aguna refers to a woman whose husband has disappeared without a trace,
who has no way of knowing whether she has been widowed or not. Jewish tradition,
as well as basic human values, compel us to do whatever possible to permit such
a woman to continue her life, seeking and accepting evidence that would
otherwise be doubted or insufficient. Yet the army, and most notably its
rabbinate, did nothing to address this situation for almost two years, until the
deal was nearly finalized, in what seemed more of a last-ditch negotiation
tactic. Worse, nobody in the press examined this angle of the situation.

Can one truly claim there was no cynicism or manipulation involved in the
Goldwasser-Regev affair? If everything had been directed at the honest welfare
of the families, they would have been allowed to mourn and recover two years
ago, and not allowed to suffer agonizing thoughts of their sons being subjected
to "maniacal torture." Unfortunately, those who were supposed to represent true
human compassion and empathy allowed themselves to be manipulated into - or else
were manipulating others into - courses of action detrimental to the nation as a
whole.

SHLOMO GOREN

Beit Shemesh

Bad timing

Sir, - They say that timing is everything. Naomi Chazan's "Tourist in her own
land" (July 25) was very poorly timed. After the heart-wrenching return of the
remains of our soldiers and the terrorist tractor attack in Jerusalem, Ms.
Chazan has to be kidding if she thinks people are going to get worked up about
Zeina Ashrawi Hutchinson's inability to come to Israel when she wants to.

It is almost the third anniversary of the expulsion of the Gush Katif refugees.
They mostly do not yet have permanent places to live and jobs. Why are the poor
Palestinians the only underdog?

YEHUDIT SPERO

Beit Shemesh

Living waters in the Dead Sea

Sir, - Amotz Asa-El wonders if a Dead Sea canal might one day enable fishing
there ("An idolatry called environmentalism," July 18). Indeed it will, but not
by waters coming from the Mediterranean or Red Sea, but from out of the Third
Temple!

"These waters will go out to the eastern region, descend to the Arava and come
to the sea - and the water will become healthy. And it will be that every living
thing that swarms, wherever streams flow, will live, and the fish will be
exceedingly abundant. And there will stand fishermen from Ein Gedi to Ein
Eglaim" (Ezekiel 47).

The Dead Sea region, the lowest point on the globe, was once one of the most
delightful places on Earth: "The entire Jordan Plain all the way to Zoar was
fully watered, like the Garden of the Lord" (Genesis 13). The reason for its
reduction to one of total devastation, when "God rained down on Sodom and
Gomorrah sulphur and fire from heaven" (ibid 19), and how it exists as a
monument to this day in the very heart of the Land of Israel, must not be lost
on the Jewish People, or on mankind.

AMNON GOLDBERG

Safed

Jerusalem worthies

Sir, - A couple of corrections regarding your piece on the American Colony Hotel
("One of the hotel greats," Letters, July 18):

Valentine Vester was not the last of the family of its founders, as there are
sons and grandchildren. Also, not she but Bertha Spafford Vester authored the
book Our Jerusalem. But she did give that book to Dola Wittman, who in exchange
gave her Tongue of the Prophets on her father, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, and his work
in reviving the Hebrew language.

We had this book reprinted and continue to sell it, also the Hebrew translation
of it. It contains a photo of these two "Jerusalem worthies" holding the two
books.

Anyone who would like to purchase a copy can call me at (02) 625-1075.

IRENE LEVI

Jerusalem

Sir, - We read Abigail Klein's well-written review of American Priestess: The
Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem (July
11) with interest. Strangely, your reviewer was entirely unaware of substantial
prior work on this topic. We co- authored a book, The American Colony: Scenes
from a Jerusalem Saga, which was published by Carta, Jerusalem, in 1998 and well
received both here and abroad. In addition, one of us (RK) authored several
detailed academic papers precisely on this topic.

So to say, as your subhead did, "Finally, a book about..." was, at best,
unfortunate. How ironic the final paragraph about the "irony" that no journalist
"has ever written" about the hotel's history - one of us (HD) was for years a
journalist at The Jerusalem Post (and a guest at the hotel).

HELGA DUDMAN and RUTH KARK

Jerusalem

Friendly or vicious cycle?

Sir, - While there should be nothing but praise for an environmentally friendly
motor vehicle on Israel's highways, I think one that was a lot safer than a
motorcycle might be more appropriate ("A shocking development," July 25).

I realize that road safety was not the point of the article, but Sam Ser could
go to any hospital emergency room in Israel and every doctor and nurse working
there would tell him the same thing: "Buy your kid a motorcycle for his last
birthday."

KENNETH BESIG, Kiryat Arba

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Cartoon; 2 photos: Valentine Vester and Dola Wittman (Credit: Courtesy)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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918 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 8, 2008 Friday

It's not just the system

BYLINE: NAOMI CHAZAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1102 words

HIGHLIGHT: Critical Currents

The impending collapse of the Olmert government after barely 26 months in
office, coupled with the probability of general elections, has once again
provoked a clamor for electoral reform. These renewed appeals for an overhaul of
the system link the instability of Israeli politics to the built-in flaws of
proportional representation and the coalition antics it generates. But is the
perennial volatility of the political arena merely an outgrowth of procedural
defects, or is it at least as much the outcome of the absolute inability of the
Israeli polity to make any clear decision on the resolution of the conflict?

The latest spate of ideas aimed at "fixing" the system is usually superficial,
often self-serving and generally uninformed. These include the rather half-baked
proposal to revive the verifiably catastrophic direct election of the prime
minister and the somewhat bizarre notion of allocating reserved seats for
particular sectors (ranging from youth and immigrants to students and
pensioners). They also involve apparently more reasoned suggestions to revamp
the electoral system with a view to increasing accountability, augmenting the
hold of the larger parties and assuring more long-lasting coalitions. All these
propositions suffer from a mistaken tendency to conflate stability with
governability and to equate a reduction in the number of parties (at the expense
of representation and political inclusion) with greater governmental longevity.
Everywhere there is confusion of coalition durability - however artificial -
with substantive clarity.

Those joining the ranks of the perennial chorus for electoral reform would do
well to recall that regime robustness stems from the ability to contend with
concrete challenges. The policy stalemate on the negotiation front (especially
with the Palestinians, but also with the Syrians) inevitably strains fragile
institutions and ultimately serves to undermine governance.

FOR THE past four decades, if not more, the party map in Israel has been defined
by attitudes toward the Arab- Israel conflict. Israel is the only country in the
democratic world where left and right are used exclusively as synonyms for doves
and hawks. Positions on war and peace have been the determining factor in every
single election since 1967, with the possible exception of the 1977 ballot which
terminated Mapai hegemony. Not one government was brought down for socioeconomic
reasons, and no elections were decided on domestic matters. The ideological
deadlock on the future of the territories has, in fact, paralyzed successive
coalitions, leading to their premature collapse.

Since 1992, Israelis have experienced seven changes in government and have
witnessed the rise and fall of six prime ministers. Their average term stands at
2.6 years. Ariel Sharon holds the record for the longest consecutive tenure
during these years; the shortest was that of Shimon Peres in 1995-6 - 227 days.

Throughout this period, the pendulum constantly shifted between moderates and
hard-liners. The breakthrough policies of Yitzhak Rabin, terminated by a Jewish
assassin, were not sustained by his successor, Peres. The Netanyahu interregnum
(1996-9) was as crisis-ridden as it was brief, falling apart in the wake of the
Wye River understandings. Ehud Barak's decisive electoral victory was even more
short-lived, coming apart at Camp David and ending with the outbreak of the
second intifada. Even Ariel Sharon, whose premiership spanned the height of the
subsequent violence, could not endure the political fallout of the Gaza
disengagement.

EHUD OLMERT's unanticipated ascent to the Prime Minister's Office was meant to
break this history of governmental fluctuations. By rallying the electorate
around a new consensus centering on Israeli-inspired unilateral moves which
would absolve the country and its leaders from entering negotiations, he and his
Kadima associates sought to avoid coming to terms with the hard choices any
lasting agreement involved. This hope was almost immediately shattered by the
ill-fated Second Lebanon War. The resumption of negotiations first on the
Palestinian and more recently on the Syrian track could not compensate for this
egregious error, especially when accompanied by constant corruption
investigations of the prime minister.

The next vacillation is already in the making. Despite the fact that the Israeli
public has come a long way since the beginning of Israeli-Palestinian talks in
1992 (there is a solid majority for a two-state solution, substantial
flexibility on sharing Jerusalem, a willingness to dismantle settlements and,
where necessary, to engage in an equitable land swap), these years are
punctuated by a series of missed opportunities. Realization of what needs to be
done has dawned only after the conditions for implementation no longer existed.
Tragically, successive Israeli governments, like the public they represent, have
exhibited a perplexing, persistent and profound lack of ability to decide on the
most important existential question confronting the country. This foot-dragging
has perpetuated - and now institutionalized - the occupation under the
fallacious guise of separation.

It has also gradually shaken the political system and seriously undermined its
decision-making and implementation capabilities. As immobility has become the
norm, malfunctions have multiplied and new faults have surfaced. The propensity
to constantly tamper with the system has only exacerbated its weaknesses.
Corruption in high places, unbridled assaults on the independence of the
judiciary, the absence of adequate checks and balances, problems of
accountability, the alarming drop in public confidence in key institutions and a
pervasive sense of inefficacy are among the most notable symptoms of this
malaise.

IT IS tempting to directly address these outward manifestations of governmental
inadequacy. But such exercises do not go to the root of the problem. Systemic
dysfunction is as much a product of policy disagreements as of mechanical
fissures. Politics is all about making decisions. No formalistic corrective can
substitute for a willingness to resolve the single most contentious issue on the
national agenda.

The current state of Israeli politics painfully demonstrates a well-known truism
- that countries that can't design and implement policies on topics central to
their existence are bound to fall apart. To function smoothly, what is needed
now, more than ever before, is a total commitment to end the occupation before
it completely erodes the political system and, along with it, Israeli society as
a whole.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Kadima wins, 2006. Israel is the only country in the democratic
world where left and right are used exclusively as synonyms for doves and hawks.
(Credit: Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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919 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 8, 2008 Friday

Destroying Israel's deterrence

BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1084 words

HIGHLIGHT: Civil Fights

Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin is so worried about Israel's
deterrence that he made his concerns public last month. Speaking to the Knesset
Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Diskin said Israeli deterrence had
"suffered substantially" due to three events over the past three years: the
disengagement from Gaza, Hamas's subsequent takeover of the Strip, and the
Second Lebanon War.

Diskin did not elaborate, but his reasons for citing these events were obvious:
All undermined both the physical and the psychological aspect of deterrence.

Physical deterrence relates to the actual balance of forces: The greater the
imbalance, the more reluctant the weaker side will be to start hostilities. And
while the balance clearly still favors Israel, the gap has shrunk markedly
thanks to the events Diskin cited.

UNTIL ISRAEL quit Gaza in 2005, it combated Palestinian arms smuggling with
substantial (though never complete) success. But once it withdrew, the
floodgates opened. Thus pre-disengagement, most Hamas rockets had ranges of only
a few kilometers, and its stockpile never exceeded a few hundred. Today, Israeli
intelligence believes the organization has thousands of rockets capable of
reaching major cities in southern Israel, on top of thousands of shorter-range
rockets. It has also acquired sophisticated anti-tank rockets - the weapon
responsible for most IDF casualties during the Second Lebanon War - and built a
network of Hizbullah-style bunkers.

Thus should Israel respond to any future Hamas attack, it will risk withering
rocket fire on its cities, while any ground operation aimed at stopping the
rockets will entail many more casualties than did previous Gaza operations. That
knowledge will make any Israeli government more reluctant to respond, which in
turn will make Hamas feel freer to strike when it deems the time convenient.

The same goes for Lebanon. The government touted Security Council Resolution
1701, which ended the 2006 Lebanon war, as an achievement, saying its provisions
for a beefed-up UN force and the Lebanese Army's deployment in south Lebanon
would prevent Hizbullah's rearmament. Instead, 1701 allowed Hizbullah to rearm
at breathtaking speed. The organization now has some 40,000 rockets - triple its
arsenal in 2006. Moreover, these include long- range rockets capable of striking
anywhere in Israel, whereas in 2006, only the north was in range.

Furthermore, thanks to both its arms-buying spree and the image boost it
received from the IDF's failure to defeat it (a feat no regular Arab army ever
matched), Hizbullah now controls the Lebanese government so totally that new
government guidelines approved last week formally authorize it to attack Israel
whenever it wishes. This governmental approval may well grant it access to
Lebanese Army materiel, which includes highly sophisticated American equipment -
especially since Lebanon's new president and former army chief, Michel Suleiman,
announced last Friday that he supports "all means" to regain what he terms
occupied Lebanese land.

Thus again, should Israel respond to any future Hizbullah aggression, Hizbullah
will be able to exact a far greater price than it did last time. That will make
Israel think twice about responding, which in turn will make Hizbullah feel
freer to attack.

BUT FOR all the importance of the physical element, deterrence is primarily
about psychology: Perceptions of a foe's strength often matter more than reality
in deciding whether to attack. And on the psychological plane, the events Diskin
cited were devastating.

According to repeated polls, 70 to 85 percent of Palestinians believe that
Israel quit Gaza due to anti- Israel terror. And with reason: In 2000, no
Israeli government would have considered withdrawing from Gaza unilaterally. Yet
a relatively low casualty level - Gaza- based terror accounted for less than 15
percent (some 150 people) of Israel's intifada-related fatalities over the
ensuing five years - sufficed to reverse this stance. Thus, clearly, terror
worked.

Sheikh Hassan Yousef, who is widely regarded as Hamas's leader in the West Bank,
explained the thought process in an astonishingly frank interview in last
Friday's Haaretz. He himself, the interview implies, was unenthusiastic about
suicide bombings. Yet Israel's own actions proved the tactic so effective that
its opponents within the organization were effectively silenced.

"Members of the Israeli 'peace camp,' those who spoke about ending the
occupation and withdrawing, pushed us forward in our decision to continue the
suicide attacks," he said. "The cracks in your steadfastness encouraged us
greatly and proved that this method is very effective. Ariel Sharon's plan for
disengagement from the Gaza Strip was also a great achievement that resulted
from our activities. For us, one of the best proofs of the rift that suicide
attacks had created in Israeli society was the phenomenon of refusal to serve in
the army. We thought this rift should be deepened, and use of the suicide bomber
weapon became a matter of consensus in our organization."

In short, many Palestinians concluded that Israel was simply too weak to stand
up to terror.

Hamas's takeover of Gaza two years later compounded the impression of Israeli
weakness, because for years, Israel had openly backed Fatah against Hamas - both
verbally and, to some extent, in deeds. And when your proclaimed ally is
ignominiously routed by your enemy, that inevitably reflects on you as well.

But the Second Lebanon War was the ultimate proof: After 33 days, the IDF proved
unable to defeat a much smaller and more poorly equipped foe. And precisely
because Hizbullah was obviously militarily inferior, the only possible
explanation for its achievement lay in Israel's unwillingness to fight: For fear
of taking military casualties, Israel refused to launch the necessary ground
operation against Hizbullah, preferring to let a million Israelis cower
helplessly under daily rocket barrages. The conclusion is obvious: Israel is
afraid to confront Hizbullah head-on. And therefore, Hizbullah need not fear
attacking it again.

One might argue that all of the above is water under the bridge: It happened,
and Israel is stuck with the consequences. Yet the fact that the government has
continued making all the same mistakes in the ensuing years (as next week's
column will show) proves that the lessons remain unlearned. And until they are
learned, whatever shreds of Israel's deterrence remain will continue to
evaporate.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Abandoned greenhouse, 2005. Until Israel quit Gaza, it combated
Palestinian arms smuggling with substantial (though never complete) success.
(Credit: Bloomberg)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

920 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 8, 2008 Friday

Eruv fight on a summer holiday

BYLINE: MARILYN HENRY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 963 words

HIGHLIGHT: Metro Views

Along with hitting the surf and the sand, David Paterson, New York's first black
governor, went to shul last Shabbat, turning up in the Hampton Synagogue on the
east end of Long Island.

This was not simply about hanging out with the Jews on some of the most
expensive real estate in the continental US. Instead, Paterson lent support in
the latest battle for an eruv in the metro area.

With about 500 families - approximately 30 percent of whom are observant - at
the Orthodox shul, it was time for an eruv that would cover about one-third of
the town's three square miles, and ease some restrictions on observant Jews, or
so thought Rabbi Marc Schneier, who heads the summer shul on Sunset Avenue in
Westhampton Beach, and the affiliated New York Synagogue on the east side of
Manhattan for the rest of the year.

There is nothing like the prospect of an eruv to make things nasty in a
community and it is no different in this case, even though the shul has been on
the island for 18 years. Besides, people should be more than used to a Jewish
presence in the Hamptons, which is home to some of the most famous names in the
entertainment industry, as well as a host of financiers, artists and designers.

LAST SPRING, the village held three public hearings on the eruv. The synagogue
is planning to offer an informational meeting next Wednesday.

Will anyone listen? In the heat of an eruv battle, it's never clear if people
are truly racists, deliberately deaf or simply ignorant - but a lot of stupid
things get said. A full-page ad, by the Westhampton Beach Alliance for the
Separation of Church & State, in June in the Southampton Press, being an equal
opportunity offender, asked: "Is Westhampton Beach a Christian Community? Don't
let it happen! Is Westhampton Beach an Orthodox Jewish Community? Don't let it
happen!"

An eruv, said the advertisers, "will proclaim us as an Orthodox Jewish Community
for all time."

Every eruv battle seems to have its own back story. The subtext in the Hamptons
is not the same as in some other significant metro-area cases, like the
long-fought battle in Tenafly, New Jersey. Among the differences is that Tenafly
is a small suburban borough in Bergen County, whose estimated 15,000 residents
are year-rounders. One argument is that an eruv, by making Tenafly more
Orthodox- friendly, would bring in young families who would not use the public
schools and thus upset the demographics of the education system.

The Hamptons are chock full of tony towns and villages that cater to wealthy
summer residents and weekenders. Westhampton Beach, with some 2,000 residents,
has a median household income and cost-of-living index that soar above the
national average. If you can afford it, the Hamptons are the place to enjoy
beaches and boating. Think oceanfront mansions and housing values with lots of
zeroes. Eight years ago, for example, there was quite a deal between a nice
Jewish comedian and a nice Jewish musician when Jerry Seinfeld reportedly paid
$32 million for Billy Joel's Hamptons home. Although Westhampton has a public
school system, summertime residents do not attend. When the sunny season ends,
even the Hampton Synagogue basically migrates back to Manhattan.

In the Hamptons, there was no shortage of utterly uninformed, possibly
anti-Semitic or deliberately idiotic comments about the eruv. "What is to stop
the Orthodox from demanding that Christians, within the eruv, not put up
Christmas ornamentation on their properties within the eruv?" the Jewish Week
quoted an unnamed person as asking. (Perhaps when the synagogue offers its
informational meeting, the diocese should announce its own remedial education
program.)

ERUVIM SERVE an important function. No one wants young Jewish families to be
imprisoned by Shabbat, unable to push strollers or to attend services with young
children.

But the misrepresentation and exaggeration is not only from the eruv opponents.
In a legal brief in the Tenafly eruv case, the Orthodox Union said: "An eruv is
a core element of the constitutionally guaranteed right of the free exercise of
religion for Sabbath observant Orthodox Jews in the United States."

In an interview about his eruv battle, Schneier said: "I never imagined that, in
my own backyard, I would have to fight for what I consider to be the civil
rights of my own congregation and community."

I know I should duck as I write this, but in the US, an eruv is not a
constitutionally guaranteed or a civil right.

The eruv, basically created with wires on telephone poles and fences, allows
observant Jews to carry or push objects within that area during the Sabbath.
Because these activities are not allowed in the public domain otherwise, an eruv
creates the legal fiction of a "private domain" to enable such activities.

But as American courts and religious authorities have noted, the eruv itself has
no religious significance or symbolism, and it is not part of any religious
ritual.

It is an odd situation, these knock-down fights in which opponents of eruvim
rarely can show that they have sustained some injury by the creation of the
eruv. Nor can Jews, however, show any breach of legally protected religious
rights. The exceptions have been when the telephone poles and public fences have
been used for signs and other purposes, in which case a specifically Jewish
purpose, like wires for eruvim, cannot be denied.

The absence of an eruv does not stop anyone from going to shul on Shabbat; they
just can't push their strollers or carry their tallitot and must resort to
turning house keys into faux brooches pinned to lapels for the day. Is it
pleasant? Not really - just ask the observant Jews on New York's Lower East Side
who, under the terms of Rav Moshe Feinstein's 1962 responsum, have been living
for generations without an eruv.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Main Street in East Hampton. No shortage of utterly uninformed,
possibly anti-Semitic or deliberately idiotic comments. (Credit: Bloomberg)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 8, 2008 Friday

Crusades long gone, but jihad lingers on

BYLINE: BARRY RUBIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1235 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Region. The writer is director of Global Research in
International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East Review of
International Affairs Journal and Turkish Studies.

A 19-year-old man is tortured and beheaded for a bad joke interpreted as
blasphemy. A father is accused of killing his son because he converted to
another religion. They are not Muslims but Christians, and the place is France
in the mid-1700s.

There was a time when Europe often behaved in ways parallel to that of
Muslim-majority countries today. Yet by the end of the 1700s, this was changing.
In the first case cited above, the king and even Catholic bishops failed to save
the unfortunate Chevalier de la Barre, but the outcry led to the end of such
actions. In the second case, Voltaire led a campaign that saw Jean Calas's name
legally cleared on the grounds that he was the victim of an unjust frame-up
because he was a member of the Protestant minority.

It's true, then, that there are parallels between Western and Middle Eastern
societies. But even leaving aside important doctrinal religious issues, the
crucial difference between the two is that phenomena the West has left far back
in the past continue to exist in Muslim- majority counterparts.

The Crusades ended eight centuries ago; jihad continues. And other critical
differences differentiate between the two civilizations.

One is that progressive opinion, intellectuals, governments, even many of the
Christian churches themselves, fought for progress in the West. They didn't say
"These are our sacred practices, our lifestyle and thus must remain forever
unchanged." They didn't let fear of being labeled "Christianophobic" paralyze
them.

Another is that four centuries of rethinking, struggle and debate were needed to
create contemporary Western democratic society. Such processes have, at best,
barely begun in the contemporary Middle East.

IT'S EXTRAORDINARY that much analysis of the region - possibly the most
important intellectual endeavor of our times - is conducted in an ad-lib fashion
based on the latest newspaper interview, underpinned with wishful thinking. Yet
if we're going to be serious about this task, serious historical perspective is
needed. Most should be based on the region's own distinctive past and world
view.

But since people insist on making transregional analogies, here's a way of doing
one. Consider the following statement: "The world is not ruled by an intelligent
being." Instead, religion has created a deity who is a "monster of unreason,
injustice, malice and atrocity."

Who said this - someone last week in the West? No, it was the French writer Jean
Meslier in 1723. That statement, too hot to publish at the time, was a few
decades later part of mainstream French discourse.

Oh, and by the way, Meslier was a lifelong Catholic priest.

THE BASIS of democracy began in 1215 in England with its Magna Carta. The battle
to have a legitimately accepted division between religion and state was waged
and largely won there in the Middle Ages. A basis was laid for secular-
dominated society.

True, in the 1500s underground Catholic priests in England were tortured and
executed, while Protestants in France suffered even worse. Yet at the same time,
English universities were teaching the classical tradition which, in Italy,
formed the basis of representational art. The works of Shakespeare and his
fellow creators depended on this freedom, background and example. A basis was
laid for a pragmatic, empiricist, utilitarian culture that stood on the
scientific method.

That was the Renaissance, or rebirth. For the West, the great civilization of
classical times was being rebuilt.

But Greece and Rome are not part of the Arab-Islamic tradition, where
representational art is viewed with suspicion. The time before the coming of
Islam is rejected with horror. To this day, secularism is almost a hanging
offense in the Middle East; and democracy, as it is understood in the West, is
deemed inappropriate. Much of Europe's cultural production in the 16th through
18th centuries could not be produced and widely accepted in the Arabic-speaking
world today.

Of course, these things do appear, but usually as imports from the West, which
raises suspicion and gives ruling forces - clerical and state - a strong
incentive to demonize the West to limit the appeal of subversive ideas.

THE GREAT historian of France, Alfred Cobban, wrote that the new secular
ideology triumphed there between 1748 and 1770, after already flourishing in
Britain and the Netherlands. Even in the Catholic Church "the persecuting spirit
was dying down." The English, Dutch, American and French revolutions were not
triumphs of traditionalism, as in Iran, but of greater democracy. Many
Westerners continued (as they do today) to be religious, but more open and
tolerant.

This struggle between the old and new societies characterized much of the 19th
and 20th centuries, yet the trend was steady. Perhaps fascism - and arguably
communism - were the final reactionary movements, and World War II was the last
struggle. Yet victory required 500 years of rethinking and education.

There's no such history in the Middle East, while several additional problems
block movement toward moderation and democracy here. Whatever one thinks of
specific Islamic doctrine as generally interpreted, the big problem is that it
remains so powerful and hegemonic. Arab nationalism is anti-democratic,
repressive and statist. Islamists seek a somewhat revised version of the eighth
century, albeit with rockets and mass communication.

IT IS also worse because Middle East regimes and revolutionaries know Western
history. They are aware of the fact that while pious Western philosophers and
scientists sincerely believed open inquiry and democracy didn't threaten
traditional religion and the status quo, they were wrong. Openness led to
revolution and to modern secular- dominated society, a West with all the ills
decried by those in religious, ideological and political power in the Middle
East. They also know what happened to Soviet bloc dictatorships that
experimented with more freedom. And they know that accepting Western ideas makes
people want to change their own societies.

On top of that knowledge, they have weapons, technology, new means of
organization and communication to block any change that tries to make its way
through persuasion or threat. This point applies as much to Iran's Islamist
rulers as to Syria's pretend-pious ones or Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi monarchs.

FINALLY, it is worse because there's a powerful, growing movement - radical
Islamism - posing an alternative to modernism. The question is not merely of
tiny, marginalized al-Qaida but also the governments of Iran, Syria and Sudan;
the Saudi regime; powerful mainstream societal influences, Hamas and Hizbullah;
the Muslim Brotherhood, and many others.

In comparison, while there are courageous individual liberals, there's no real
liberal party anywhere in the Middle East, no liberal-controlled media or
liberal proselytizing university. In Egypt the only liberal organization has
been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood.

So while the great majority of people want a good life for themselves and their
children - while they breathe air, drink water and bleed when they are pricked -
as they did in Ice Age caves, ancient Rome, medieval France, imperial China,
Inca Peru and the central deserts of Australia - that does not mean everyone
thinks the same, or that all societies and governments are basically equivalent.

Anyone who doesn't understand history is doomed to be battered by it.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: A Cairo clinic run by the Muslim Brotherhood, which took over
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The Jerusalem Post

August 8, 2008 Friday

Israel's greatest untapped source of brainpower

BYLINE: JONATHAN ROSENBLUM

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1238 words

HIGHLIGHT: Think Again

Education Minister Yuli Tamir became an unlikely haredi hero recently when she
defended the Knesset vote to anchor in law funding of yeshivot ketanot (for
young men aged 14 to 16) at 60 percent of the funding of students in the state
education system.

Evelyn Gordon took Tamir to task in these pages ("Tolerance without state
funding," July 30). Gordon agrees with Tamir that the government should not
coerce haredim into accepting the core curriculum. But that does not mean, she
argues, that the government must also fund an education system that has declared
itself free from all governmental control.

I confess that I find it almost impossible to disagree with anything that Evelyn
Gordon writes. Here too, I agree that democratic theory does not mandate
government funding of private education. Nevertheless, there are compelling
public policy grounds to justify the continual funding of haredi post-elementary
education.

First, let us clarify the extent of the issue. Teenage haredi girls receive a
secular education that is on a par with, and likely superior to, the average
student in the state education system. Increasingly, haredi women are going into
hi-tech, accounting and architecture, as well as the traditional haredi
professions of teaching and special education. That leaves the boys, whose
secular education generally ends in eighth grade.

Next, let us clarify the goals of education. Broadly speaking, those goals are
twofold: conveying specific information and developing the ability to think.
With respect to the first, most of us retain very little of the specific content
of our schooling. How many reading this column can remember the quadratic
formula, much less its application? My brother once built a stairwell using
trigonometry, but for most people trigonometric functions play no role past
high-school math tests.

Given the pathetic state of Israeli public education, haredi young men would not
seem to be missing much in terms of content. Barely half of Jewish high-school
students even qualify for a matriculation certificate. And anyone who has ever
listened to students in elite Tel Aviv high schools stumped by questions such as
"How did Israel come into possession of the Golan Heights?" and "What is the
difference between the legislative and executive branches?" can only wonder what
is taught in the civics portion of the core curriculum. As Tali Lipkin-Shahak
once wrote: "The only thing more depressing than our students' total ignorance
is their utter indifference to that ignorance."

Most haredi kids are avid readers - unlike their secular counterparts.
Newspapers, magazines and lots of books are found in almost every haredi home.
Unless the subject is sports or the sexual peccadilloes of our leaders, haredi
kids are probably better informed about current events than their secular
contemporaries. I would wager that the average haredi high-school-age student
even knows more Israeli history and has toured more widely in Israel than his
secular counterpart.

The New York State Regents once exempted Orthodox schools from teaching the
state's mandatory anti-AIDS curriculum on the grounds that an Orthodox education
provided a superior defense against the disease, as reflected in the near
nonexistence of AIDS in the Orthodox community. In light of the vastly lower
rates of violence and crime in haredi schools and society, and the much higher
rates of participation in the political process, perhaps haredi education should
similarly be treated as the functional equivalent of the core's civics
requirement.

IN TERMS OF developing reasoning ability, nothing compares to Talmud study.
Every proposition put forth by the Talmud is immediately challenged and a
dizzying array of proofs adduced to each side. Not only is no proposition
accepted at face value by the Talmud itself, but Talmud is studied together with
a partner whose task it is to challenge every interpretation one offers. The
process is justly called "the wars of Torah."

Talmudic learning leaves no room for the passive absorption of information
spoon-fed by a teacher. When Rabbi Eliezer Schach, the leading talmudist of his
time, gave his lectures in Ponevezh Yeshiva, he was inevitably challenged within
a few moments by students 60 years younger than he.

To the logical abilities developed in talmudic learning must be added the
intellectual discipline required to engage challenging texts 10 to 12 hours a
day. Yeshiva learning thus bears no resemblance to the rote memorization of the
madrassa, to which it is ignorantly compared.

A 1994 study by a team of Israeli and American researchers, headed by Prof.
Robert Sigler of Carnegie- Mellon University, found that yeshiva students
surpassed secular students in their ability to solve geometry and mathematical
problems. And American software entrepreneur George Morgenstern claims that
students with a background in Talmud can master computer programming in
one-quarter to one-half the time of those lacking such background.

A July 24 Ha'aretz news story compared the results on the psychometric exam of
haredi men who had no high-school education but who took a preparatory course of
one year or less to the national average. The results refuted Ha'aretz's
recurrent portrayal of yeshiva education as the heart of darkness, consigning
its products to a life of ignorance and poverty.

The conclusion: "The data indicate that the formal education system plays a
small part in an examinee's chances of succeeding in the test." Of the 30 haredi
men in the course, 70% scored above the national median of 400, with 15% over
700 and 45% over 610 (as compared to national averages of 5% and 27%,
respectively, in the latter two categories.)

The manager of the preparatory course attributed the superior results of the
haredi men to the "haredi students' marked capacity for learning. It's not just
the developed logic of those who studied Gemara but the habit of perseverance."

EDUCATION MINISTER Tamir cited such studies in her defense of continuing
government support for the yeshiva ketana system. To cut off all government
financial support to the yeshivot, as Gordon suggests, would be treated by
haredi society as a declaration of war. And it would greatly strengthen those
elements in haredi society always seeking to draw the wagons tighter and
minimize contact with the broader society.

The result would be to deny Israeli society its largest untapped source of
brainpower - the yeshiva world. And that brainpower is the least susceptible to
the lure of higher-paying jobs abroad.

In recent years, there has been a vast proliferation of training courses aimed
at the haredi public, in particular men from their mid-20s to 40. In the past, a
kollel student considering vocational or academic training faced a major
disincentive: He would not even bring home a kollel salary during the period of
his studies and would be laying out money he often did not have for his
education. Today almost any haredi man seeking vocational or academic training
can receive a stipend during the period of his studies and have those studies
paid for through grants from private benefactors and the government.

The fastest way to bring to a halt the growing trend of haredi men following
haredi women into the workforce would be a frontal attack on the haredi
education system. That, as much as her multiculturalism, explains Yuli Tamir's
surprising defense of the yeshiva ketana system.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Does the average haredi kid know more about Israeli history than
his secular counterpart? (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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923 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 8, 2008 Friday

Helping to create a rock that you can't lift

BYLINE: SAUL SINGER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 711 words

HIGHLIGHT: Interesting Times

Earlier this summer as we read Parshat Shlach Lecha - the story of the spies -
our oldest daughter Noa celebrated her bat mitzva. Here is my attempt to meet
her challenge by addressing the biggest questions she could think of.

Noa is a night person. So when it is already an hour past her bedtime, she will
start asking questions. Big questions. Anything to stay up a little bit longer.

Among her favorites are: "How can God create a stone that he can't lift?" and
"Why are there bad people in the world?" The first I would tend to brush off as
a trick question. It is another way of asking "How can God do impossible
things." I wanted to answer, "How am I supposed to know that?" To the second
question, I would give the somewhat unsatisfying answer that philosophers and
Jewish tradition have been giving for centuries: that God gave people free will,
and free will includes the ability to do bad things and not just good things, or
it would not be free will.

But this answer is also just another way of asking why was it so important for
God to give people free will. A few months ago - as we were walking somewhere on
Shabbat - an answer to both these questions dawned on me. I told Noa then that I
would answer her questions, but that she had to wait for the bat mitzva. Now
that time has finally come.

FOR ME, the answer to these questions comes from you, Noa, and your sisters, and
thinking about what we want for you. We, your parents, want you to be like us,
but we also want you to be better and different than us.

We are proud when you can do things that we teach you, but we are even more
proud when you can do things we can't do. The dream of many parents is to raise
children who transcend them. Some day, Noa, when you are a parent, God willing,
you will understand what it means to want your children to go beyond you, and
that when your children do that, it is as if you have helped create a rock that
you couldn't lift.

So you see, the answer to both your questions is that God is like a parent. As
we say in our prayers, God is our father or mother and we are God's children.
And God wanted to create a rock that He couldn't lift, so He created people who
would do amazing things - not because that was the only thing they could do, but
because they chose to and learned to do it themselves.

God could have created people to be like robots who were incapable of doing
evil. But such people would never be capable of transcending Him. They would not
have surprised God, either for good or for evil.

I'm sure it was not easy for God to give people such freedom. It must hurt God
to see what people sometimes do.

It is also not easy for parents to give their children freedom. Giving them
freedom to succeed is easy, but what about freedom to make mistakes? The story
in your parsha is exactly this, of God letting go, of letting the Children of
Israel make a terrible mistake. Why did God let the spies go when He knew their
mission would end in betrayal and disaster? Because He had to or His children
would never have grown up.

The rabbis teach us the famous story of a halachic debate in which Rabbi Eliezer
calls on a tree to move, a stream to change direction, the walls of the yeshiva
to lean in, all to prove his point. Rabbi Yehoshua responds, "One cannot bring a
proof from a tree, a stream or walls." Then came a voice from God himself: "Why
are you arguing with Rabbi Eliezer, even though the law is always as he says?"
And Rabbi Yehoshua responds simply that "It is not in heaven."

From another story we learn that when God heard that He had been overruled by
His creations, He smiled.

To me, this shows that God is proudest of us when we transcend Him, because it
means that He has created something that recreates itself, and therefore that He
could not have created directly. In other words, He has created a rock that He
couldn't lift.

I don't know if this answers your excellent questions, Noa. What I know is that
we are very proud that you are asking such questions, and that you are answering
them by becoming a mature, independent person who cares so much about her
sisters, her family, her friends and making the world a better place.

We love you, and thank God for the privilege of sharing in the wonderful person
that you are and are becoming.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 7, 2008 Thursday

Kadima, unvarnished

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 712 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

With Prime Minister Ehud Olmert set to step down as party leader, the spotlight
focuses on Kadima's September primary race - the assumption being that the
victor will form a new coalition.

Will Olmert be replaced by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Transportation Minister
Shaul Mofaz, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter or Interior Minister Meir
Sheetrit?

Moreover, what does the process say about the health of our political system,
about Kadima itself and about whether democracy would be best served by simply
advancing the general elections scheduled for March 2010?

THERE IS no denying that the system has taken its lumps since the election of
the 17th Knesset in March 2006. President Moshe Katsav has been driven from
office in disgrace. Olmert is set to step down - not, as this newspaper urged,
because of his mishandling of the Second Lebanon War, but because the multiple
corruption investigations hanging over his head have left him politically
impotent.

The vice premier, Haim Ramon, has been rehabilitated after a 2006 conviction for
committing an indecent act. Former finance minister Avraham Hirchson is on trial
for stealing, and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee,
Tzahi Hanegbi, is being tried for fraud. Former MK Shlomo Benizri has been
convicted of bribery. Former MK Azmi Bishara fled the country under suspicion of
being an enemy spy.

KADIMA was founded as a political vehicle by former prime minister Ariel Sharon
- originally elected as Likud head - to implement the 2005 Gaza Disengagement
plan. Absent Sharon, Kadima has neither evolved into a bona fide Third Way party
nor inspired a genuine grass-roots following.

The polls show Livni as being highly popular with the general electorate, though
Mofaz appears to have the stronger party campaign apparatus. She won't promise
to remain in Kadima if defeated or, if victorious, to appoint him as her number
two.

The stability of Israel's political system has always depended on which party
leader can muster 61 Knesset seats - and not on how she or he got to be party
leader. Moshe Sharett, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Shamir all originally
came to power by becoming party leaders.

John Major became British prime minister when the Conservatives dumped Margaret
Thatcher. Even in the US, Republican House minority leader Gerald Ford served as
an unelected president, replacing Richard Nixon.

Of course, what Israel really needs is an overhaul of the electoral system -
perhaps some creative combination of direct election by district and
proportional representation, with a relatively high threshold.

Were general elections held under the present system, polls show Binyamin
Netanyahu and his Likud Party emerging victorious. He would probably then have
to turn to Kadima and Labor to form a broad-based coalition.

At least on the Palestinian issue, the three parties are in broad agreement -
or, perhaps, equally clueless.

Since 2006, Likud has reluctantly accepted the establishment of a demilitarized
Palestinian state as the outcome of negotiations based on reciprocity. Labor has
been offering a state since 2000, having set the stage in 1993 with Oslo. And in
his December 2003 Herzliya Conference speech, Kadima founder Ariel Sharon
declared that Israel wanted the Palestinians to govern themselves.

The Palestinians are, nevertheless, electioneering against Mofaz on the grounds
that he would be too tough a negotiating partner. Which begs the question: Why,
after eight months of bargaining with Livni, have they been unable to come to an
agreement? Perhaps the answer is the Palestinian side's obduracy and not the
personality of the Israeli negotiator.

Observing an Israeli political party select its leader is a bit like peeking
behind the scenes in a (kosher) sausage factory. The end result could produce a
marketable product, but the process isn't pretty.

With polls showing that 53 percent of Israelis want new elections, it is too bad
that Kadima's 72,000-strong "membership" - many of whom were just signed up by
the competing camps - will likely decide who becomes Israel's next prime
minister.

At the very least, however, Livni, Mofaz, Dichter and Sheetrit would do the
country a service by publishing substantive position papers instead of snipping
at each other.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 7, 2008 Thursday

Letters

BYLINE: Yehudit Collins, Pesach Goodley, Leonard Zurakov, David Katcoff, Esther
and David Diamond, Howard Wolle, C. Sieden, Gloria Mound, Yehuda Klepper

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1144 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Cruise to remember

Sir, - A "flotilla" of ships is preparing to sail to Gaza to break the blockade.
Passengers include leading lights from the usual Jew-bashing fringe, including
some of our own brethren, and an 81-year-old retired nun.

Rather than enforcing the blockade, we should let these ships breach it. The
passengers should then be allowed to disembark in Gaza, and remain there for
some time. It would be a wonderful opportunity for them to experience,
firsthand, the humanitarian crisis caused by the murderously fraternal divisions
among Gazan society.

They could view, up close, the once-flourishing settlements now used as rocket
launching pads. And who knows, if they are really lucky they could get to
experience a real, live kidnapping.

All in all, it could be a memorable cruise and (literally) breathtaking
experience ("Israel weighs possible responses to activists sailing to Gaza,"
August 6).

YEHUDIT COLLINS

Jerusalem

Omar Khayyam

has it right

Sir, - How can Michael Freund write "...but we can largely undo the damage if
we..." thus seeming to dismiss the unimaginable damage done to so many thousands
of personalities? ("Return to Gaza," August 6).

He must have cognizance of the families destroyed when they were stripped of
their supports, when the fathers, the mothers, the children were wrenched from
their security. The pain can't stop because the pain will be with us for
generations.

"The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on. Nor all thy piety nor wit,
nor all thy tears can wash away a word of it" ('The Rubaiyat' of Omar Khayyam).

PESACH GOODLEY

Telz Stone

Sir, - Michael Freund has it all wrong. No! We're not going back into Gaza - at
least, not to settle there. Gush Katif is dead, and should remain so.

It's unfortunate that so many of the former residents are not doing so well, but
that's partly their own fault. They made only half-hearted efforts to live with
the new order.

The government is equally at fault, if not more so.

LEONARD ZURAKOV

Netanya

More war, less land

Sir, - In "Trojan horse in the Jordan Valley" (August 6) Lara Friedman and Hagit
Ofran complain that the proposed settlement will obstruct the possibility of a
future peace with the Palestinians. But if this settlement is cancelled, what
incentive will the Palestinians have for ever making peace?

Their territorial demands, backed as they are by a wide spectrum of the
international community, have only increased in the past several years. Now,
fully backed by the US State Department and the UN, the Palestinians have an
endless litany of complaints about Jewish settlement in areas once supposedly
off-limits. As Israel backs down in many of these cases, it teaches the Arabs
that all they have to do is yell "settlement!" and they can continue the war as
usual.

Peace will come only after the Arabs realize that the longer they prosecute
their war, the more land they will lose.

DAVID KATCOFF

Jericho, Vermont

Sir, - We were shocked to read that "Jewish settlement here has never really
taken root."

The Jordan Valley is our home, and 50 new families have made Shadmot their homes
in the past seven years. We're no Trojan horse!

ESTHER AND DAVID DIAMOND

Shadmot Mehola

Poisonous spin

Sir, - It was truly enlightening to read a university- based story that didn't
fall off the left edge of my paper, and it is crucial that all supporters of
Israel understand the type of media spin Seth J. Frantzman described in "The
real victims are..." (August 4).

Here in Canada, an ugly story in one of our national papers, the Globe & Mail,
spun this evil web of victimization against Israel and the poor souls who died
at the hands of the brutal bulldozer killers in Jerusalem last month. The story
said Israel was reaping the seeds of destroying the houses of killers using
these same bulldozers, and the poor victims were the Palestinians.

Not a tear was shed for the real victims - but sympathy poured out for the
Palestinians. The acts of murder were, in effect, condoned, portrayed as only a
reaction to the treatment the Palestinians had received at the hands of the
Israelis.

Over and above Frantzman's suggestion that "we must steel ourselves against the
media's ever-present attempts" to blame the victim, we must react to such
attempts immediately and vociferously to stop the spin from growing into an
anti-Semitic spiral.

HOWARD WOLLE

Toronto

'Where did the

country go?'

Sir, - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who claims credit for helping to draft UN
Security Council Resolution 1701, thought she had done her job. Not once in the
following two years did she take steps to see to it that the resolution was
properly enforced.

As was so well laid out in your excellent editorial "Lebanon tipping-point"
(August 5) neither she nor anyone else in the government raised a fuss over the
complete violation of 1701.

In addition to the weapons it installed south of the Litani River, Hizbullah is
set to receive a new generation of Russian SA-8 self-propelled anti-aircraft
missiles that will prevent our pilots from flying over Lebanon.

Of course Livni is busy. She wants to be the prime minister. But shouldn't she
first make sure there will be a country to rule over?

C. SEIDEN

Jerusalem

Importance of Ladino

Sir, - I would like to correct some errors in "Reappraising Jewish-Hispanic
relations" (July 30). First, Ashley Perry (Perez) stated the remarks of Dr. Dell
Sanchez without clarifying that this man is a Jews For Jesus "pastor" who openly
and heavily proselytizes and publishes accordingly, although his credo is not
obvious from the exterior of his volumes.

Secondly, Mr. Perry writes that "today only a few hundred Jews in the US speak
Ladino." This is totally incorrect, as I have witnessed myself. In the past year
alone, our office has dealt with at least 100 cases in which - for example,
those who originated from just the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico - their
families spoke a different kind of Spanish at home, which turned out to be
Ladino.

We have many instances of Anusim in Colorado, Texas and New Mexico now coming
"out of the closet" and confirming that while Jewish practices were maintained
in secret, Ladino played a large part in family life. That role continues until
today. A recently published book, New Mexico's Crypto Jews by Cary Herz,
supports this important evidence.

This facet of family life needs to be taken into account when so many of these
applicants stand before the rabbis to regain their heritage and be accepted as
Jews.

GLORIA MOUND

Casa Shalom Institute for

Marrano-Anusim Studies

Gan Yavneh

En-Jew and enjoy

Sir, - As a religious Jew, I commend atheist Larry Derfner for his honesty ("The
wonders of normative Judaism," July 31). But I wish he would try to enjoy our
religion more. Why just a bar mitzva? In some Jerusalem synagogues the music, in
both content and performance, is worth a $100 Metropolitan Opera ticket!

YEHUDA KLEPPER, Jerusalem

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The Jerusalem Post

August 7, 2008 Thursday

Eliminate the bagrut

BYLINE: DAVID HERZ

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 736 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is an American lawyer, licensed Israeli English teacher,
and the father of four school-aged boys. His mission is to reform the
educational system in Israel. His Website is www.educatingisrael.com.

Israel was built on the backs of people who put their lives on the line for a
cause. My heroes are people like Theodor Herzl, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, David Raziel,
Avraham Stern and Menachem Begin. My joy is that we do not need to be like them.
We have legal, acceptable, recognized channels by which to effect change.

The future of our children - if not our state - is on the line. This goes well
beyond any concern for Israel's economic prosperity based upon its vaunted
"intellectual capacity."

My vision for our educational system is one in which we have happy,
intellectually curious, morally upright students joyously growing into
successful, satisfied and committed adults, people who have a passion for their
work, their families and their country. The bagrut (high school matriculation)
system is fundamentally at odds with this vision. It stymies the students, it
limits the teachers, and also reduces our collective intellectual capacity.

THE BAGRUT is not effective at ensuring that students have any particular base
of knowledge. What our students learn is that passing the test is all-important,
that collaboration is cheating, that someone else has the one right answer, that
they need to reproduce it, and once they have done so, they have done their job.
They do not learn to think deeply, they are not trained to collaborate, and come
to doubt the knowledge they already have. Then we lament that no one has respect
for anyone else and that people disregard others in their quest to get ahead.

Some students might recognize some of my "heroes" as figures from history class,
but few could cogently argue whether these people were terrorists, builders of a
state, statesmen or a little bit of all of these. What's worse is that even
fewer care. They might know the formula for an ellipse, but fail to recognize
that this shape characterizes the orbits of planets. They can look at the sun in
the morning, but don't wonder why they can't at noon. They are taught the basics
of science, but the miracle of life is lost on them. Quite simply, they haven't
been taught to ask questions or take initiatives. They are uninspired and join
the rat race for money, status and possessions instead.

Often, when they do know a subject, that knowledge is not reflected in the
bagrut grade. I teach English, and frequently find myself asking other English
teachers what answer the bagrut examiners want, even at the three-point level. I
have students who understand a passage without difficulty, but then lose points
because their answers are too specific or general.

Some just don't take these tests well or lose credit based on errors in
interpretation or computation, while others may know a formula or fact and get
full credit without any real understanding, We are left with the question of
whether the bagrut really measures anything that matters in life. Even if it
does, is it worth the cost?

ON THE other hand, teachers are expected to teach what is on the test. To cover
all the material, they may not have the time to delve deeply into any particular
matter, or even to determine whether students truly understand the concepts
underlying what is taught. In many schools, what's left of the school year after
Passover - probably a fifth of the year - is given over almost entirely to test
preparation and bagrut examinations. Even though most of us know that
substantive teaching will give us the same results in the short term and greater
ones in the long term, we are strongly encouraged to "prepare" our students for
the test, in other words finding the right answer, whether they understand or
not.

While this is sufficient cause for outrage, it is not my inspiration for writing
this op-ed. Instead, it is the lack of willingness to do anything about it.
Instead of taking action to effect changes, we make excuses why things are the
way they are and why no one is willing to change it.

Further, we live in fear of the system. We claim we have a free press and
freedom of expression, but our inspectors do not feel at liberty to give their
opinion on the bagrut system, school administrators and teachers won't take a
stand for fear of losing their jobs, and students don't act because they have
been given no model to follow. We are willing to be victims instead of agents
for change, and we all lose out.

For the health and continued prosperity of this country, it is time for a
change.

drherz@educatingisrael.com

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GRAPHIC: Photo: AN EMPTY EXERCISE. Students do not learn to think deeply, are
not trained to collaborate, and come to doubt the knowledge they already have.
(Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 7, 2008 Thursday

Can settlers get a fair hearing?

BYLINE: JOHAN RHODIUS

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 666 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer worked for almost 28 years as an attorney in private
practice in the Netherlands, and for two years as a lawyer with the United
Nations High Commission on Refugees.

Danny and Yitzhak Halamish live in Ma'aleh Rehavam, a settlement near Bethlehem.
The IDF trained and armed the brothers as volunteer security guards. On February
21, 2004, Baruch Feldbaum, the IDF security guard from the neighboring
settlement Sde Bar, called for the assistance of the brothers as Beduin
threatened Sde Bar. About 20 rock and club-wielding Beduin surrounded the
brothers upon their arrival. To enable their escape, Feldbaum fired a warning
shot in the ground and Yitzhak fired a warning shot in the air. The brothers did
not fire their rifles.

The Beduin filed a complaint with the police: All three guards had shot at them
with rifles, beat them with their fists and shot a three-year-old child.

Danny and Yitzhak were convicted of aggravated assault and negligence with a
firearm, and sentenced to seven and eight months in prison. As a byproduct, the
brothers are no longer allowed to carry weapons in an area known to be dangerous
for Jews - the very reason the IDF trained the two as guards. Nor can they serve
in the IDF, thus weakening the army.

BUT THE brothers committed no crime. First, they acted within the guidelines of
the IDF. Second, the police - who entered the homes of the brothers illegally -
acted with malevolence. Instead of testing to see if their rifles had been
fired, they themselves fired the weapons, ostensibly to see if they were in
working order. By doing so the police destroyed evidence that would have
exonerated the brothers.

Third, the evidence is based only on witness testimony, the weakest legal proof.
This is the more so when the witnesses are the complainants, and even more so if
the complainants are suspected of having threatened the persons against whom
they have complained.

The judge favored the testimonies of the Beduin, unsubstantiated by any other
proof. There were no visible wounds or pictures of wounds, not even of the child
allegedly shot to death.

Fourth, the prejudice of the public prosecutor was revealed when he demanded an
extra-stiff penalty because "the behavior of the accused during their
interrogation indicated incriminating behavior on their part" and "the accused
have a lifestyle with a clear-cut ideological character that finds expression in
their behavior, their place of residence and their social and political
outlook."

THE VERDICT is clearly in breach of the international principle of
non-discrimination because of "race, religion, sex or political conviction," and
should sound an alarm bell for appeal by any supreme court. Not so for the
Supreme Court in Israel, which whitewashes blatant injustice performed by
lower-court judges.

Moreover the Supreme Court made an incomprehensible ruling on May 3: The
brothers were not allowed to remain free while awaiting a decision on a pardon
they had requested from the president. Feldbaum - sentenced to nine months
imprisonment - had awaited such a decision in freedom. The ruling of May 3 was
all the more unjust as president Katsav had reduced Feldbaum's sentence to six
months of community service.

This case is inherently offensive. It was prosecuted because of the political
views of the brothers, and the fact that they are settlers; this was clearly
stated by the prosecution.

There is reason to think that this case is just the tip of an iceberg whereby
judges condemn settlers without legal grounds other than the complaint of
opponents of the settlement movement.

I have never seen such a combination of incompetence and injustice. This case is
a strong indication that settlers are persecuted: by the police, public
prosecutors and judges, including the Supreme Court. And by the president: On
March 24 the brothers requested a pardon from Shimon Peres. On May 20 their
prison sentence began and on May 22 the Ministry of Justice gave the president a
positive recommendation. Despite repeated and urgent requests from inside and
outside Israel, President Peres has not responded, thus perpetuating this
injustice for more than two and a half months.

Enough!

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GRAPHIC: Photo: The Halamish brothers. Why are they still in jail? (Credit:
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The Jerusalem Post

August 7, 2008 Thursday

Quicksand in Yesha

BYLINE: Larry Derfner

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1112 words

HIGHLIGHT: RATTLING THE CAGE

Ehud Olmert said it about as well as anybody. "We're nearing the point where
more and more Palestinians are going to say: 'We're convinced. We agree with
[Avigdor] Lieberman. There isn't room for two states between the Jordan River
and the Mediterranean Sea. All we want is the right to vote.'

"The day that happens," Olmert continued, "we will have lost everything. Even
when they commit terrorism, it's hard for us to convince the world that we're
right. It'll be that much harder when they're demanding equal voting rights. I
dread the thought that the leaders of the struggle against us will be the
liberal Jewish organizations that carried the fight against apartheid in South
Africa."

That was from an interview with Yediot Aharonot in December 2003. Since then,
Ariel Sharon made the good faith effort to avoid Olmert's nightmare scenario by
getting us out of Gaza. Then Olmert wanted to go further with his "convergence
plan" to withdraw from about 90% of the West Bank. But the Second Lebanon War,
the Kassams from Gaza and the rise of Hamas doomed that idea. Instead, the
settlements and outposts in the West Bank have only been growing, and there's no
end to their growth in sight.

MEANWHILE, ISRAELIS are thoroughly complacent. It's the Palestinians' fault
there's no peace process, they say. When the Palestinians prove beyond a shadow
of a doubt that they're through with terror, then we'll talk, but only then. Of
course, there's more than a little justice to this view. The Kassams and Hamas
have given Israelis, including me, a very good reason not to want to withdraw
from the West Bank: the very legitimate fear that if we do, rockets will start
hitting Ben-Gurion Airport.

Yet there's an opposing argument that has more than a little justice, too:
Israel may say it's ready to give up settlements, may say it's ready to live
alongside a peaceful Palestinian state, but Israel's actions say different.
Israel's actions say it wants more and more West Bank land for itself, and less
for the Palestinians. This didn't start with the intifada, or with the Kassams;
this started 41 years ago. The disengagement was a fluke. Only a leader of
Sharon's magnitude could have pulled it off, and a prime minister like that
comes along once in a generation, if you're lucky. There's nobody like Sharon in
Israel today, and nobody like him on the horizon, either.

PUT THESE two arguments together and what you get is this: Even if the
Palestinians were ready to give up terror, which they're not, Israel is not
about to uproot the 50,000-100,000 settlers necessary to make room for a
Palestinian state. Bottom line: Israel is staying in the West Bank indefinitely.

The question is: What are the Palestinians supposed to say to that? I know what
I would say if I were a Palestinian. I'd say: I'm convinced. There isn't room
for two states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. All I want is
the right to vote. Citizenship. Equality.

How's that for an existential threat to Israel? It's called the "one-state
solution."

Abu Ala, chief peace negotiator for the Palestinians, says it's the only
alternative if the two-state solution fails. Polls say about one-quarter of the
Palestinian public is ready for it right now.

If Palestinians as a body ever become convinced by Israeli settlement expansion
that the one-state-solution is their only path, what will Israel say to them?
"No, you can't vote, you can't have citizenship, you can't have equality"? We're
a democracy, remember. We're joined at the hip with America.

Or will we tell them - "Yes, you can be equal, voting citizens"? Then that's it
for the Jewish state. The Arabs will have a majority, if not now, then soon, and
I'm not sure we'll do so well here in the minority.

So if Israel becomes forced by world pressure to choose between abandoning
democracy, abandoning Zionism, or abandoning the West Bank, will it take the
third way?

Sure. And risk seeing Ben-Gurion Airport, Kfar Saba, Modi'in, etc. turn into new
versions of Sderot.

So what on earth will we do when the Palestinians finally wise up and demand
citizenship and voting rights, knowing this will either lead Israel to become a
pariah state, turn the Arabs into Israel's majority, or give the Palestinians
the West Bank in a hurry?

For now, I'd say we should stop doing nothing. We should stop telling ourselves
the ball is in their court and that we've got all the time in the world. Because
we don't. The status quo in the West Bank may be tolerable for us, but it isn't
for them. It's not going to last forever. So maybe now's the time to make a
plan, then start carrying it out. Here's an idea:

Uproot the West Bank settlers on the far side of the security barrier - but keep
the IDF there, unless and until a final peace agreement is reached. Evacuate
50,000- 100,000 settlers and redeploy the army in the West Bank for the sole
purpose of defending Israelis behind the security barrier, instead of on both
sides of it.

Pulling the settlers out but keeping the soldiers in - pending a final peace
treaty, if and when it comes - would probably be good for Israel's security. It
would definitely be good for Israel's democracy. The gridlock with the
Palestinians would be broken; a giant step toward peace would be made. Yes, it
would be traumatic for the many thousands of settler families who'd lose their
homes, but there's no way of avoiding that trauma if Israel is going to remain a
Jewish, democratic state.

AND AFTERWARD, if the Palestinians demanded citizenship, equality and the right
to vote in Israeli elections, we would be able to say: No, but you can have an
independent Palestinian state so long as it's peaceful. We've just demonstrated
that what we want is security, not more land; now it's your turn to demonstrate
that you'll deliver.

I don't know if even then the Palestinians would hold up their end, but I think
the democratic world, the world whose good will Israel needs, would see that we
had held up ours. I think Olmert's bleak vision of international sanctions and
boycotts against Israel would be forestalled. I think the Palestinians would
have lost the political leverage they're gaining from Israel's filling up the
West Bank with settlers.

But I know this is a dream. Israel is not about to start moving out
50,000-100,000 settlers. It's not about to move out even one. The iron will
isn't there, not in any potential prime minister, not in any potential
government, and not in the public. Ever since Sharon's stroke 2-1/2 years ago,
the settler movement and its supporters have been back in the saddle.

No, Israel doesn't look like it's going to wise up anytime soon. Like Olmert, I
fear that the Palestinians may.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: WEST BANK supporters of the re-establishment of the caliphate.
What will happen should they ask for Israeli citizenship? (Credit: AP)

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August 7, 2008 Thursday

It's embarrassing to be an Israeli

BYLINE: ARIEH ELDAD

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 752 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is a National Union MK.

Once, many years ago, we were proud to say we were Israelis. Israel's
accomplishments in agriculture, settlement and science were internationally
acclaimed, and the Israeli army was our pride.

We all recall the world's applause after the Entebbe operation, when we proved
that nothing was too far for us, and nothing too difficult.

We didn't negotiate with murderous terrorists, we fought them. We didn't trade
in blood. Anyone who attacked us paid for doing so. We rescued our brothers even
from the grip of distant savages.

Where did we go wrong?

Today we want to hide our faces in shame as Israel deals with Hizbullah and
frees murderers in exchange for corpses. The world blinks at our weak
leadership, our paralysis and the loss of our will to defend ourselves.

Last week Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Knesset's Security Affairs
Committee: "With 270,000 Arabs [in Jerusalem], there will be more tractors in
Jerusalem." The deputy prime minister, convicted sex offender Haim Ramon,
declared that we have to get rid of the Arab neighborhoods because murderous
terrorists come from them.

Along these lines, he could have suggested that we have to "get rid of" the
village of Abu Snan because one of its residents blew himself up in Nahariya; or
"get rid of" of Jaffa because one of its residents drove a murderer to the
Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv?

Does Ramon advocate transferring Kfar Manda to the Palestinian Authority because
one of its residents murdered a policeman in Jerusalem? Has Ramon taken up the
old, extreme right-wing slogan "No Arabs = No Terrorists"?

ANYONE WHO suggests dividing Jerusalem because he can't deal with a security
problem is an embarrassment. It's hard to fathom whence comes this loss of will,
this inability to deal with difficulties. Once Israel dealt with hard issues;
now it runs from them.

Gilad Schalit is not in Entebbe. He's in Gaza, within walking distance. The sole
item on the government's agenda should be a military operation to free him and
destroy Hamas - but instead the government is arguing over whether to free 400
murderers or 800 murderers.

It's embarrassing to be an Israeli led by the likes of Olmert, Haim Ramon, Tzipi
Livni, Ehud Barak and Shaul Mofaz.

As if this were not enough, added to these disgraces are Olmert's scandals. This
prime minister is apparently the most corrupt Israeli leader since King Ahab,
yet Ruhama Avraham-Balila, the ministerial liaison to the Knesset, a few weeks
ago said of his various scandals: "This is not the first investigation, not the
second investigation, not the third investigation, not the fourth or fifth, and
I don't know if it will be the last. So what? Who really cares?"

Who indeed? She herself is under an ongoing criminal investigation on suspicion
of having accepted a bribe from Agrexco.

MILLIONS OF honest people live in this country, working hard to support their
families. They pay taxes. They serve in the military. Their children serve in
the military. But the prime minister and his cronies have been mocking us all,
asking, "So what? Who really cares?"

We care.

What angers us most? That our prime minister can be bought for a few thousand
dollars?

The Book of Exodus states that bribes blind the eyes of the clear-sighted. But
Olmert cannot be accused of blindness - he sank to the depths of corruption with
his eyes wide open. Maybe we are angriest because he treats all Israelis as if
we were fools; because he stayed in office years after his corruption was
exposed because he was so sure he would eventually get away with it.

I accuse the prime minister of shaming millions of Israelis. I accuse him of
causing the world to see Israel as a den of thieves, takers of bribes and
kickbacks.

Olmert was furious about leaks from his police interrogations. Leaks are a
serious matter, but thievery is worse, and bribery worse yet. A small-time thief
breaks a window and steals from one house. A corrupt politician steals from
everyone.

"Since my first days in the Prime Minister's OfficeÉ I have been forced to
defend myself against ceaseless attacks on the part of self-named
justice-seekers who have made the goal of deposing me one in which the ends
justify all the means," Olmert said in announcing his impending resignation.

I am very proud to be one of the "self-named justice- seekers." If the nation's
leader has no integrity, and if the legal system is too slow to stop him before
he causes irreversible damage, it is the duty of all "self-named
justice-seekers" to struggle so Israelis will not be ashamed.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: GETTING READY to fly to Entebbe, where we proved that nothing
was too far for us, and nothing too difficult. (Credit: GPO)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 7, 2008 Thursday

Letters

BYLINE: Maureen Rivlin, J. Fischer

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 145 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

CALENDAR CLASH

I congratulate you on the appearance and presentation of Weekend, in which there
is always something of interest to me. However, I find it frustrating when
events are advertised for the same day. I only read Weekend last Shabbat and
found that Little Women had a single performance on the Thursday of publication.
This is not a unique occasion, and it would be helpful if "Top 10" could provide
advance notice for events, many of which we have enjoyed.

Maureen Rivlin, Rehovot

SEEING TROUBLE

Two-thirds of July 24th's Tidbits column (page 12) was impossible to read
because of the background. Please print black on white or pale solid colors.
Also, it would also be a boon to many of your readers if amounts in recipes
could be printed a bit larger.

J. Fischer

Michmoret

Weekend apologizes for the printing error and has worked to ensure that it will
not be repeated.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 6, 2008 Wednesday

Pay to drive?

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 721 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

If the Transportation Ministry and the Tel Aviv Municipality have their way, by
next summer out-of-town motorists will be paying a "congestion charge" for the
privilege of driving in metropolitan Tel Aviv.

Proponents of the scheme want fees to apply in the area south of Rokach
Boulevard and north of Derech Kibbutz Galuyot. A more radical plan would charge
for driving anywhere into the area bounded by Highway 5 in the north and the
Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Highway in the south. Daily costs could reach up to NIS 50
per vehicle.

The good news is that the proposal is probably at least several years from
implementation. Nevertheless, a congestion charge plan was recently introduced
in the Knesset Interior Committee, and proponents promise to submit it to a
plenum vote when the Knesset reconvenes in three months.

THE IDEA of limiting traffic in central Tel Aviv is a good one. Israel needs to
be more aggressive in reducing harmful carbon emissions. Moreover, fewer cars
would mean fewer bottlenecks, accidents and aggravation.

But unlike New York City, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg's push for a Manhattan
congestion charge has been stymied by the state legislature, or London, which
has had a congestion charge in place for five years, Tel Aviv does not have an
underground or subway system.

Without a practical rapid transit alternative, congestion charges would merely
shake down drivers entering Tel Aviv - and possibly Ramat Gan, Bnei Brak and
Petah Tikva too. Premature implementation of a pay-to-drive scheme would create
hardship and undermine the local economy.

Workers who put in a six-day work week would need to shell out as much as NIS
1,200 a month. There would be different toll rates at different hours, for
different vehicles, according to emissions produced. Strangely, no provision has
been included for rewarding car-pooling.

Tel Aviv is still awaiting its light-rail system. It's been touted for decades,
but the prospect of comfortable, sleek and non-polluting electric trams, so
common abroad, remains an urban planning vision.

After much argument about whether the (non-existent) line should be extended so
that it begins in Rishon and terminates in Herzliya, the quarrel now centers
around Tel Aviv's busy Rehov Ibn Gvirol. The city wants the train to run
underground, but the Transportation Ministry doesn't want to pay for tunnels.
Meanwhile, many citizens continue to resort to cars (for which Israelis pay
exorbitant customs duties and taxes) to avoid overcrowded, slow-moving and
sometimes unreliable buses in their localities.

The bus service between localities - for instance, from Ra'anana to central Tel
Aviv - leaves much to be desired. And in the southern Sharon area many Tel Aviv-
bound lines don't run late into the night, are infrequent or offer no express
service.

As for the much-heralded railroad line to Tel Aviv, trains run from the distant
edge of eastern Kfar Saba and from an outlying corner of Herzliya, and getting
to these stations is almost as much of a hassle as driving your car all the way
to Tel Aviv. To add insult to injury, the same MKs who are set to legislate
congestion charges recently voted against free park-and-drive at these
inaccessible train terminals, ostensibly to encourage bus-riding - even though
the service has not been improved.

Speaking of buses, why not make a greater investment in hybrid electric buses
and advanced emission-control technologies? New York City now has a fleet of 700
"green" vehicles. Many of New York's other buses have been fitted with the
latest devices that reduce air pollution.

THE COUNTRY also needs to move full speed ahead with a fast train link between
Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Finance Ministry
have, for budgetary reasons, been stymying the Transportation Ministry's efforts
to bring this project to fruition.

Meanwhile in Jerusalem, the good news is that tracks for the light rail are
being laid this week on Jaffa Road. The bad news is that the entire project
should have gone operational two years ago.

So rather than putting the cart before the horse, let's first improve Israel's
intra- and inter-city public transportation systems - and and only then think
about whether it makes good public policy sense to slap congestion charges on
vehicles entering metro Tel Aviv.

For now - it doesn't.

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August 6, 2008 Wednesday

Exclusively inclusive: The divisive education law

BYLINE: NAFTALI ROTHENBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1050 words

HIGHLIGHT: Both the religious and the secular streams of the existing state
school system already include larger shares of the other side than the
'integrated stream' could encompass. The writer is a senior research fellow at
the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

The Israeli State Education Law sets clear goals for the state school system
(mamlachti). At its core is the inclusion of Jewish studies, with emphasis on
Jewish identity. For example: "Teaching Torah, the history of the Jewish people,
the heritage of Israel and the Jewish tradition." Or again: "Educating
individuals to love human beings, to love their people, and to love their land
... to respect their heritage, their cultural identity, and their language."

But the state educational system has failed to achieve these objectives in a
fair and comprehensive manner.

How do Knesset members react? Instead of demanding that the law be more
thoroughly implemented, MKs Esterina Tartman and Rabbi Michael Melchior, joined
by members of all factions, pushed through a bill that will weaken the system,
enervate the periphery, and direct more state resources to groups already
blessed with cultural and economic capital.

THE SPONSORS' declared intention is admirable: to bolster Jewish studies and
promote a rapprochement between the religious and the secular. But not only will
the law fail to achieve its sponsors' goals, it will curtail Jewish studies in
much of the state system and increase the polarization between sectors of
Israeli society.

This is because of the requirement that two thirds of the parents involved
request an "integrated school." Parents who can take enough time off work to be
involved in school curricula are not a majority in Israel, and usually come from
the middle and upper classes. Many are already involved in initiatives to
establish special schools for their children. Their awareness of and access to
philanthropic foundations abroad and government allocations in Israel have made
it possible for them to get special treatment and increase the gaps between
their children and all the rest. And if it were not enough that they have
already segregated themselves, the new law actually encourages them to set up
their own quasi-private schools with government funding.

It's hard to imagine that a two-thirds majority can be assembled in many
schools; hence we will witness a migration of parents from several schools in
each district to a single school in which they can satisfy the numerical
requirement. This will mean a weakening of many schools because of the exodus of
parents who possess cultural capital and could have made major contributions,
even as a minority.

THE PUBLIC debates about bolstering Jewish studies in the state system ignore
the majority of parents: those who for various reasons are strenuously opposed
to augmented Jewish studies; secular parents who are dead set against having
their children attend the same school as religious pupils; and the majority of
parents who simply haven't thought about the issue because they are engaged in
an unrelenting struggle to pay for a satchel, textbooks, decent clothing,
parents' fees and travel expenses. The well-fed discourse about "integrated
education" doesn't seem aware of the fact that not only Arab and religious
schools, but also state schools are attended by hundreds of thousands of pupils
who live below the poverty line. Their parents have not heard of the American
foundations and Jewish federations whose generous support has made it possible
to set up "integrated" schools, and they will not be included among the parents
who request such schools because they don't know how to ask. The honorable MKs
never stopped to think that instead of amending the law, their job is to demand,
on behalf of these parents, that the already existing goals of the state
educational system be met for their children as well.

THE CRISIS of Jewish studies in state schools is ongoing. The new law will make
the humanities, including Jewish studies, even more marginal in most schools.
The demand for these subjects will decline because those parents who are aware
of their importance will congregate in the few "integrated" schools and leave
the others with no demand and perhaps even increased opposition to these
subjects. Many schools will have to cope with poor achievement by their
remaining pupils, and will invest more in basic subjects such as English and the
sciences at the expense of Jewish studies and other humanities. This trend will
further diminish the hope that it might ever be possible to create a common core
curriculum for all Israeli schoolchildren.

More than 10% of the pupils in state schools come from Sabbath-observant
families. At least another 10% come from traditional families. Approximately 20%
of the pupils in the state religious system come from secular families that
don't observe the Sabbath. In both streams this is a large segment of the
student body (much larger than what the "integrated stream" could reasonably
encompass) and poses a significant challenge to the hope of living together.

If the idea is to bring people together, we should consider making an
educational investment in the existing systems and groups, despite the
differences in their lifestyles. The pupils who will be enrolled in integrated-
education schools have parents with no need for rapprochement. Portraying such
schools as a bridge between the state and state religious systems is a
misrepresentation, because the existence of two separate systems is not the
problem. Most religious Zionist parents send their children to private or
semi-private religious schools, with segregation of boys and girls. The
integrated schools will not function as a bridge to that sector, or to the
haredim.

The amendment to the State Education Law passed in 2000 includes an appropriate
emphasis on Jewish studies and a precise definition of their central place in
the school. Apparently the MKs did not realize that their initiative actually
contradicts the goals of the law, and that if the existing legislation were
merely enforced, there would be no need to modify it merely to benefit parents
interested in the establishment of an "integrated" system. All this has been in
the lawbooks for the past eight years!

It is clear that the new amendment will serve a distinct segment of the
population at the expense of other groups. It is a typically sectoral law,
intended to serve political interests at least to the same extent as it claims
to reinforce Jewish studies.

The damage it causes will exceed its benefit.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: TALI SCHOOL in Jerusalem. The new law encourages the middle and
upper classes to set up their own quasi-private schools with government funding.
(Credit: Esteban Alterman)

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August 6, 2008 Wednesday

Letters

BYLINE: Yochanan Visser, R. Rubin, Mendel Mendelssohn, Malka Hillel Shulewitz,
Shimmy Pine, Shlomo (Alan) Koor, Mendel Bernstein, George Gorayeb, Hriday Narain

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1174 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Peaceniks' dubious role

Sir, - I wholeheartedly support "B'Tselem to demand police inquiry into second
shooting death in Ni'lin clashes" (August 5). But this investigation should
include the role of left-wing "peace" groups such as Peace Now and B'Tselem
itself in West Bank protests during the last few months.

It is clear from eyewitness accounts, video footage shot by Jewish residents in
the West Bank and remarks by the police commander in Hebron that these "peace
activists" play a role in orchestrating violent Palestinian protests like those
in Ni'lin. So let this investigation go ahead.

YOCHANAN VISSER

Efrat

Sir, - "Indictments expected in Ni'lin shooting" (August 3) failed to mention
that the bullets fired were rubber bullets; that they were fired at the victim's
toe; and that photographs of the injured toe revealed the injury was not
serious.

These omissions, more typical of media outlets such as CNN, led readers to
imagine a much more grave and sinister incident than actually occurred.

R. RUBIN

Ma'aleh Adumim

Who's a victim?

Sir, - I could not agree more with Seth J. Frantzman ("The real victims are..."
August 4).

The usual cry in cases of terror or crime is: Seek the root causes! And, on the
surface, what could be more reasonable? But how far do you stretch the roots?
Behind the root that one side prefers lies another root preferred by the other
side.

Did Israel kick out the Palestinians? Who kicked the Israelites out of the land
2,000 years ago? Did the West exploit the East and the Arabs? What drove them to
do that?

While the burglar is burglarizing your house is no time to ask what brought
about the demoralization that led him to commit the crime. You call the police.
When you have more time, you study the background to criminal motivation.

The search for root causes and "true victims" impedes deterrence, prevents
justice and, finally, brings punishment and shame to the immediate victims, who,
as this op-ed pointed out, are the only real victims.

MENDEL MENDELSSOHN

Jerusalem

Beyond the king

Sir, - In your editorial "Interfaith, Saudi-style" (August 3) you gave sober
expression to a very complicated subject. King Abdullah may be sincere, even if
so much of the fanaticism that threatens his own kingdom is largely
"home-grown." However, the problem goes much deeper than even the difficulties
Abdullah faces from his own clerical establishment. It is found at the very
roots of normative Islam.

Islam enacted doctrines against Jews as early as the 8th century, when it became
clear that the Jewish tribes in the Arabian Peninsula were not ready to accept
Muhammad's new religion. Codified in the 11th century as the Covenant of 'Umar,
this series of regulations included distinctive clothing and a badge designed to
separate Muslims from non- Muslims and preserve the superiority of the former
through the humiliation of the latter. (In this, Islam preceded by a century
similar Christian legislation enacted by the Fourth Lateral Council in 1215
under the aegis of Pope Innocent III.) This Muslim legislation has a long and
tragic history that also affected other non-Muslim minorities, particularly
Christians.

The suffering of the Jews since the rise of Islam is masterfully chronicled by
Andrew Bostom in his recently published The Legacy of Anti-Semitism in Islam,
ably reviewed by Sam Ser in UpFront ("A radical rethink," June 20). As Dr.
Boston phrased it: "When I put together the Koranic verses on the Jews, they
read like an indictment, prosecution and conviction."

How can even 10 interfaith conferences correct such a history at the core of
Islam?

Even in our own day, the Jews of Arab Islamic countries were expelled following
brutal persecution. The change has to come from within Islam, and that will take
much more than King Abdullah can achieve.

MALKA HILLEL SHULEWITZ

Jerusalem

Mutual disdain...

Sir, - I would like to thank Michael Freund for "Healing the rift within
Orthodoxy" (July 23), a topic which has deeply concerned me since making aliya
exactly a year ago from Manchester, UK. I was always taught to have respect for
rabbis, but here one finds little evidence of that.

The open hatred of the religious Zionist camp toward the haredim usually centers
around army service, and that is an area which needs to be addressed.
Conversely, the disdain of haredim for their Zionist brethren shows a complete
lack of sensitivity.

Whether Mr. Freund's suggestions are the solution, I am not sure; but at least
he has created a forum for further discussion.

SHIMMY PINE

Jerusalem

...and the Messiah's donkey

Sir, - Michael Freund's op-ed reminded me of the time I overheard a conversation
between two stewardesses on a British Airways flight to Tel Aviv. One was trying
to explain to the other the difference between kosher and glatt kosher meals.

She said: "A Jew who eats kosher will eat a special kosher meal, but a Jew who
eats a special kosher meal won't eat kosher."

Methinks this was a not-unrealistic summing up of the situation within
Orthodoxy. Mr. Freund set out three steps to "mend the schism within Orthodoxy"
- but if we get to even step one, we will have succeeded in reading the license
plate on the Messiah's donkey.

SHLOMO (ALAN) KOOR

Petah Tikva

Small change

Sir, - Evelyn Gordon suggests ending the yeshiva student stipend in order to
encourage haredim to go into the army and the workplace ("Tolerance, without
state funding," July 31). But does she know how much the monthly stipend
actually is?

It is impossible to live off it. I can't imagine a few hundred shekels a month
changing anybody's lifestyle.

MENDEL BERNSTEIN

Ramat Beit Shemesh

Peace without injustice

Sir, - In "To fight or not to fight on the home front" (July 24), Ira Rifkin
described a meeting he had with me in Annapolis, Maryland. I am the vice chair
of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington, DC.

For the record, I do not think that all American Jews support Israeli policies
without question. I am well aware that there is a steady, vigorous debate within
Israel.

I also firmly believe that many Israelis are sincerely troubled by the
collective punishment of Palestinians in reaction to attacks by militants on
Israeli towns.

I have spent many hours in discussions with American Jews and Israelis, and that
experience convinces me that the Jewish tradition of moral justice will
ultimately result in a fairly-structured peace agreement allowing Palestinians
to live in peace without the injustices resulting from the current military
occupation.

We must each understand each other's sense of vulnerability before we can
resolve this conflict successfully.

GEORGE GORAYEB

Annapolis, Maryland

Stomach for the fight

Sir, - Your readers may be interested to know that most Indians (Hindus) admire
brave Israel for its courage and determination to fight against Arab terrorism.
A recent report in the Hindustan Times mentioned Reena Pushkarna's Indian
restaurants in Israel. She supplies 1,500 tonnes of packed Indian food per annum
to the Israeli armed forces. We are proud of her success.

HRIDAY NARAIN , Allahabad, India

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August 6, 2008 Wednesday

Does Israel need 'tough love?'

BYLINE: JONATHAN S. TOBIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1112 words

HIGHLIGHT: The latest push for pressure to sustain a futile peace process has
little to do with reality. The writer is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent
in Philadelphia.

In the wake of Barack Obama's trip to Israel, Republicans and Democrats wasted
no time tilting over the meaning of every word uttered by the man.

But amid all the partisan debate, one prominent analyst thought both sides had
it wrong. According to Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times op-ed columnist, the
problem wasn't whether or not Obama was supportive of Israel. Notwithstanding
differences he might have with Republican John McCain, it was Obama's recitation
of many time-honored cliches of pro-Israel rhetoric that was, in Kristof's view,
unfortunate.

In his July 24 column "Tough Love for Israel?," which echoed "The Two Israels,"
an earlier piece published on June 22, the Times' resident human-rights advocate
opined again that what Israel needs from the United States is the sort of
intervention that friends and family of an alcoholic would employ: It must be
stopped from destroying itself.

KRISTOF SEES the Jewish state as a sort of schizophrenic country split between
its good and bad sides. In his formulation, the "good" Israel is the country of
local human-rights groups and journalists who sympathize with the Palestinians
and defend them against the nation's security establishment in the courts and
media. The "bad" Israel is composed of settlers who supposedly "steal land" from
the Arabs, with an army and government that abuses them with checkpoints and
barriers.

What Kristof wants is for American presidential candidates to stop pandering to
the "Israel lobby," and instead "clarify that the [Israel] they support is not
the oppressor that lets settlers steal land and club women but the one that is a
paragon of justice, decency, fairness - and peace."

People like Kristof can't be dismissed as Israel- haters, as some on the Zionist
Right might like to do. Nor can Jewish groups like the Israel Policy Forum,
Americans for Peace Now and the new left-wing lobby J Street be labeled as
closet backers of Hamas. When it comes to support for Israel's right to exist,
they deserve to be taken at their word when they say they want what's best for
the country.

But good intentions notwithstanding, the point of this push for "tough love" is
support for a troubling campaign to force Israel to make more unilateral
concessions to the Palestinians, no matter what the actual conditions on the
ground would dictate as rational policy.

The goal of Kristof - and the Jewish groups that seem to agree with him - is to
splinter the bipartisan coalition that has remained Israel's ace in the hole in
the US. They may not subscribe to every verse of John Mearsheimer and Stephen
Walt's controversial treatise The Israel Lobby, but they share the revulsion
those two authors have for the ability of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee and its allies to rally Congress and the vast majority of the American
people to head off attempts to strong-arm Jerusalem.

The notion that any American ought to think themselves better qualified than
Israel's democratically elected government to decide matters of life and death
for that nation is, at best, a curious one. But what makes this latest push to
"save Israel from itself" truly absurd is how divorced it is from the facts.

Israel has, after all, spent the past 15 years retreating from a maximalist
position on territory and security. The Oslo Accords gave the Palestinians self
government. Oslo collapsed due to a Palestinian refusal to end terrorism or
accept a state alongside Israel, but three years ago, Israel withdrew every
settler and soldier from Gaza. Instead of peace, the Palestinians - under the
leadership of the Hamas terrorist group - have answered with rockets, missiles
and bloodshed.

THE "MODERATE" Palestinian Authority, which Israel and the US still hopes to use
as a negotiating partner, is itself compromised by support for terror. But even
if one takes its stand on peace at face value, it is a weak structure whose sway
only extends to those parts of the West Bank that remain effectively under the
control of the Israel Defense Force.

Americans tempted to embrace the "tough love" thesis need to remember that the
overwhelming majority of Israelis are already prepared to hand over most of the
West Bank to a Palestinian state that will live in peace with them. If there is
ever a reasonable chance for peace, they will be the first to seize it. But
Israelis know that under the current circumstances, any land handed over will
simply become yet another Hamastan terror base.

But none of that seems to matter to Kristof or the true believers in the peace
process. For them, the only obstacle remains the presence of Jews in parts of
the West Bank and those areas in Jerusalem occupied by Jordan prior to the
city's unification in June 1967.

Indeed, Kristof used his column to chide those who rightly pointed out that in
the absence of Israeli sovereignty, Jews would (as was the situation prior to
June 1967) be unable to even visit holy places in Jerusalem or Hebron. For him,
Jews and even Christians have no such right. The only thing that appears to be
sacred in his view is the 1949 armistice line, which the late Abba Eban famously
dismissed as "Auschwitz" borders because they placed Arab armies and terrorists
in position to destroy the state.

Kristof acknowledges Israel's security barrier has stopped the flow of suicide
bombers. But in spite of the lives it has clearly saved, he thinks it does more
harm than good because it inconveniences Palestinians.

The columnist's preferred policy would be for Israel to negotiate "more
enthusiastically" with Syria (the current pace of talks to give back the Golan
Heights being too slow for his taste); talk with the Saudis on the basis of
their peace proposal, which is predicated on a so-called Palestinian "right of
return" (which means the end of a Jewish state); expel Jews from those places
that were Judenrein prior to June 1967; and dismantle their anti- terror
security checkpoints. He wants an American president who will try to force
Israel - for its own good - to do exactly that. For the "tough love" crowd, only
Israel has the ability to engender peace. Palestinian intentions, and their
culture of terror and hatred for Israel and Jews, are mere details to be
ignored.

It's far from clear exactly what an Obama or McCain administration would mean
for Israel in the next four years.

But the one thing that friends of Israel should not hope for is a president who
thinks he understands things better than the Israelis themselves.

Unlike those who intervene with addicts to give them "tough love," it is
Kristof, and those Jewish groups who mimic his position, who are the ones with a
tenuous grip on reality.

jtobin@jewishexponent.com

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GRAPHIC: Photo: DISMISSING JEWISH rights to visit holy sites, the 'tough love'
crowd sees only the 1949 armistice line as sacred. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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August 6, 2008 Wednesday

Waltz of the lame ducks

BYLINE: Douglas Bloomfield

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 800 words

HIGHLIGHT: Rice is pressing all parties to remain engaged through the campaigns
and transition so they can build something for the new administrations to pick
up on. Washington Watch

In the twilight of their political careers, it is difficult to take George W.
Bush, Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas very seriously when they talk about an
Israeli- Palestinian peace agreement by the end of the year.

Don't look for a dramatic "October surprise" to come out of the closed-door
negotiations because none of the three leaders is strong enough to win approval
for any agreement.

Olmert has already announced his resignation and may be facing criminal charges;
Abbas presides over only half of the Palestinian areas on a good day; and,
unlike the other two, Bush wasn't deeply committed to the peace talks enough to
do the essential heavy lifting needed to get the other two over the toughest
hurdles.

All three face homegrown opposition to the peace negotiations: Olmert from the
nationalist camp and settlers, Abbas from the Islamists and Bush from the
neocons and evangelicals. And those aren't the only obstacles.

CORRUPTION HAS corroded Abbas' Fatah and has brought down Olmert. "Greed," said
a former State Department official, "is a major enemy of peace in the Middle
East, not just nationalistic or religious passions."

Olmert has said agreements with the Palestinians and Syrians are "closer than
ever" and he said his lame duck status won't get in the way of pursuing them,
but the police, prosecutors and voters may have other plans.

The United States and Israel are engaged in political campaigns that will shape
both nations' approach to peacemaking over the next several years.

When Bush moved into the Oval Office nearly eight years ago, he was promising to
move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and determined to avoid following his two
predecessors into the Mideast peace quagmire. Neither happened.

The Clinton administration had been on the verge of an Israeli-Palestinian peace
agreement. With less than a month until leaving office, President Clinton
presented his "ideas" for a settlement and told both sides "if either could not
accept the ideas, they would be withdrawn and would leave with him when he left
office," according to his top negotiator, Dennis Ross. Barak agreed, but Arafat
opted instead for another Intifada.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants to avoid that kind of setback and keep
the process alive despite the political turmoil and transition in all three
places. She publicly insists "there is still time" to reach an agreement this
year, but her real goal is getting both sides to put in writing the progress
they've made so far.

This so-called shelf agreement could then serve as a starting point when new
leadership is ready to resume talks. But she faces opposition from the White
House.

According to published reports, Elliot Abrams, the National Security Council's
chief for Mideast policy, told a group of Jewish leaders recently that any
progress in the current secret talks led by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni
and former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, are strictly between the two
of them and not between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

LIVNI IS a leading candidate to replace Olmert as head of the ruling Kadima
party and prime minister, and is committed to pursuing the talks with the
Palestinians. If, however, there are early elections and opposition Likud leader
Benjamin Netanyahu wins, he has indicated negotiations are more likely to go
into the freezer than on to the shelf.

President Bush launched this round of negotiations at Annapolis last November
when he set a goal of a peace agreement and Palestinian statehood by the time he
left office, but his spokespeople have since scaled that back to producing an
"outline" of steps needed "to move forward."

There will be new leaders all around; Abbas has said he wouldn't run for
reelection when elections are held in 2009 or 2010. He also has reportedly
threatened to resign unless there's an agreement by the end of the year, but he
won't.

The challenge facing the lame duck leaders is to leave something for their
successors to build on or risk setting the process back another eight years.

The Israelis and Palestinians say they are close on many issues - with the
notable exception of Jerusalem - but no peace agreement is possible as long as
there are two Palestines, one that wants peace but can't deliver and another
that could deliver but isn't interested.

Rice may have little support from the White House but she is on the right track,
pressing the parties to remain engaged through the political campaigns and
transition so they can build something for the new administrations to pick up
on.

The alternative would play into the hands of Palestinian extremists like Hamas
who preach that the only way to build a state is through the kind of violence
they claim drove Israel out of Lebanon and Gaza. It is up to three lame ducks to
make sure that doesn't happen.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 6, 2008 Wednesday

Return to Gaza

BYLINE: MICHAEL FREUND

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 780 words

HIGHLIGHT: The retreat was a disaster from beginning to end. FUNDAMENTALLY
FREUND

This coming Monday, the tenth day of the month of Av, marks three years on the
Hebrew calendar since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

As if on cue, Israelis received a stark reminder this week that while some might
want to put Gaza behind them, the Strip and its problems can not just be wished
away.

Internecine warfare broke out once again between Hamas and Fatah loyalists,
leaving nine Palestinians dead and more than 90 others injured in an ugly
exchange of mortar shells, machinegun fire and summary executions. At least a
dozen of the injured were said to be children.

It was the worst spate of violence in the area since the Hamas takeover in June
2007, and it left the so-called moderates of Fatah on the run - both literally
and politically - as over 180 of them sought temporary refuge across the
frontier in the warm embrace of the very same Jewish state they just love to
hate.

Then, even as IDF soldiers were reportedly risking their lives to save some of
the Fatah escapees, Palestinian terrorists launched five mortar rounds at Jewish
communities in the Negev, once more violating the cease- fire that went into
effect over a month ago.

IT WAS, in a nutshell, an unambiguous and quite telling sign of just how badly
misconstrued Israel's August 2005 retreat truly was.

For not only did the Gaza withdrawal exacerbate internal Palestinian tensions
and bring Hamas to power, but it failed to make southern Israel any safer. It
was unnecessary and ill-conceived, and it came at the expense of thousands of
Jews who were expelled from their homes, all for nought.

Indeed, a comprehensive survey released ten days ago found that a whopping 81%
of the Jews forced out are still living in temporary housing and that 50% of the
evacuees remain unemployed.

It also revealed that 70% of the respondents are in worse financial shape than
they were prior to being evicted.

In other words, the government threw these fine citizens out of their houses,
and then threw them to the dogs, essentially leaving them to fend for
themselves.

It is little wonder, then, that the Knesset State Control Committee took the
unusual step last week of voting by a wide margin in favor of establishing a
State Commission of Inquiry to investigate the government's handling of the
evacuation.

While the Committee's decision is a welcome one, the underlying strategic
challenge posed by Gaza's downward spiral into Islamist chaos remains
unaddressed.

THE STRIP has become a terrorist haven, and Hamas is actively preparing itself
for confrontation with Israel.

As Yediot Aharonot reporter Ronen Bergman revealed last month, Hamas has
recently begun using abandoned synagogues and other public structures in Gaza
for terrorist training drills that include the staging of kidnappings, urban
warfare and the takeover of buildings.

And as Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) director Yuval Diskin was quoted in The
Jerusalem Post, Hamas has smuggled in more than four tons of weapons, 50
anti-tank

It is almost a foregone conclusion that Israel will at some point have to go
back in to Gaza to strike at the terrorist infrastructure that is busy
incubating itself there.

Even Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who has thus far refrained from unleashing the
IDF against Hamas, acknowledges this to be the case. Speaking at a Labor party
event on Monday evening, Barak said, "anyone who misses the military operations
in Gaza mustn't worry - they will come."

BUT A pinpoint military operation, or even a grand sweep through the area, is
unlikely to provide a lasting solution to the threat posed by Gaza-based terror.

As the past three years of Kassam rocket fire have shown, you might be able to
take Israel out of Gaza, but you can't take Gaza out of Israel.

It is not too late to turn back the clock and to correct the disastrous mistakes
of the past. So let's hit the collective rewind button, and reassert complete
control over the entire Gaza Strip.

Israel should move to topple the Hamas regime, and arrest and try its
leadership. The ongoing existence of a rogue, terrorist state along our southern
border is simply intolerable, and we have no choice other than to bring it down.

And while we are at it, let's correct the injustice that was done to the
residents of Gush Katif, and allow them to rebuild their lives, their homes and
their shattered communities.

The retreat from Gaza was a disaster from beginning to end, but we can largely
undo the damage if we act decisively and with resolve.

Sure, it won't be easy, and the international community will react with
predictable fury.

But as our experience since the withdrawal has shown, as difficult as it may be
to "occupy" Gaza, vacating it has proven to be far, far worse.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: REMOVING RESIDENTS of Tel Katifa, August 2005. Among the Gaza
evacuees, 81% still live in temporary housing and 50% remain unemployed.
(Credit: Bloomberg)

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August 6, 2008 Wednesday

A Trojan horse in the Jordan Valley

BYLINE: LARA FRIEDMAN and HAGIT OFRAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 728 words

HIGHLIGHT: Establishing new settlements is inconsistent with a two-state
solution. The writers are the co-authors of Peace Now's Settlements in Focus, a
bi-monthly publication. Friedman is Americans for Peace Now's director of policy
and government relations. Ofran is the director of Settlements Watch.

Is Israel serious about wanting peace? Plans approved last week by Israeli
Defense Minister Ehud Barak for a new settlement in the Jordan Valley provide
ammunition for those who argue that the answer is no.

Here are the facts: In 1982 the army established a military outpost, called
Maskiyot, in the Jordan Valley. In 2002, the IDF left Maskiyot and a pre-army
religious education program, with a few dozen students in temporary residence,
moved in. In September 2005, settlers evacuated from the Gaza Strip settlement
of Shirat Hayam announced plans to move to Maskiyot. In late December 2006, the
world was shocked to learn that then-Defense Minister Amir Peretz had approved
construction to accommodate them. After stinging criticism from within Israel
and from abroad, Peretz froze the approval.

But settlement plans never die. Today, the plan is back, possibly as part of a
"deal" between Barak and the settlers. In exchange for Israel turning Maskiyot
into the first new settlement in more than a decade, the settlers may consent to
evacuate a few of the more than 100 illegal outposts. Rather than calling
settlers to account for the stain on Israel's reputation and breach of the rule
of law that the illegal outposts represent, the State is apparently instead
offering them a prize.

Supporters of construction in Maskiyot argue that the plan will not create a new
settlement but simply change the status of an existing one. This logic violates
the spirit of Israel's pledge to stop establishing settlements - a pledge made
in the context of Israel's very public commitment to peace with the
Palestinians. A pledge predicated on the recognition that additional settlements
could fatally undermine the chances of achieving a two- state solution.

LET NOBODY be fooled: Transforming a disused military site into a permanent
civilian community - with all the new construction, security, infrastructure,
services, and resources that this would entail - means creating a new
settlement. Arguing to the contrary is trying to win the debate on a
technicality.

It is no accident that the settlers and their supporters are targeting the
Jordan Valley. The future of this area is at the heart of the territorial aspect
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And much to the dismay of proponents of
eternal Israeli control in the Jordan Valley, Jewish settlement here has never
really taken root. This settler population, which has long been stagnating or
even dwindling, consists of people who will mostly cooperate with, if not
actively support, a future peace agreement with the Palestinians, even if it
required them to leave.

Given this context, it is not surprising that some observers view the Maskiyot
plan as a Trojan Horse - a scheme to transplant hardcore ideological settlers
from the Gaza Strip to the Jordan Valley for the express purpose of
complicating, if not blocking, any future peace agreement. Indeed, a few weeks
ago, we learned that the Israeli Foreign Minister had presented a map to the
head of the Palestinian negotiating team, Ahmad Qurei, representing Israel's
proposal for borders under a future peace agreement. The map reportedly showed
the Jordan Valley - with no Israeli settlements - as part of the Palestinian
state. How does this square with the Defense Minister's decision?

TWO YEARS ago, cooler heads prevailed and the Maskiyot plan was frozen. Israeli
officials recognized that establishing this new settlement would have
contradicted Israel's stated commitment to Israeli-Palestinian peace; that it
would have been a slap in the face to the U.S., which was heavily invested in
promoting peace; and that it would have dealt a body blow to President Abbas and
other moderate Palestinians who support Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Cooler heads are needed again, today, to stop the plan. Barak's decision must be
reversed.

The world is watching. And the world - including friends of Israel - knows that
establishing new settlements is inconsistent with a two-state solution to the
Israeli- Palestinian conflict, now or in the future.

This is a clear, bright line that supporters of the plan will not succeed in
blurring, and it is a line that Israeli leaders must have the wisdom to not
cross. The world is watching, and the world will be saying: No new settlements,
not now, not ever. Not if Israel is serious when it tells us that it wants
peace.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: MASKIYOT. Is Israel violating the spirit of its pledge to stop
establishing settlements?

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The Jerusalem Post

August 5, 2008 Tuesday

Lebanon tipping-point?

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 778 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Israel is sounding the alarm: The fragile balance of forces in Lebanon is
unraveling. And the world is playing deaf.

The Israeli-Lebanese relationship is reaching another critical turning-point;
and not just over how Lebanon and Hizbullah are melding into a single new
entity, with Beirut set to formally confer upon Hizbullah the right to "liberate
or recover occupied lands" - meaning any territory it defines as "occupied,"
whether Mount Dov (the Shaba Farms) or Galilee. Lebanon is metamorphosing from
hapless bystander to willing Hizbullah enabler, a transformation certain to have
devastating consequences.

The even more immediate crisis is that unless Hizbullah's runaway arms-smuggling
is checked, the Islamists may soon possess weapons that could force Israel into
preemptive military action to protect this country's deterrence.

In the words of Defense Minister Ehud Barak: "We are warning leaders, foreign
ministers, defense ministers around the world of the consequences of
destabilizing the very delicate balance that exists in Lebanon."

THIS WEEK, the four-member Lebanon Independent Border Assessment Team,
dispatched by UN Secretary of State Ban Ki-moon to assess "the monitoring of the
Lebanese border with Syria" - or, in plain English, to expose rampant Hizbullah
arms smuggling - wrapped up its two-week mission. It will now submit
recommendations to the secretary- general. We should pray that its report is
genuine, and that the powers-that-be will sit up and take notice.

Israel continues to insist that UNIFIL countries are choosing to disregard
evidence of Hizbullah smuggling because they do not want to confront the
muscular extremists. Still, Israeli officials have been sounding the alarm.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Barak both held meetings with Ban last week to
press for action against Hizbullah's shameless violations of UN Security
Resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006. Livni
declared that Israel "cannot accept" the flood of Hizbullah weapons smuggling.
Barak was equally blunt, saying 1701 "did not work, doesn't work, and is a
failure" given that Syria and Iran have moved "munitions, rockets and other
weapon systems" into Lebanon.

How Damascus expects Israelis to reconcile its behavior - not to mention Bashar
Assad's weekend dalliance in Teheran - with intimations that Syria wants
rapprochement with Israel is anyone's guess. It also begs the question of
whether Israel's indirect talks with Syria have inoculated Assad's regime
against international reprobation.

At any rate, after his meeting with US Vice President Dick Cheney last week in
Washington, Barak remarked that Syria's hostile behavior had led, in the last
two years, to Hizbullah doubling or tripling the number of missiles in its
arsenal. Hizbullah's armaments are smuggled from Iran via Syria, though some are
of Syrian origin. The most lethal weaponry is Russian-made.

While Resolution 1701 demanded "the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon,"
Hizbullah has never been better armed. While it called on Lebanon to support the
cease- fire, Beirut now explicitly threatens Israel. And while it demanded that
"no sales or supply of arms and related material" reach Lebanon - Syria, Iran
(and, less brazenly, Russia) are systematically flouting 1701.

WHY ARE Israeli officials raising the decibel level now given that Hizbullah has
been violating 1701 practically from the get-go? And what to make of Hizbullah's
menacing declaration last week that it would treat as "provocative" and
"unacceptable" Israeli overflights of Lebanese airspace?

There is no denying that Israeli aircraft fly reconnaissance missions over
Lebanon gathering imperative intelligence and monitoring Hizbullah's hostile
intentions. Now that Lebanon stands poised to adopt Hizbullah's anti- Israel
crusade as national policy, it would be ludicrous to treat Lebanese airspace as
sacrosanct.

Hizbullah appears set to receive a new generation of anti-aircraft missiles that
would jeopardize the IAF's intelligence-gathering capabilities. If, for
instance, Syria facilitates the delivery of these Russian- manufactured, SA-8
self-propelled anti-aircraft missiles - or, more ominously, the SA-15 now
operating in Iran - Israeli decision-makers may have to consider a preemptive
strike.

No weapons at all should be reaching Hizbullah; but channeling dangerously
destabilizing surface-to-air missiles that could blind Israel to the threats
emanating from the north is simply asking for trouble. Responsible actors in the
international community need to take Israel's warnings with the utmost
seriousness and act to close the spigot spewing weapons into Lebanon.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 5, 2008 Tuesday

A Jewish Peace Corps

BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 878 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer hosts a daily US radio show on Oprah and Friends. His most
recent book is The Broken American Male and How to Fix Him. www.shmuley.com

Materialism is becoming a cancer to the American Jewish community. Our children
feel entitled. They take and do not know how to give back. Self-absorption is
lifetime's calling.

That's why this summer I arranged for three of my children to work as volunteers
in the children's camp of Rabbi Yossi Turk in Cordoba, Argentina. The work is
not easy and our children, while working hard, complained that there weren't
enough recreational outlets. I reminded them that Turk and his wife have been in
Cordoba not for two weeks, but for 22 years. You don't hear them complaining.

The experience for my children was profound. They were inspired by the sight of
Jews who devote their lives to the spiritual education of others, and parents
who have to send their kids 6,000 miles away to Jewish schools in the US. For
the last week of their stay I met my children in Buenos Aires. We toured the
Jewish community, including the Jewish Community Center, AMIA, which was bombed
in July 1994, killing 85, and which has since been rebuilt.

A highlight was a two-day jaunt to Montevideo, Uruguay, where we witnessed the
inspirational work of Rabbi Leizer and Rochi Shemtov, living there for 23 years,
their seven children all studying far away, including their youngest daughter
who is 13. Who has heard of sacrifice like this? And why aren't our children
witnessing it?

THIS IS why the global Jewish community requires a new organization, modeled on
birthright israel, whose purpose will be to inspire young Jewish volunteers, 16
to 28, to spread out every summer to distant outposts like Chabad's around the
world and help the local rabbis and communal professionals. Volunteers can do
everything from baking hallot for the local community (which was one of my
children's responsibilities) to helping teach local children the aleph bet. The
volunteers need not be religious; they need only be possessed of a simple desire
to give something back to the global Jewish community that gives them so much
for free.

Indeed, an organization like this should appeal particularly to birthright,
which has been looking for the best means to sustain the commitment of young
Jews after an inspiring trip in Israel. Why not the way Chabad has done it for
50 years?

What is the most fascinating aspect of the Chabad emissaries spread all over
Latin America is their children. How can you raise 10 Jewish kids in a place
like rural Argentina and still have them grow up to be not just deeply
religious, but passionate about the Jewish future? Heck, American Jewry doesn't
know how to pull this off in New York or LA! The answer is that these kids are
taught from birth to give and not take. When teenagers become exponents of
Judaism, they are no longer absorbing the secularizing influences of the
overarching culture. On the contrary, they are making a Jewish impact. It's a
simple equation. The more you give out, the less you soak in.

We should therefore impress upon birthright alumni the importance of
volunteering, within one year of their return, to go out on another expense-paid
jaunt, this time to an outlying center to help.

IN CREATING what is, in essence, a Jewish Peace Corps, we will achieve several
objectives. First, we can teach the birthright alumni that there is no free
lunch. When Jewish mega-philanthropists like Michael Steinhardt decide to give
them an all-expense-paid trip to Israel, it is with the understanding that this
will inspire a deeper Jewish attachment which must manifest itself in a
commitment to the Jewish people.

Second, it will help to combat the growing materialism and self-centeredness
among American Jewish youth. Third, these kids will be in awe of the dedication
of a handful of Jews who are prepared to spend their lives far away from family
and friends just because of small numbers of neglected Jews.

My trip through Argentina and Uruguay left even me, a lifelong communal
activist, both humbled and inspired. Even the IDF, the Jewish people's other
great heroes, conscripts for three years. But the Rebbe's army is forever. You
go out to Bangkok to look after Israeli backpackers, and you stay there until
the Messiah comes.

I RECOGNIZE that some will say that birthright alumni owe their gratitude to
Israel rather than the Jewish community of Pretoria. But that is a shortsighted
criticism that fails to recognize the interconnectedness of all Jews, and the
State of Israel's reliance on the Diaspora. Any of us who travel to the AIPAC
convention in DC can bear witness to just how crucial it is to Israel to have
strong and well-organized Jewish communities in native populations across the
globe.

Next week I'll be leading a birthright group to Israel - a collection of young
Jewish professionals who work in TV, radio and media. I will encourage them to
show their gratitude to all who work so hard, like Rabbi Shlomo Gestetner, head
of Mayanot-birthright, so they can have a great time in the Holy Land. I will
suggest that they join the program of "Two weeks for Two Weeks," and in the
coming summer volunteer at a Chabad House or synagogue in Singapore, say, and
help those operations become more media savvy. By doing so they will not only
give back but participate in the Jewish community's ancient calling of serving
as a light unto the nations.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: BOTEACH AND his kids in Buenos Aires. Helping out Chabad
emissaries stationed in far-flung outposts for a lifetime (Credit: Courtesy)

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The Jerusalem Post

August 5, 2008 Tuesday

Letters

BYLINE: Josef Gilboa, David Dothager, T. Jacobson, Fay Dicker, Stephen J. Kohn,
JJ Gross, Meir Abelson, Linda Stern, Harold Lewin

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1119 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Case of 'die-alog'

Sir, - Re "Proud, indeed" (Letters, August 4): It is about time the British
chief rabbi addressed the Anglican church.

Once upon a time Anglicans and Scots Presbyterians were the most fervent
Christian Zionists in the world. From Oliphant, to Balfour, to Wingate, their
contribution to Zionism was great. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's
description of his upbringing is a refreshing example.

However, the smug, self-satisfied British Jewish community let that all slip
away and did not engage in dialogue with its Christian neighbors. Today, the
declarations on the Mideast by both the Anglican and Scottish churches read as
though they were written in Ramallah, and they probably were.

Instead of congratulating Rabbi Sacks on his achievement, we should ask him and
his community: Where have you been all these years?

JOSEF GILBOA

Jaffa

Perilous path

Sir, - When the Anglican community seeks to legitimize same-sex marriages, all
it does is delegitimize heterosexual marriage ("Confessions of a heterophile,"
Hillel Halkin, July 2).

DAVID DOTHAGER

Mulberry Grove Illinois

100 years of oppression

Sir, - Again we stand accused of oppressing the "poor sick Palestinians" by
limiting their access to our hospitals ("Shin Bet decides who lives or dies in
Gaza," August 4).

Why haven't the Palestinians built their own hospitals? It certainly can't be
for lack of funds.

The world community has given them billions of dollars and euros. On what was it
spent? Largely on weapons, it seems.

If Physicians for Human Rights was really concerned with these people's plight,
it would note that it is the Palestinians' own leaders who are oppressing them.
And they've been doing it for about 100 years.

T. JACOBSON

Petah Tikva

Hold an agreement

Sir, - Re Ehud Olmert's decision, during his PM "caretaker-mode," to negotiate
"firm understandings that can serve as a basis for agreements on both the
Palestinian and Syrian tracks":

Although your editorial "A long good-bye" (July 31) warned against "a lengthy
vacuum in Israel's conduct of security, political and diplomatic affairs,"
surely the status quo would be preferable to "a bad diplomatic deal" that an
Olmert desperate to redeem his legacy would be ready to negotiate and "that
would be seen as binding on Olmert's successor"?

In view of the deadly fighting between Hamas and Fatah, with Hamas as the
putative victor, any further efforts to forge an agreement with Mahmoud Abbas
must be put on hold until the volatile discord between the Palestinian factions
is clarified.

FAY DICKER

Lakewood, New Jersey

Looking bad

Sir, - Jeff Barak has a fine sense of humor ("He ran the country well," August
4). If this is managerial competency, what am I missing? The time for this type
of praise is at someone's funeral, not his forced resignation.

Let's look at PM Olmert's achievements: the school strike and impending
university strike. Appointing the unlamented former minister of defense, and a
transportation minister whose few stupid words sent oil prices up $10 a barrel.

Draft-dodging. The ongoing problem of the Gaza refugees. The incomplete Route 6.
A publicly funded haredi school system that graduates students incapable of
surviving in a modern society. Outrageous haredi domination of the chief
rabbinate. The safety issues at our international gateway.

Perhaps the only way to make the PM look good is to compare these marks of
incompetence with the outrageous failure of the Second Lebanon War.

STEPHEN J. KOHN

Ra'anana

Bad to worse

Sir, - Evelyn Gordon is 100-percent correct that Israeli taxpayers should not be
obligated to pay for haredi education and for stipends to 55,000 haredi
draft-dodgers ("Tolerance, without state funding," July 31).

Yet she does not elaborate on why the status quo will continue and, if anything,
only change for the worse.

Israel is not a democracy. Hence, as long as political party slates that are
never answerable to the electorate continue to run the country, any ruling
plurality - Left, Right or center - will lack the majority necessary to
legislate in the public interest without being subject to the blackmail of
haredi interests.

JJ GROSS

New York/Jerusalem

Fathers of the desert

Sir, - Mark Twain was not the only traveler to describe Palestine's desolation
in the 19th century ("'The Economist' rewrites history," Zalman Shoval, August
3). There were dozens of such commentators.

The British consul, James Finn, reported: "The country is in a considerable
degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of
population..."

A Christian clergyman, the Rev. Samuel Manning, mourned: "This fertile plain
(the Sharon), which might support an immense population, is almost a solitude."
Prof. Fred Gottheil described "a desolate country... wretched... almost
abandoned now... unoccupied... uninhabited." Col. Claude R. Condor pronounced it
"a ruined land."

Pierre Loti wrote: "I traveled through sad Galilee in the spring and found it
silent... As elsewhere, as everywhere in Palestine, city and palaces have
returned to the dust...."

David Landes summarized it as a land that "has been given over to sand, marsh,
the anopheles mosquito, clan feuds and Beduin marauders."

The Arabs have been described as the "sons of the desert," but they are truly
its fathers.

MEIR ABELSON

Beit Shemesh

Letter-perfect

Sir, - When I was a youngster growing up in London, I could never understand my
dear, late mother Anne Curzon's penchant for constantly writing letters to The
Times, The Daily Mail, The Jewish Chronicle, you name it - all of which were
printed. I never read them.

When I grew much older and began receiving The Jerusalem Post on a daily basis
after my mother passed away four years ago, I began to understand her so
clearly, and realized that I had inherited this trait of hers.

To summarize in a rhyming nutshell: "I feel so much better / After writing a
letter...." ("Eloquent outrage," Letters, August 4).

LINDA STERN

Safed

Rather dim

Sir, - The Israel Airports Authority has issued a request for information on
"Airport Lighting Luminaries including Light Emitting Duode - LED" (July 31).

I have always understood a luminary to be a person who inspires others (although
an archaic definition is of a natural light-giving body such as the sun or
moon).

But what is a duode?

Almost every high school student, and many juniors, could have told the Airports
Authority that LED stands for Light Emitting Diode, and that "lighting
luminaries" should have read "illumination."

Such gaffes join NATBAG (a road sign once directing drivers to Ben-Gurion
Airport) and a myriad other examples of bad English seen daily in official
notices. Can't people swallow their pride and request a bit of proofreading?

HAROLD LEWIN, Jerusalem

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August 5, 2008 Tuesday

Will Durban II be a replay of racist Durban I?

BYLINE: ALFRED H. MOSES

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 777 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer, former US ambassador to Romania and special presidential
emissary for the Cyprus conflict, is chairman of UN Watch and a past president
of the American Jewish Committee.

Is the United Nations' follow-up to the racist 2001 Durban World Conference
Against Racism headed for the same fate? Perhaps. In response to the newly
released UN blueprint for next April's Durban II in Geneva, EU members need to
defend the red lines set by France, the UK and the Netherlands.

What went wrong with Durban I? Despite its supposedly universal intentions,
compromises were made to satisfy the non-aligned group of 118 countries,
dominated by Islamic states.

Slavery was and is evil. But by addressing only the trans-Atlantic slave trade
of previous centuries while ignoring the modern Arab slave trade and other forms
of slavery, the 2001 conference showed itself to be more concerned with scoring
points than promoting human rights.

SIMILARLY, THE conference's condemnation of Western European colonialism became
tainted when it omitted mention of far more recent colonial crimes - be it
Russian colonialism in Ukraine, Armenia and the Baltics, or China's ongoing
repression of Tibet.

To make matters worse, the entire Durban I agenda was hijacked by anti-Israel
forces, led by Iran and Yasser Arafat, who showed up in person.

Then as now, the lead-up was formative. Six months before Durban I, at the
preparatory Asian meeting in Teheran, the 57-strong Organization of the Islamic
Conference led the conference to single out Israel, accusing it of "ethnic
cleansing" and committing a "new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity."
After international interventions, Durban's final declaration was toned down.
Nevertheless, it expressed concern about "the plight of the Palestinian people
under foreign occupation," and recognized "the right of refugees to return
voluntarily to their homes." The US delegation walked out. At the end of the
conference the Canadian representative said: "Canada is still here only because
we wanted to have our voice decry the attempts at this conference to
delegitimize the State of Israel."

Far worse, though, were the nongovernmental proceedings. Goebbels-like
caricatures of Jews circulated freely. Jewish activists were harassed. The final
NGO statement declared Israel a "racist apartheid state" guilty of "genocide."
The text was so odious that even Mary Robinson, the UN rights chief who had been
criticized for appeasing anti-Israel forces, refused to accept it.

The late Democratic Representative Tom Lantos of California, a US delegate, said
"this was the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I had seen
since the Nazi period."

WILL DURBAN II suffer the same fate?

Some fear it is inevitable. Canada has already announced that it will not
participate. The US and Israel will also stay away, unless it is proven that
Durban II will not be another platform for anti-Semitic hatred.

That leaves the EU.

It has been clear in resisting attempts by Algeria, Pakistan and other Islamic
states to alter the agreed mandate with a condemnation of "defamation of
religions" - i.e., the unflattering Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, as
well as milder forms of free speech deemed unacceptable to Islam.

It has been ambivalent, however, in its response to the renewed attempts to tar
Israel. On the one hand, France and some other leading EU states have declared
attacks on Israel to be a red line. "[T]the Durban conference in 2001 led to
intolerable excesses from certain states and numerous NGOs that turned the
conference into a forum against Israel," said President Nicolas Sarkozy in
February. "France will not allow a repetition." His position was unequivocal:
"If our legitimate demands are not taken into account, we will disengage from
the process."

Similar warnings were expressed by UK Minister for Europe Jim Murphy and
Netherlands Interior Minister Maxime Verhagen.

BUT SINCE the UN on May 27 released a blueprint for Durban II that again singles
out Israel, not one EU state has spoken out.

The issues to be included in an April 2009 declaration confirm that the planners
of Durban II, headed by Libya, have again set their sights on the Jewish state.
First, under the header "Victims of racism," the draft makes special reference
to "the plight of the Palestinians."

Second, under "contemporary forms of racism as reported by different countries,"
Israel is singled out by Iran, a vice chair of the conference's organizing
bureau.

In other words, the train to Durban II has already left the station. Why is the
EU failing to defend the principles laid down by France, the UK and the
Netherlands? Those who would like to give the new conference a genuine chance to
combat intolerance need to know that Durban II will not be a repeat of the
Durban I debacle.

The test - the EU's test - is now.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: ONE OF the cartoons displayed in the 2001 anti-racism conference
in Durban. 'The most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I had seen
since the Nazi period.'

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The Jerusalem Post

August 5, 2008 Tuesday

Peeling the myths off Saudi Arabia

BYLINE: TANYA CARIINA HSU

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 897 words

HIGHLIGHT: Right of Reply. The writer is a Saudi-US political analyst originally
from London. She lives in Riyadh and London.

In Isi Leibler's "Candidly Speaking" (July 29), we read the same myths regarding
the kingdom of Saudi Arabia; sweeping statements are presented as immutable
fact.

In 2005, one of my closest professional partners (as well as closest friends)
and I planned for and created a model for a Saudi-sponsored interfaith dialogue
to be ideally hosted by King Abdullah in Spain. We worked on the concept in
Riyadh, where I live. (For the record, she is Jewish and visits the kingdom
frequently.) We submitted the business plan to specific members of the royal
family, and three years later the dialogue materialized almost exactly as we
imagined. It may well be that our idea was coincidence and incidental to the
king's own interfaith dialogue, as we were not part of further planning, but
either way the desired outcome has been achieved.

We also, however, expected precisely the sort of media response printed - that
in effect, any Jewish representative who participated on behalf of Judaism
would, indeed, be placating the king or appeasing Saudi sensibilities. Any
progress made in discussing globally relevant issues, specifically similarities
and differences of religions, would be somehow offensive. Or, as written in The
Jerusalem Post, they would be "grovelling" or "intoxicated."

Yet, if the king or any other Saudi official did not initiate this dialogue, no
doubt it would be nanoseconds before it was written that the Saudis failed, once
again, to make strides toward peace.

ONE CANNOT win for losing, but as the African proverb goes: "The best time to
plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now." King Abdullah,
unlike counterparts in Israel, has planted that tree.

Leibler also repeats the oft-cited myth of "state sponsored export of Wahhabism"
that has produced a network of sanctified violence. There is no such thing as
"Wahhabism," just as there is no such thing as ""Maimonism." As you should know,
madrassa is merely the Arabic word for school, madrassa al-din specifies a
religious school, and there is no evidence yet to support any direct link
between a madrassa and fighters in Afghanistan, Palestine or Iraq. In fact,
there have been no convictions for terrorist activities in the United States of
any Saudi, which would indicate that they have certainly had no success
whatsoever for their supposed multi-billion dollar export of a radical doctrine.
It certainly seems a poor cost-benefit analysis.

Additionally, the depictions of Jews are yet another story that won't die, and I
have addressed the Saudi textbooks and education directly to the US Congress and
do not need to repeat here, or specify Torah or Talmud chapter and verse for
comparison. The depictions of Muslims and Arabs, specifically Saudis, however,
remains abhorrent within Israel at times, just as in many parts of the world.
The difference appears to be that Saudis have little ability to recruit the
media to their cause, and have almost no ability to boast about their culture
and their views to meet the rapidly changing news cycles. They thereby too often
fail to quash these sweeping and persistent generalizations, despite all their
excessive cash.

Also regurgitated is the notion that Jews are forbidden entry to Saudi Arabia.
This is completely untrue, but these rumors have existed for decades, begun by
US Aramco employees. Despite all corrections from the Saudis, they remain
ignored. Clarifying that those with Israeli passports are not permitted entry
into the kingdom (akin to no American being permitted to enter Cuba or Iran, for
example), the policy rests on the political situation between the two nations. I
feel safe in assuming that neither Fidel Castro nor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be
invited to many Israeli-sponsored conferences either.

FINALLY, LET me address the state of Islam in Saudi Arabia.

It is correct to state that it is the official religion, but that is all it is.
The confirmation is in the Constitution of Saudi Arabia. It states "Islam," not
Sunni, not Sufi, not Shi'ite, not Ismaeli - just plain Islam, full stop. Indeed,
would it not be foolish to ban Jews or Christians from the kingdom, given the
assumption that the Saudis are spending vast quantities of petrodollars on
exporting Islam? Are Jews not the very people whom they would wish to "convert"?
Why, until relatively recent history and migration to Israel, were Jews living
safely in Arabia, having existed there since the days of Abraham? Actually, why
did the prophet marry a Jew, if not to show peace among religions?

It is understandable that some may choose words - sharper than swords - to block
the path of peace and progress given the prism of Islam from within Israel. As
occupiers of a predominantly Muslim land pre-1948, and as occupiers of the
predominantly Muslim West Bank and Gaza, those fighting to preserve what is left
of their land may "represent" to Israel all of Islam. Yet I suspect that the
vast majority of Israeli Jews do not wish to be represented by the likes of the
late Baruch Goldstein either, even though his slaughter of Muslims in 1993 was
not in defense of his homeland and was instead an act of simple premeditated
murder.

Leibler is perfectly correct in stating that the fear of offending the other
party prevents true progress.

Indeed, a conference wherein Shas rabbis sat down with Hamas leaders and openly
spoke their minds, now that would be progress.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: TEENS PLAY with their cat in Riyadh. The official state religion
is 'just plain Islam,' not any particular sect. (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

943 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 5, 2008 Tuesday

The real victims are...

BYLINE: SETH J. FRANTZMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 695 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is completing his doctorate at Hebrew University.

A person grows up and believes there are perpetrators and victims. He sees a
person assaulted or hears about a rape or someone being abused, and he believes
that in each incident there is a person who perpetrates the crime and a person
who is the victim. Then one becomes more "enlightened" and learns that the
victim is not as interesting as the perpetrator. The perpetrator's life story
and mental state are deemed important in order to understand "why" he or she
committed the crime.

Then one grows even older and wiser and comes to learn that when there is a
crime, the actual victim is the perpetrator's ethnic or religious group, which
will be viewed negatively because of what he did. In the end, one learns that
the real victim in every crime is the wider society - particularly the group the
criminal came from. This is how one grows up in modern Western society. In this
world the "victims" of World War I, far from being all the soldiers or civilians
killed, were the Germans because, as the aggressors, they were punished by the
Versailles Treaty. The victims of the Holocaust were not the Jews who died but
the Palestinians who saw the survivors sent to their homeland. The victims of
the three recent acts of terrorism by Muslims from east Jerusalem are not the 11
dead and 70 wounded Jews, but the Palestinian Arabs who might lose work because
of the actions of their countrymen.

I REMEMBER the first time I learned how this "true victimhood" works. I was a
college student in Tucson, Arizona. Along with everyone else, on September 11 I
awoke to news of the terrorist attacks. But a day later, when I began to read
the local papers, I was astonished to learn that the true victims were not the
3,000 dead Americans but the nation's Muslims, because after 9/11 they would
face increased scrutiny and perhaps even hate crimes.

There were soon marches in my city, not to condemn terror or support the
families of the victims, but to reassure Muslims. Muslim human rights groups
became wealthy off the notion that Muslims were victims.

As if to reinforce this notion, the BBC published a story on July 24 by Heather
Sharp entitled "Palestinian workers fear backlash." There was no story about
fears by Israelis of more bulldozer attacks; the only people who were truly
victimized, it seems, were Palestinians. The story relates how Palestinian face
"widespread discrimination" and how they "fear revenge attacks. They say stones
were thrown at them as they worked near a right- wing neighborhood." (What
exactly constitutes a "right- wing" neighborhood, according to the BBC, is not
clear.)

It turns out, according to the BBC, that "in both attacks using construction
vehicles, the motives of the attacker remain a mystery - local press reports
suggested that the attackers had previous involvement with crime and drugs, and
no links to militant groups have emerged."

There is no mention of the fact that both attacks were directed at Jews and Jews
only.

ONE IS reminded of the closing scene of the film A Time to Kill (1996), when the
white attorney of a black man accused of shooting three white rapists of a black
girl in the American South is giving his closing statements. Realizing he cannot
convince the white jury to acquit a black man, the lawyer asks them to imagine
the raped girl was white.

In the case of these Jerusalem attacks one must do the same. One must ask
viewers of the BBC to imagine that the drivers were settlers driving over Arab
children. Then one must ask oneself, would the media claim that "settlers fear
backlash"? After Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City, were we told that the
real victims were right-wing militias and Christian conservatives who now feared
a backlash?

The real victims of terror are the people who die and are injured. There are no
other victims. We must therefore steel ourselves against the media's
ever-present attempts to turn innocent Afghan children into the "real" victims
of 9/11. The real victims of 9/11 were those who died that day.

Elizabeth Goren-Friedman, 54, Jean Relevy, 68, and Batsheva Unterman, 33, were
the victims of the bulldozer terror attacks in Jerusalem. They and the 50
wounded. No one else.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: BATSHEVA UNTERMAN and Elizabeth Goren-Friedman were killed,
but the focus in the BBC article was on Palestinian fear of revenge attacks.

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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944 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 5, 2008 Tuesday

Creating a new reality on the ground

BYLINE: GERSHON BASKIN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 966 words

HIGHLIGHT: ENCOUNTERING PEACE. Israelis and Palestinians find common cause in
the Jenin-Gilboa plans. The writer is co- CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for
Research and Information.

Danny Atar and Kaddoura Mousa, two relatively unknown people, have made great
strides on the road to peace and could go much further if their governments
would only stop interfering. Atar is the head of the Gilboa Regional Council,
elected by the residents of the kibbutzim, moshavim and Arab villages in the
Gilboa area; Mousa is the governor of the Jenin District, appointed by
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. They have been working together
quietly for the past years to create a new reality on the ground whose success
is now being called "Jenin first."

In this area, the most northern part of the West Bank, the Green Line and the
separation barrier are on the same line. The absence of conflict on the
territorial issue has enabled these two local leaders to march forward with
ambitious plans that if brought to fruition will provide the best chance for
prosperity, stability and security for Palestinians and Israelis on both sides
of the line.

What they have achieved so far is mainly the building of a relationship of trust
which is the most basic necessary ingredient in a recipe for peacemaking. In the
Israeli-Palestinian reality, the almost total absence of trust is one of the
main reasons why progress in negotiations between the leaders is so slow and
tedious. In this conflict, which is so filled with rhetoric and hyper-
verbosity, the absence of empty words and high politics is refreshing,
especially when it is replaced by actions that build confidence and stability.

IN THE Gilboa-Jenin area trust has been built by deeds, not by words. Mousa has
diligently worked to bring law and order back to the Jenin area. He is a
no-nonsense man who has zero tolerance for Palestinians who believe that they
have the right and obligation to attack and kill Israelis. As governor, Mousa
has direct authority over the Palestinian police and security forces in his
area. With determination, the support of Abbas and PA Prime Minister Salaam
Fayad, and support from the local communities, he succeeded in turning the area
once controlled by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants into the quietest in the
West Bank.

Atar's part in building trust has been achieved by his personal commitment and
determination toward the economic and social development plans that are based on
creating a new cross-boundary reality. The center of those plans is an
industrial zone that will be built on the Palestinian side of the border. A
logistical center and a medical center are planned on the Israeli side, and
there are talks about cross-boundary projects in higher education and vocational
training as well.

THE CONNECTING point is the Jelama crossing, which will probably have to be
moved and expanded to accommodate the new plans. The plans are ambitious and
visionary, and if Atar and Mousa are allowed to move forward without the
interference of their governments, Jenin-Gilboa will become a model for moving
from conflict to cooperation.

A key element in the success so far is the bridge- building role being played by
Eid Salim, the representative of Mukeibila, a small Arab village and a member of
the Gilboa Regional Council. Salim is an Israeli-Arab - that is his definition.
He has no conflicts regarding his identity. His amazingly rich fluency in both
Hebrew and Arabic is only one small indication of his ability to stride both
sides of the border and earn the full trust of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Eid's Jewish colleagues on the council have no questions about his loyalty to
Israel. They see him as a vital member, colleague and true friend. When Eid
speaks about "our state," he is only referring to Israel. The Atar-Eid
partnership is a model of friendship and leadership based on a joint vision and,
perhaps most importantly, on deeds and not words. This powerful duo together
with Mousa can transform the northern West Bank into a real success story in
Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and perhaps lay a new cornerstone in building
peace from the bottom-up.

THE GILBOA-Jenin development plans will move forward if the local leaders have
their way. The central governments have only to facilitate their work. To begin
the physical work on the industrial zone, they need final agreements on
technical issues concerning electricity, water and access roads. The plans have
been advanced; financing is available from Germany and elsewhere. Groundbreaking
could take place by January and the process of creating thousands of new jobs on
both sides of the border could begin. A meeting of these local leaders and
others from both sides took place this past weekend in the Konrad Adenauer
Foundation Center in Lake Como, Italy, sponsored by the Israel/Palestine Center
for Research and Information and the Adenauer Foundation in Jerusalem.

The process could also be stopped by the national governments and by high
politics. The Jenin-Gilboa plans will not end the occupation. The Palestinian
state will not come into being as a result of cross-boundary cooperation in the
North. The situation in Gaza will not be affected by the creation of thousands
of new jobs in Jenin. Nor are the plans fostered by Atar and Mousa a blueprint
for a more humane or benign occupation.

Both of these local leaders fully support the two- state solution. But these are
men of action. They understand that they can achieve nothing through political
debates and arguments. They have the tools of local government at their
disposal, and they plan to use those tools to build a piece of the peace that we
all hope for.

In the absence of real hope that the heads of the Israeli and Palestinian
negotiating teams might actually reach an agreement, it is people like Atar and
Mousa who provide the real hope that peace is reachable and not solely a vision
on the horizon that continually moves away from us.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: DANNY ATAR, head of the Gilboa Regional Council, and Qadura
Mousa, the PA-appointed governor of the Jenin District, collaborate on
cross-boundary projects. (Credit: Courtesy)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

945 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 5, 2008 Tuesday

Capital punishment for capital crimes

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1826 words

HIGHLIGHT: Our World. The criminal code permits the death penalty, but the state
prosecution refuses to request it

Six years ago last week, a bomb went off in the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria at
Hebrew University's Mt. Scopus campus. Seven students were murdered. The attack
was the work of a Hamas cell from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.

The Silwan cell was one of the most prolific and murderous cells Israel has
seen. In addition to the massacre at Hebrew University, its four members carried
out the massacre at Moment Cafe in Jerusalem in which 12 were murdered; the
Sheffield billiards club bombing in Rishon Lezion, which left 16 dead; and the
bombing of railroad tracks in Lod. The cell's most horrendous attack, however,
is generally downplayed.

In May 2002, the group planted a bomb in a fuel tanker and detonated it as the
tanker stood on line to refuel at the Pi Glilot fuel depot. Miraculously, the
cell had attached their bomb to a diesel tanker. Since diesel fuel is not as
flammable as regular gasoline, the blast was insufficiently strong to blow up
the fuel depot as they had planned. Had they managed to attach their bomb to a
gasoline tanker, the blast would likely have resulted in a fireball that could
have killed thousands.

Pi Glilot fuel depot is located in one of the most densely populated areas of
the country. It is adjacent to North Tel Aviv, Ramat Hasharon and the Glilot
junction which, when the bomb went off, was filled with bumper-to- bumper
traffic. Given the magnitude of its foreseeable and sought for carnage, the
attack on Pi Glilot constituted an act of genocide.

For their activities, three members of the cell were convicted of 35 counts of
murder and several counts of attempted murder (210 people were wounded in their
attacks). They received 35 consecutive life sentences and additional decades for
their non-lethal attacks. The fourth member was convicted of assisting murder
and was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

THE CRIMES of the Silwan cell bear recalling today as the lame duck
Olmert-Livni-Barak government continues its negotiations with Hamas toward the
release of IDF Sgt. Gilad Schalit, whom the terror regime and its terror
partners have held hostage since June 2006. Hamas is demanding that in a
three-stage swap, Israel release a thousand terrorists for Schalit. Hamas has
made clear that it demands master terrorists and convicted murderers, Fatah
terror master Marwan Barghouti and PFLP commander Ahmed Sa'adat and an unknown
number of additional murderers.

In late June, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's hostage negotiator Ofer Dekel
provided Hamas the names of 450 terrorists that Israel is willing to release in
the first stage of the deal. Although their identities were not revealed to the
public, it can be assumed that among them are convicted murderers. Olmert
recently told the government that Israel will have to redefine what it means by
terrorists "with blood on their hands" in order to relax the criteria for
releasing murderers and attempted murderers in exchange for Schalit. Moreover,
several ministers are actively lobbying for Barghouti's release.

To date, no one has publicly raised the prospect of releasing murderers like the
Silwan cell members. But this is no cause for relief. Even if they are not
released in a deal to free Schalit, there is no reason to assume that they will
die in prison.

In 2004, Israel refused to release baby-murdering Samir Kuntar in exchange for
the bodies of soldiers Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Sawayid, and for drug
dealer and Hizbullah agent Elhanan Tannenbaum. Instead, Israel released
Hizbullah commanders Mustafa Dirani and Abdul Karim Obeid - men who were
supposed to only be released in exchange for IAF navigator Ron Arad who was
kidnapped in 1986. Once Dirani and Obeid were released, Israel had no one left
except Kuntar to release in exchange for the mutilated corpses of IDF reservists
Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser last month. So too, if Israel releases a
thousand mid-level terrorist murderers as well as Barghouti and Sa'adat for
Schalit, it will have set the stage for the release of mass murderers in the
next go-round.

ALL OF this raises the issue that polite Israeli society insists on sweeping
under the rug: Israel's repeated willingness to release terrorists for live and
dead hostages makes clear the need to implement the death penalty against
terrorist murderers.

The criminal code permits the death penalty to be used in cases of treason,
murder, crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes against the Jewish people.
The problem is not the laws on the books; the problem is the state prosecution's
refusal to use them. Regardless of the nature of their crimes, the State
Attorney's Office refuses to request that judges sentence terrorists to death.

After the members of the Silwan cell were arrested in the fall of 2002 and the
enormity of their crimes was made known, there was a relatively concerted public
campaign to lobby then attorney-general and current Supreme Court Justice
Elyakim Rubinstein to request the death penalty for the cell members. But he
never considered it.

The fact that another irresponsible government would be liable to one day
release them in exchange for hostages seems not to have bothered him. Then, too,
Rubinstein seems not to have been bothered by the fact that these men, and
thousands like them continue to constitute a grave danger. In prison they are
free to plot and order the carrying out of still more attacks. Several murderous
attacks have been ordered by prisoners who communicate their orders through
their lawyers, their family members and even on the telephone. Then too, while
in prison they are free to draft their fellow prisoners into their genocidal
ranks. Since many of them were convicted of lesser crimes, they will be released
to kill still more Israelis after being radicalized in prison by the likes of
the Silwan gang.

IT IS not surprising that none of these facts played into Rubinstein's
calculations when he opted not to ask the judges to sentence the Silwan gang to
death. Quite simply, the rarified intellectual and moral universe that he, his
successor Menahem Mazuz and their fellow prosecutors inhabit is not the
intellectual and moral universe that most Israelis live in. The prosecutors live
in a world in which morality is an abstract issue, best adjudicated by
professors, judges and themselves in the name of enlightened humanism.

The country's professoriate, which enjoys an intimate relationship with its
legal fraternity, long ago dropped any semblance of propriety in its
enthusiastic embrace of anti-Zionist causes. Their top-to-bottom moral
derangement was clearly on display last week when a day before the sixth
anniversary of the Hebrew University massacre, the university's president,
Menahem Magidor, joined his fellow university presidents in signing a letter to
Defense Minister Ehud Barak demanding that the Defense Ministry stop barring
Palestinian students who constitute security risks from studying in Israeli
universities.

The university presidents wrote the letter in support of a petition to the High
Court of Justice by the anti- Zionist NGO Gisha which is demanding the court bar
the security services from preventing Palestinian students from studying in
Israeli universities or prevent them from studying subjects like nuclear physics
and that could facilitate the pan-Islamic war effort against the Jewish state.
Gisha's petition was signed by some 450 senior and junior faculty members from
all Israeli universities.

Ironically, the university presidents issued their missive 10 days after the
Shin Beit (Israel Security Agency) announced it had arrested six Israeli Arabs
suspected of membership in al-Qaida. Two of them were students at Hebrew
University. One of the students is accused of planning to assassinate US
President George W. Bush by downing his helicopter during his visit in May.

In light of the legal and intellectual elites' pathological refusal to recognize
the murderous character of Palestinian terrorists and Israel's duty to defend
its citizens from murder, it would make sense for the Knesset to circumscribe
their authority to adjudicate morality from the bench and the lectern. The
Knesset could amend the criminal code to require the death penalty in cases of
terrorist murder.

Unfortunately, such an effort by the Knesset would likely not suffice to force
their hand. Either the prosecutors would indict the terrorists on lesser charges
or the judges would declare the amendments unconstitutional, or both.

The Supreme Court's refusal to simply acknowledge Israel's duty to defend was
made clear by its handling of the anti-Zionist left's 2001 petition to bar the
IDF from conducting targeted killings of terrorists. Although the measure is
perfectly legal, the court took five and a half years to issue its ruling that
the IDF is in fact legally entitled by customary international law to target
terrorists. Why there was even a question that the IDF has the right to target
illegal combatants engaged in an illegal terror war is unclear. Yet even in its
self-evident ruling, the court invented limitations on the tactic to demonstrate
its concern for the well-being of terrorist mass-murderers.

The recidivism rates of terrorists released in hostage swaps alone make clear
that hostages-for-terrorists swaps endanger Israeli citizens. And in light of
the moral depravity of our intellectual and legal elites, it is clear that
legislative action alone cannot remedy the current situation in which even the
most monstrous terrorists can safely assume that they will one day be released.
The public must involve itself in the issue.

THE FIRST step in a campaign calling for a mandatory death penalty for terrorist
murderers would be to conduct a poll on the issue. To date, no major polling
institution has conducted a poll of public opinion on the death penalty.

Beyond that, student activists should band together to oppose their professors'
call for the Defense Ministry to stop conducting security checks of potential
students. A new student organization, "Im Tirtzu," was formed last year to
combat the anti-Zionist claptrap disguised as academic research being propagated
by their professors. It is already organizing such a campaign and its efforts
should be supported.

Finally, the public must make clear, through demonstrations and e-mail campaigns
to political leaders, that it demands both an end to the hostages for terrorists
swaps and the death penalty for convicted terrorist murderers. It is now, as our
politicians gear up for elections, that they are most prone to listen to us.

It is hard for private citizens to take a public stand. But among our
governmental instability, the weakness of our political leaders and the perfidy
of our elites, it has fallen to us to make our demand for security and
responsible leadership clear. Until we can be certain that murderers like Kuntar
and the Silwan gang will never harm us again, we will not be able to sleep
soundly in our beds.

caroline@carolineglick.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: DISASTER DRILL at the Pi Glilot fuel depot, October 2002. A
botched terror attack in May of that year could have killed thousands. (Credit:
Yael Tzur/Israel Sun)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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946 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 4, 2008 Monday

Weekend in Hamastan

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 729 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Trying to distinguish between the good guys and the bad in the latest bout of
Gaza fighting is bit like trying to decide who to hire as a babysitter - the
Boston Strangler or Jack the Ripper.

Hamas may have been elected fair and square, yet its true orientation is
totalitarian. No surprise, then, that it has been using the cease-fire with
Israel, in effect since June 16, not only to prepare for the next round against
the Jewish state, but to smother rival factions.

Thus Hamas shut down the Gaza offices of the Ma'an news agency (an outfit funded
largely by Denmark) as well as the Sha'ab radio station, run by the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Even Islamic Jihad has been put on notice
to watch its behavior.

It's not as if Hamas faces much opposition. Perhaps its most significant
challenge comes from the Dughmush clan, which enriched itself by smuggling
weapons and contraband through tunnels dug under the Philadelphi Corridor into
Sinai, and the equally lucrative hostage- taking business. Clan leaders help
found the Popular Resistance Committees, a terror group active in the second
intifada and probably involved in capturing Gilad Schalit.

It would not be surprising, therefore, to discover that Dughmush was behind the
July 25 car-bombing along the Gaza beachfront which killed five Hamas
operatives, injured scores of passersby and took the life of a little girl. If
so, expect his clan to be the next Hamas target.

FOR ITS OWN Machiavellian reasons, Hamas blames exiled Fatah strongman Muhammad
Dahlan for the bombing. On Saturday it went after the Hilles clan, described by
the media as "loosely affiliated with Fatah movement."

Hamas cut off the clan's Gaza City stronghold. In the ensuing fighting, nine
Palestinians were killed; a residential building was reportedly blown up, with
people still in it; and Hamas sharpshooters aiming from minarets in nearby
mosques targeted anyone trying to flee.

Hamas even used tunnels dug in the area - originally for use against Israel - to
surprise the clan. At least 100 people were injured, including a dozen children.
Many more were taken into Hamas custody. Under withering Hamas fire, about 180
members of the clan, led by headman Ahmed Hilles, sought to enter Israel via the
Nahal Oz crossing, leaving their women and children behind.

At the request of Egypt and the Palestinian Authority - and as a humanitarian
gesture - Israel allowed the Hilles men in, with the intention of sending them
on to Mahmoud Abbas's Ramallah headquarters.

But in the murky world of Palestinian politics, relationships are seldom
straightforward. Far from being Dahlan stooges, the Hilles had actually tried to
assassinate Dahlan, together with Abbas, in November 2004, shortly after Yasser
Arafat died and Abbas went to Gaza to receive visitors in Fatah's mourning tent.
Abbas and Dahlan survived, but two of their bodyguards didn't.

Yesterday, after the dust had settled, Abbas did an about-face: At his request,
Israel "repatriated" to Gaza many of the men who had sought his protection in
Ramallah.

ISRAEL AND the West would do well to internalize, given this internecine
Palestinian violence, that Hamas's rule in Gaza is the best indicator to date of
how Palestinians would run their affairs in a fully independent Palestine. We
need also to recognize the failure of institution-building and due process in
the Abbas component of the PA thus far, as illuminated by the torture of Hamas
functionaries, on Fatah's behalf, by the Aksa Martyrs Brigade.

Dismally, despite the brutal nature of its Gaza rule, Hamas remains more popular
in the West Bank and Gaza than Abbas. This ongoing triumph of bellicosity and
intransigence over relative moderation is greatly assisted by Abbas's abject
failure to root out corruption from Fatah.

In such a climate, there aren't enough checkpoints in the West Bank Israel can
dismantle to "help" Abbas. Indeed, IDF pullbacks and eased security conditions
in the West Bank would simply set the stage for a Hamas takeover and leave
Israel more vulnerable to terrorism.

Plainly, lifting international sanctions on Hamas would be a flagrant reward for
Islamist violence and tyranny. At the same time, Hamas is a permanent fixture in
Palestinian politics. Rather than closing its eyes to this reality, Israel must
more thoroughly integrate awareness of it into its security and diplomatic
strategy.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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947 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 4, 2008 Monday

Does Hamas vs Fatah = Bolsheviks vs Mensheviks?

BYLINE: ANNA GEIFMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1281 words

HIGHLIGHT: Comparing the hostilities between rival Palestinian extremists to
those between Russian extremists 90 years ago may be instructive. The writer is
a professor of history at Boston University.

At 8.30 p.m. on July 25, an explosive device detonated outside the Hilal Cafe,
frequented by leading Hamas activists in Gaza City. The explosion occurred next
to a vehicle belonging to Nihad Masbah, a Hamas commander. Along with him, the
blast killed four other Hamas operatives and a four-year-old girl; more than 20
others were wounded.

Unexpectedly, the Hamas leadership did not blame Israel for this act of
violence. Instead it officially declared that "certain forces" within Gaza
sought to create anarchy in the city, but their efforts would be to no avail.

Specifically, Hamas leaders assigned responsibility for this terrorist attack to
Muhammad Dahlan, the former Palestinian Authority national security adviser.
Following the explosion, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh vowed to "seek
justice" and punish all responsible for bloodshed.

Hamas's security forces immediately began to make arrests throughout the city,
apprehending 160 people aligned with Fatah. The arrests set off a new wave of
the ongoing fighting between Hamas and Fatah factions.

That violence reached its height last aweekend, when nine Palestinians were
killed and more than 90 wounded in Gaza City in further clashes between the two
factions.

It is not the first time since Hamas gained control over the Gaza Strip 13
months ago that its combatants have opened fire at Fatah activists. With Israel
as their common enemy, extremists contest political power in the not yet
established Palestinian state. Like terrorists of other ideological orientations
throughout the world, they are also fighting over the control of scarce economic
resources. The Russian radical tradition is particularly illustrative of this
point.

BEFORE THE 1917 revolution, Russian terrorists, while frequently collaborating
against the hated imperial regime, did not enjoy an idyllic relationship of
comrades-in-arms. Often inter-faction rivalries resulted in violent exchanges of
verbal abuse and threats. Extremists from different groups stole money and
weapons from one another and engaged in physical fights.

When they could not peacefully settle conflicts - usually over expropriation
spoils - terrorists used weapons against one another, the argument all of them
understood best.

Time and again fortunes disappeared from party treasuries, radicals accusing one
another of pocketing the money. Some "comrades" tried to blackmail others for
cash, threatening to pronounce them police agents if they refused to comply.

They bickered and fought over the loot like common thieves and often disbanded
revolutionary cells. Then off each radical went (sometimes with a share of the
expropriated funds), and on many occasions joined rival combat groups,
disregarding any ideological and organizational conflicts that might have
previously separated the fellow-fighters.

'BEHIND the raging debates on the philosophies of Marxist materialism... lay the
politics of another kind of material: money," affirms historian Boris
Nicolaevsky, an expert on Bolshevik shady enterprises. He argues that the
ideological squabbles in the highest spheres of the Russian Social Democratic
Workers Party (RSDRP) were in fact over the control of the treasury, filled
primarily by expropriations ("exes") of state and private property.

The mastermind of the most profitable "exes" was the so-called Bolshevik Center,
a clandestine circle of Lenin's supporters within the predominantly Menshevik
central committee of the RSDRP. The center was under constant attack from the
less opportunistic, yet equally covetous Mensheviks, who had nothing against
expropriations per se and resented only the Bolshevik refusal to share the
proceeds. The Mensheviks demanded their share of the loot and threatened to
expel from the party's ranks the "bandits" and "thieves" - i.e., the instigators
and practitioners of the Bolshevik "exes."

AS A result, relations within the RSRDP were such that Maxim Litvinov, one of
Lenin's closest associates before 1917, once sent two Bolshevik combatants to
the party headquarters to demand 40,000 expropriated rubles that the Menshevik
central committee had spent. Litvinov threatened that if the money were not
returned to the Bolsheviks, the "guys" would "bump off" one of the central
committee members.

Following the November 1917 takeover, Lenin had no choice but to put aside his
dream of the unilateral Bolshevik regime and share power with the radical Left
Socialists-Revolutionaries (Left SRs). The Bolsheviks invited them to join the
coalition government, where the Left SR were given four commissar positions. The
Left SRs also held high posts within the Soviets' repressive organs, including
the notorious secret police force, the Cheka.

Along with the Bolsheviks, the Left SRs proceeded to enact Lenin's policy of the
Red Terror, aimed at eradicating "counterrevolutionaries" for any criticism of
the new administration.

On July 6, 1918, Left SR Iakov Blumkin assassinated the German ambassador in
Moscow, Count von Mirbach; to this day historians still disagree about the
motivation.

Some argue that the Left SRs were attempting to sabotage the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk, which Lenin's government had signed in March 1918, conceding to
Germany enormous territories and indemnities in exchange for peace, essential
for the survival of the Soviet regime.

Mirbach's assassination supposedly prompted a full- fledged Left SR uprising
against the Bolsheviks, who suppressed it and arrested the rebels' leadership,
which, Lenin claimed, had violated the two-party coalition.

According to another opinion, Blumkin, a leading member of the Cheka, acted on
the orders of its head, Bolshevik Feliks Dzerzhinsky. His aim was to provoke
Lenin's suppressive action against the Left SRs, who had no intention of
rebelling against the government. Mirbach's assassination and the ensuing
exchange of fire between former allies served to fulfill Lenin's underlying
purpose of establishing a single-party Bolshevik regime.

NEARLY a century later and at the other end of the world, the extremists are
following similar patterns of eliminating political rivals. Over the final
weekend of July, Hamas continued its repressive operations in Gaza, arresting in
total almost 200 Fatah activists.

Fatah retaliated: Fatah forces rounded up dozens of pro-Hamas politicians and
sympathizers across the West Bank, including 54 in Nablus.

The identities of those who stood behind the July 25 explosion will most likely
remain unknown, at least in the near future, but it is noteworthy that Hamas
rejected PA President Mahmoud Abbas's offer to initiate an independent inquiry.

Abbas, of course, has repeatedly denied the allegation that Fatah was behind the
bombing, but Hamas declared that a senior official loyal to Abbas had fled to
Israel to avoid apprehension in connection with the July 25 violence.

On July 28 Hamas banned the distribution of three Fatah-affiliated newspapers.
Its operatives arrested two journalists and sent death threats to others,
warning reporters against publishing materials in support of Fatah.

"Our work under Hamas has become extremely dangerous," complained one
journalist.

To suggest that in July 2008 the situation in Gaza is somewhat like that in
Moscow in July 1918 is to understand this point: The terrorist regime in the PA
is demonstrating a relentless determination to establish a dictatorship - which
is what the Bolsheviks aspired to. As masters of Russia, they never ceased to
employ violence to expand their pressure within and beyond the country's
borders.

The democratic community must take the historical precedent into account in
order to formulate an adequate reaction to the inter-faction conflict among the
PA extremists.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: HAMAS SECURITY forces fight Fatah in Gaza. Is the situation in
the summer of 2008 like that of Moscow in the summer of 1918? (Credit: AP)

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August 4, 2008 Monday

He ran the country well

BYLINE: JEFF BARAK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 852 words

HIGHLIGHT: But it takes more than managerial competency to make a good prime
minister. The writer is a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.

Shortly after the end of the Second Lebanon War, Ehud Olmert told newspaper
interviewers: "A prime minister doesn't need an agenda, he needs to run the
country." Putting the war to one side - a case of "How was the play, Mrs.
Lincoln?" - as well as the myriad of police investigations into his allegedly
criminal behavior, the general consensus is that Olmert did, in fact, run the
country well.

Despite the recent terror attacks in Jerusalem, Israeli citizens in the main are
more worried by gangsters having a shoot-out on the beach than terrorists, and
the economy is holding up well in the face of an international recession.
Tourists are back and world leaders have made a point of visiting this year to
help mark the country's 60th anniversary. And yet, Olmert will go down in
history as one of our most, if not the most, unpopular prime ministers.

The main reason for this is, of course, the Second Lebanon War. The public will
never forgive a leader who fails to meet its military expectations, as Golda
Meir also discovered in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. Olmert's mistake of
appointing Amir Peretz as defense minister and his hastiness in launching the
war sealed his eventual political fate, even though it took another two years
and only the increasing probability of a criminal indictment to make him realize
he had no choice but to stand down. Indeed, if it were not for the scandals
surrounding the prime minister, he would still be floundering in the polls, but
continuing to run the country.

'I LIKE my job," Olmert once told a Kadima forum, explaining why he would not
bow to the public's will and resign. But this remark, and his statement about
not needing an agenda, more than anything else explain why Olmert was unsuited
for the premiership. Leading a country is not a career move, and it takes more
than managerial competency to become a good prime minister. A leader needs
vision and, despite his fine words at Ben-Gurion's grave, Olmert had nothing in
practice to offer.

All his immediate predecessors sought, not always successfully, to leave their
mark on the country and build a better future. Ariel Sharon disengaged from the
Gaza Strip, while Ehud Barak failed in his brave attempt to reach a final-status
agreement with the Palestinians. Binyamin Netanyahu aimed to reshape Israeli
society and its economy, while Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres began the whole
Oslo process. Olmert has nothing similar to show for the time he stubbornly hung
on to office. His whole tenure as prime minister has been, at best, a waste of
time.

It is therefore depressing that none of Olmert's would-be successors in Kadima
are offering a compelling reason as to why they should be the next prime
minister. While there is a certain logic in Tzipi Livni presenting herself as
the antidote to Olmert in terms of ethical behavior, not having double-billed
for an airplane ticket or accepted dubious expenses are hardly the core
qualities demanded in a prime minister. With a recent cabinet meeting coming to
the conclusion that Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the Second
Lebanon War, was empty of meaning, Livni has little to show for her work as
foreign minister. She talks of the necessity of a two-state solution but has not
presented a convincing road map as to how we will reach this goal.

EVEN LESS inspiring is Shaul Mofaz. As transportation minister he has singularly
failed to address the impending danger to airline passengers at Ben-Gurion
Airport. According to Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Lapidot, head of the Public
Committee to Examine Civil Aviation Safety, Israel is "at a level of immediate
national danger and is already lagging 20 years behind the standards in properly
run countries." All Mofaz can do is counter that Lapidot is "sowing panic,"
while admitting that the country is not reaching the international standards of
safety to which it aspires.

In other countries, such a poorly performing minister would not dream of running
for the top job, but Mofaz is ignoring his present track record and running on
his security credentials as a former chief of General Staff and ex-defense
minister. Security experience by itself, however, is no guarantee of leadership
ability and as a recent chief of General Staff and defense minister, Mofaz
cannot escape responsibility for some of the IDF's shortcomings in the Second
Lebanon War.

One also has the sneaking feeling that Mofaz joined Kadima at the time of its
founding more because he saw the Likud disintegrating at the polls than out of
any deep ideological motivation. Two days before he joined Kadima, he proclaimed
that the Likud was his home which he would never leave and perhaps, in his
heart, he never did. His recent irresponsible remarks that Israel would have to
attack Iran, aside from leading to a sharp rise in oil prices, showed his
hawkish intentions.

With these less-than-inspiring candidates for prime minister, and the presence
of such political pygmies as Ruhama Avraham-Balila and Eli Aflalo around the
present cabinet table, the option of early elections is beginning to look more
and more attractive.

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GRAPHIC: Photo: EHUD OLMERT on Thursday. The country will never forgive a leader
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The Jerusalem Post

August 4, 2008 Monday

Letters

BYLINE: Michael Plaskow, Mottel Greenbaum, Joseph Feld, Raymond Cannon, E.G.
Cohl, Olga P. Wind, A. Weinberg, Prof. Elihu D. Richter, Leslie Portnoy, James
Adler, Rachel Birati

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1143 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Proud, indeed

Sir, - We should feel very proud that British Chief Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks is
the first rabbi to have addressed the Lambeth Conference in its 140-year
history. He is a brilliant orator, and the fact that he received two standing
ovations was a true kiddush Hashem - a sanctification of God's name ("Sacks
becomes first rabbi to address major Anglican bishops' conference," August 3).

MICHAEL PLASKOW

Netanya

Sir, - One hopes this opportunity will enable Rabbi Sacks to quietly try to
influence the Anglican community re the importance of keeping the Noahide Laws,
which include the biblical standards of appropriate sexual practices; thus
strengthening the hands of those in the gentile world who are fighting to
maintain a sense of holiness and not give the idea that everything is acceptable
as long as you mean well.

MOTTEL GREENBAUM

Melbourne

Sir, - Chief Rabbi Sacks's address to the Lambeth Conference reminded me of the
previous chief rabbi Lord Jakobovits's speech in the Lords, calling upon
Christians to protect their Sunday closing laws and traditional day of rest. He
was more outspoken than many Christians in the Lords.

It was good to hear Sir Jonathan calling on Anglicans to overcome their
differences and get together for the sake of the nation. We need clear and
shared basic moral values and commitment to making the world a better place.

JOSEPH FELD

London

Shocked...

Sir, - The Knesset's vote to allow haredi schools to be publicly financed
without having to teach a core curriculum demonstrated Shas's talent for
blackmailing a weak and unprincipled government.

From the haredi standpoint it is essential to keep their communities mired in
ignorance, to empower the rabbis to control and manipulate their hapless
followers.

Those MKs from Kadima and Labor who conspired to pass such legislation should
hang their head in shame and be hounded from political life ("State to fund
haredi students who don't learn core subjects like math and English," July 24).

RAYMOND CANNON

Netanya

...to the core

Sir, - What purpose did it serve to publish "Tolerance, without state funding"
(July 31)? Perhaps Evelyn Gordon would be willing to meet some of the sweet
little children from these haredi schools. They would not be bringing knives or
chains with them.

If the state schools are so good, why do so many Russian immigrants send their
children to the Shuvu schools?

E. G. COHL

Bnei Brak

Sir, - How sad that there are those who finish high school without knowing how
to recite the Shema Yisrael, as Leah S. Wolf noted in "Core curriculum"
(Letters, July 31). After paying so dearly to have a Jewish state, we had better
hurry and find a happy medium: A modern state based on ancient traditions.

OLGA P. WIND

Holon

Sir, - Ms. Wolf is well-intentioned in wanting an education based on Torah
Judaism, but we live in the here and now. Learning the basics of math is
important, too; as is reading so haredim can stay informed about the secular
world instead of relying heavily on a teacher whose knowledge of it is limited.
We need to understand where Israel fits into the world and fight our enemies
with knowledge, not just guns.

The imams teach from the Koran only, and breed fanatic warriors. We have to be
better than that! In teaching reading outside of Torah, we may actually deepen
our understanding of it.

An educational system that teaches only religion will graduate students who
forever receive charity and cannot do any meaningful work.

A. WEINBERG

Rehovot

In praise of Mofaz

Sir, - Critics, including in your newspaper, have disparaged Shaul Mofaz's lack
of a social philosophy, policy and experience (Letters, July 29). Although I met
Mr. Mofaz only once - a quick handshake - we have interacted directly on a set
of important social issues which I believe shed light on his values and
judgment:

* In the Kishon disaster, as defense minister, he sided with Justice Meir
Shamgar against the majority of the Kishon Commission and decided to recognize
the case for a cause-effect relationship between the toxic effluents from
emissions into the Kishon River-Bay system and the excess risks among naval
divers. His statement that the IDF must do everything it can to protect the
health and safety of its soldiers was remarkable. In overruling those
questioning the cause-effect relationship, he accepted the principle that the
burden of proof is on those denying these risks.

* Applying the same principle, Mr. Mofaz overruled Defense Ministry officials
and ordered the dismantling of a broadcasting transmission antenna near Kibbutz
Naan, where there was a cancer cluster attributable in part to the non- ionizing
radiation.

* Mofaz, as transportation minister, saved many lives by effectively killing
proposals to formally raise the maximum speed limit to 110 kph on our highways.
He overruled recommendations approved by his predecessor Meir Sheetrit - whose
wife's firm was PR adviser to the Trans- Israel Highway, the major lobby for
increased speeds on our highways. Under Mofaz, the ministry consistently
supports a nationwide speed camera program to kill speed, though it could be
more energetic in doing so.

* Mr. Mofaz has provided steady support for the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem fast train
line, going against the prime minister, who tried to kill the project and put
the money into new highways instead - the showpieces of Asphalt Zionism.

Just about every minister I have ever had to deal with has been part of the
problem. Mofaz has been part of the solution.

PROF. ELIHU D RICHTER

Occupational and Environmental Medicine

Hebrew University

Jerusalem

Christianrein

Sir, - In his letter "Olmert's successor" (August 3), James A. Marples of Texas
suggested that our new premier should be "a Christian from the Bethlehem area."

What a pity that the foreign media have consistently failed to report that in
the areas ruled by the Palestine Authority, Christians are an endangered and
vanishing species, harassed and tormented by Hamas and the other jihadists until
they emigrate.

LESLIE PORTNOY

Netanya

Eloquent outrage

Sir, - Let me suggest that both Judy Montagu ("The story behind 'Dear Sir,'"
July 30) and her friendly critic Judy Prager ("About 'venting,'" Letters, July
31) are right. The point is not that anger shouldn't be in a letter to the
editor, but how it is expressed.

No one likes being shouted at. There are no angry exclamation points on the
plaques at Auschwitz, or at Yad Vashem. The most eloquent outrage is quiet and
understated, and it is then that we are capable of being changed.

We are moved by "angry," so long as calm appeals to reason with controlled
passion. For those who prefer the option of shouting and exclamation points,
there are the talkbacks.

JAMES ADLER

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Sir, - This op-ed helped me appreciate my own fascination with the letters
section of the paper and the important role it plays.

RACHEL BIRATI , Melbourne

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August 3, 2008 Sunday

Interfaith, Saudi-style

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 724 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

My brothers, we must tell the world that differences don't need to lead to
disputes. The tragedies we have experienced throughout history were not the
fault of religion, but because of the extremism that has been adopted by some
followers of all the religions, and of all political systems.

- Saudi King Abdullah, Madrid, July 16

It would be naive to make too much - though self- defeating to make too little -
of the ecumenical World Conference on Dialogue hosted by the monarch of Arabia.

For years savvy Western observers of a radicalized Muslim world have insisted
that the only reliable antidote to the toxicity of Islamism is a religious
reformation from within. It is premature to suppose that what happened in Spain
last month was the "beginning of the beginning" of a Muslim reformation. Yet it
may be that key Muslim religious and political figures have come to appreciate
the perilous consequences of a rapacious Islam - not only for its non- Muslim
prey, but for those who embrace the faith as well. The Islamist revolution has
already begun to consume its own. Al-Qaida's first and primary target: the Saudi
monarchy itself.

SO THERE can be no deprecating the ecumenical importance of King Abdullah having
invited Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist figures to Madrid - not
really for a dialogue, but to listen to a series of presentations. Plainly, the
king was making an effort, after a fashion, to connect Islam to other religions
and make Saudi Arabia less insular.

The king set the stage for his ecumenical foray in June by gathering Sunni and
Shi'ite leaders in Mecca - no small feat given the depth of religious
closed-mindedness within Saudi Arabia, a country where Salafism, the extreme
version of reactionary Wahhabism, rules.

That Abdullah, the Custodian of Mecca and Medina, decided to dialogue with
Shi'ites, Sufis and Ismailis on religious matters did not receive wholehearted
endorsement from the country's clerical establishment. This is, after all, a
society where religious, political and economic discrimination against
non-believers is enshrined as a societal norm. Only by grasping the intolerance
of the milieu in which the king operates can the relative boldness of his intra-
and interreligious efforts be evaluated.

Abdullah is undeniably a maverick. In November 2007, he became the first Saudi
monarch to visit the Vatican and meet with the leader of the Catholic Church.

Abdullah has also taken relatively modernizing steps to reform the Saudi legal
and educational systems. Analysts suggest that the real purpose of the king's
ecumenical outreach might be domestic - to influence Wahhabi clerics by creating
new theological facts on the ground.

THE JEWISH invitees to the Madrid "dialogue" comprised a virtual Who's Who of
European and American lay and rabbinical figures involved in ecumenical work
from across the Jewish spectrum. Its organizers withdrew a shameful invitation
to the Neturei Karta when the faux pas was exposed.

But what to make of the organizers' refusal to invite an Israeli theologian?
Even if we accept that beyond its ostensible ecumenical purpose the gathering's
underlying mission was mostly reforming Islam from within, the hypocrisy of
holding a religious "dialogue" while blacklisting Israelis is disappointing. And
though Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee lives in Israel, the
Saudis adhered to their boycott of the Jewish state by sending his invitation to
the AJC's Manhattan headquarters.

CRITICS ARGUE that the event's Jewish participants, if they had to attend at
all, should have taken an openly adversarial stance and denounced Saudi
political and religious fanaticism. It's doubtful, however, that haranguing
Muslims is the best way to convey the idea that politico-religious differences
should be amicably addressed.

Rosen - who points out that many Muslims he encountered during mealtimes in
Madrid had never before met a Jew, much less a rabbi - may well be right that
the Madrid gathering offers a "significant opportunity that must be seized,"
whatever King Abdullah's motives.

Indeed, Israelis would be delighted to "seize" the next chance to participate in
a Saudi-sponsored interfaith meeting. If, however, the Jewish state were again
excluded, responsible Jewish representatives would want to ask themselves if
future participation was warranted.

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August 3, 2008 Sunday

A sporting chance

BYLINE: LIAT COLLINS

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1151 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Olympics have been marred by politics and terror more than once.
Here's hoping this year's games break records only of the sporting kind. First
published in the International Edition of August 1, 2008.

The Olympics are not just fun and games. In July 1972, as my class of
11-year-olds was finishing elementary school in London (or primary school, as we
called it), we were asked to write an essay on where we would be in 10 years'
time. A fanatic Francophile at the time, thanks to annual summer vacations in
France, I envisaged a future in which I would have finished studying at the
Sorbonne and would be teaching English in Paris. My predictions didn't even come
close. As it turned out, in 1982 I finished serving in the IDF and started
studying Chinese and international relations at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. What blew my plans so off course? The Munich Olympics. The ink of the
teacher's tick in the margin of my essay had barely dried before my whole
outlook on life had changed. When the 11 Israeli athletes were slain at the
games in Germany, I lost my childhood innocence.

Actually, first I fell in love. A keen competitive swimmer, I adored Mark Spitz,
and cut out his picture from the paper with that typical preteen infatuation as
he won gold medal after gold medal - all seven of them. Spitz was not the only
reason I was following the Olympic swimming events. A member of my own swimming
club was participating and I was glued to the TV coverage when news of the
Israeli hostage situation broke.

Was my teammate safe? Yes, explained my mum, it was only Israelis who were being
held hostage. And then she added, in an aside that changed my life, that Spitz
had been whisked away from the Olympic Village and wasn't in any danger either.
Why? Because he's Jewish. But he's not Israeli? No, but he's Jewish, so he might
be a target, too.

That was all it took. For the first time I truly understood that Israel wasn't
just a place name in my prayer book and the fate of the Jews and Israelis were
intertwined. That exchange and the images of the bodies of the slain athletes
going back home in coffins set me on a path that was to bring me to Israel. It
is very poor consolation that the terror outrage - at the event that was meant
to confirm Munich's place in the new, happier post- World War II era - led to at
least one more family making aliya, but I know it would annoy the hell out of
our enemies, sore losers at the worst of times.

The world watched the attack and botched rescue but after a one-day hiatus the
"the games must go on" philosophy won. It was, perhaps, the birth of terrorism
as a media event. Nobody wanted dead Jews ruining the fun.

Of course I have watched the Olympics in subsequent years, but it has always
been with one eye on security.

ISRAEL HAS never exactly excelled at the Olympics. One wonders what would have
happened if an entire cadre of sportsmen hadn't been slain at Munich.
Unfortunately, Jews often look at past events in Germany and wonder: What if?

The very rarity of Israel's Olympic successes, on the other hand, makes every
one count. The country comes together to celebrate. When judoka Yael Arad won
Israel's first medal, a silver at Barcelona in 1992, she became an instant local
icon. Oren Smadja, who won a bronze in the same sport at the same games, also
become a hero. Arik Ze'evi's bronze in judo in Athens in 2004 cemented the
popularity of the sport with a younger generation of Israelis. I'm sure my son
will be following the judo at the Beijing games with all the enthusiasm and
hero-worship a six-year-old yellow belt can show.

Gal Fridman's gold medal in sailing at Athens had Israel riding a wave of
national pride. Israel's hopes this year are still pinned on water-based events.
Kayaker Michael Kolganov will be carrying the flag at the opening ceremony,
although the country is looking more to yachters Udi Gal and Gidi Kliger to
hopefully provide more medals. Tennis champs Andy Ram and Yoni Erlich and Shahar
Pe'er and Tzipi Obziler are expected to score points where it counts. And it's
not too long a shot to hope the shooting team is on target.

As for me, I'll be keeping half an eye on American swimmer Dara Torres. Any
woman who can compete in the Olympics at the age of 41 - particularly the mother
of a two-year-old - is both a winner and a good sport in my opinion and has
definitely earned her place in the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Of course, mainly I'll be hoping the games aren't marred by drugs and scandals -
or that specter of global terror that has hung over every major sporting event
since 1972, courtesy of (Nobel Peace Prize-winner) Yasser Arafat. The
Palestinians' successes in terror a la Munich have spawned other attacks, each
competing for deadly attention. The world watched as Black September in 1972
turned into September 11, 2001. And sadly it still doesn't seem to have figured
out that giving Arafat the legitimacy it did (remember his gun-and-olive-branch
appearance at the UN in '74?) encouraged the "struggle against the Zionist
entity" to turn into global jihad, in which nowhere is safe.

In this light, the international outcry over the decision to hold the games in
Beijing seems rather two- faced. China has, it is true, failed to clean up its
act as promised on either human rights or pollution. Although athletes could
hardly breathe easy in Athens and human rights are sadly violated all over the
world - even in the US, Britain and my former love, France. France, indeed, has
some draconian infringements of basic rights: the ban on Muslim schoolgirls
wearing head coverings within the school gates is a debatable way of stopping
the spread of radical Islam.

My former home, England, too, is struggling to come to terms with the new
threats. As the Post reported on July 28, nearly a third of British Muslim
students polled in a new report said that killing in the name of religion could
be justified. The report by the London-based Center for Social Cohesion,
entitled "Islam on Campus: A Survey of UK Student Opinion," showed that 32
percent of Muslim students said killing in the name of religion could be
justified, while 60% of active members of on-campus Islamic societies held that
opinion. Only 2% of non-Muslims polled felt the same way.

As a result, I am no longer surprised that my Jerusalem neighborhood is becoming
home to increasing numbers of new immigrants arriving from France and Britain.
The two countries fought over which country was more deserving to host the 2012
Olympics - Britain won the most challenging security event in the global jihad
village. But for the Jewish people there is only one home: Israel. As I watch
the Olympics and hope for Israeli successes, I'll spare a thought for the
victims of the Munich massacre, cut down before they had the chance to see the
state grow and witness its successes (and failures). And always remember, it
might not be nearly so grand, but the four-yearly sporting event which saw Mark
Spitz's international debut was the "Jewish Olympics," the 1965 Maccabiah.

Let the games begin. May sporting spirit triumph.

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The Jerusalem Post

August 3, 2008 Sunday

The 'Economist' rewrites history

BYLINE: ZALMAN SHOVAL

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 588 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is a former Israeli ambassador to the United States.

The respectable British Economist is compulsory reading for most people who want
to know what's going on in the world - but it is probably not the first place
one would go to if one were looking for objective reporting about the State of
Israel.

In one of its recent issues, under the heading "Lost Land," the magazine
"reviewed" a book called Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape
(Scribner) by a certain Raja Shehadeh, portrayed as a lawyer and writer living
in Ramallah. Though his oeuvre is lyrically described as a "superbly written
book," it is in fact a blatant political pamphlet hiding under the guise of a
description of walks in Palestine. However, instead of publishing the article
under the heading of "Politics," the Economist prefers to include it in "Books
and Arts" - contrary, by the way, to the trustees of the Orwell Prize, who more
honestly, awarded Shehadeh a grant for what it is, i.e. political writing.

Shehadeh, who by his own account is something of a political extremist for whom
even Yasser Arafat was too moderate, actually makes no secret of his real
intentions in publishing the tract, but the Economist goes out of its way in
uncritically spreading the author's political and factually false line. So we
have the article saying: "It is something of an irony that a land whose timeless
beauty has survived basically unchanged since biblical times is being
transformed by a people who base their claim to it on biblical history...
Wildernesses have become national parks that are barred to Palestinians; and
Arab villages that once blended organically into the landscape are little more
than besieged ghettos."

There is more in the same vein, standing historical truth on its head; the
country's erstwhile beauty had indeed been tampered with - but by whom? If the
Economist's reviewer had taken the trouble to read some of the descriptions of
Palestine in the 19th century, by for instance, Mark Twain and Herman Melville
(who described Jerusalem as an "empty skull") he might have learned how the
beauty of biblical Israel had indeed been despoiled during centuries of Ottoman
and Arab rule.

Mark Twain in his The Innocents Abroad writes: "The grass ought to be sparkling
with dew, the flowers enriching the air with their fragrance, and the birds
singing in the trees. But, alas, there is no dew here, nor flowers, nor birds,
nor trees." And in another passage: "There was hardly a tree or a shrub
anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus... had almost deserted the country." And
when he comes to Jerusalem, he describes it as "mournful and dreary and
lifeless" - and with what would hardly be considered today as politically
correct, he adds - "Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and
symbols that indicate the presence of Muslim rule more surely than the crescent
flag itself."

After the majority of the Jews had been expelled from the land and following the
Arabs' incursion, it became over time completely deforested, its fields decayed
into desert and as a result of soil erosion, large areas became malaria-infested
swamps. Only with the return of the country's rightful owners, the Jews, did
this sad chapter of ruination end.

Millions of trees were planted, swamps were dried and the land was progressively
restored to its former biblical glory. Once the Palestinians will finally agree
to make peace with Israel and the Jewish people, Shehadeh will hopefully resume
his walks in the country and perhaps even write about it without straying from
the path of truth.

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August 3, 2008 Sunday

Letters

BYLINE: Batya Berlinger, A. Levy, James A. Marples, Isadore Solomon, Leah S.
Wolf, Jeffrey Lieder, Miriam L. Gavarin

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 917 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Congratulations, Larry

Sir, - Mazel Tov to the Derfners. May you have much naches from your son. It was
so nice to read that a spark of Jewishness was lit ("The wonders of normative
Judaism," July 31).

Perhaps Mr. Derfner will rethink his attitude toward intermarriage, as expressed
a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps he will want his grandchildren to be Jewish,
according to Jewish Law. Perhaps he'll be a bit interested in exploring what
being Jewish really means. His son read from the Torah; perhaps now is the time
to start learning what it means.

BATYA BERLINGER

Jerusalem

Sir, - I've had my differences with Larry Derfner, but this was beautiful,
sincere.

I think the Almighty would approve.

A. LEVY

Tel Aviv

Olmert's successor

Sir, - Re "Olmert, bitter but dignified, says he'll quit" (July 31): I am glad
Ehud Olmert is stepping aside. I had little confidence in him, and his
decision-making abilities didn't seem solid or reliable.

I wish Israel could get a Christian from the Bethlehem area to be the new
premier - someone who would walk uprightly in the Judeo-Christian tradition,
aspire to promote reliable security, and instill absolute confidence both inside
Israel and abroad.

JAMES A. MARPLES

Longview, Texas

Court of disfavor

Sir, - Re "A just dilemma" (Josh Scheinert, July 29): Lord Daffyd Eli-Thomas,
presiding officer of the Welsh Assembly, e-mailed members of the assembly in
June to boycott a meeting with Israeli Ambassador to Britain Ron Prosor, who had
been invited by a Muslim member of the assembly, Mohammed Asgher, to a meeting
intended to promote interfaith dialogue.

Lord Eli-Thomas wrote: "I am unwilling to accept the invitation to meet the
ambassador because of my objection to the failure of the State of Israel to meet
its international obligations to the Palestinian people of the Holy Land. I
would invite other colleagues to do the same."

The Welsh Assembly is a mini-parliament for the principality of Wales. Lord
Eli-Thomas has, I am certain, as much knowledge of Israel's international
obligations to thePalestinians as I have of the way the people on Mars organize
their parliament.

It is ironic that the meeting was arranged by a Muslim, and yet a chapel-going
Christian of impeccable Welsh ancestry should spout such obstructive rhetoric.

In light of the above, does anyone in their right mind imagine that Israel would
be fairly treated by an international body such as the International Criminal
Court?

ISADORE SOLOMON

Beit Shemesh

Core curriculum

Sir, - As a long-time fan of Evelyn Gordon's writing and thinking, I felt I had
to respond to "Tolerance, without state funding" (July 31).

As a teacher in Israel over the past 30 years in every Jewish sector of the
population, I've long wondered who decides what our "core curriculum" should be.

When so many of our Jewish students graduate high school without knowing how to
say the Shema Yisrael - or even what it is - or why we live in this Promised
Land; when, sadly, they speak Hebrew but don't identify as Jews, did they get
the core curriculum?

Over half of our high school graduates, according to polls I've read, have never
visited Jerusalem. Teachers in the school system don't know how to recite the
basic blessing over bread. Jewish children don't know what the Machpela Cave
means to us and our history. Do they get the core curriculum?

When I hear my little grandchildren relate the stories they've learned in their
heder, I am amazed at the brilliant ways the rebbes have created to transmit
difficult concepts in bite-size portions to their little charges. I am amazed at
the arithmetic games our six-year- old plays. Although it's a very different
educational system than the one our children had, I think we can learn a lot
from the pedagogical methods of these rebbes.

If we are to survive as a Jewish state, our "core curriculum" has to include the
basics of Torah Judaism, which is permeated with love of Zion and Israel. The
question I would ask: Should the majority be funding education that leaves Torah
out of its curriculum?

LEAH S. WOLF

Metar

Jerusalem put

new heart into him

Sir, - Judy Siegel-Itzkovich once again presented a detailed yet clear
explanation of a new, advanced procedure being performed, at Shaare Tzedek ("For
the first time in Israel, heart valves replaced using catheter rather than
open-chest surgery," July 31).

One note: The male patient mentioned, Gerald Lieder, is not a tourist. He is a
Holocaust survivor who lived in the United States for 50 years and, in 1996,
fulfilled his lifelong dream of aliya to Jerusalem, along with his wife.

One of the primary reasons he agreed to the procedure was that he sees it as a
tremendous blessing and accomplishment for the State of Israel to be able to
offer one more contribution to the world of remarkable medical advances.

Gerald Lieder is my father, and I am proud to be his son.

JEFFREY LIEDER

Ra'anana

Mom's kitchen closes

Sir, - Judy Montagu's Short Order column was like popping into your
forever-young mother's kitchen on Shabbat Eve for a quick hello and sampling of
the easy-to-prepare and tasty dishes that she hadn't slaved over - not only
saving her energy but leaving us, the recipients of her recipes, blessedly
guilt-free ("Bean there, done that," UpFront, July 25).

That the column's chat included snippets of wisdom and such adventures as the
hazardous episode of the chewing gum in an upscale eatery's teacup only added to
the zest.

Thank you, "mother" Judy, and hoping that Short Order will reappear in book
format.

MIRIAM L. GAVARIN

Jerusalem

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August 3, 2008 Sunday

Obfuscation and oversimplification

BYLINE: YORAM SCHWEITZER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 784 words

HIGHLIGHT: The problem is not that Daniel Pipes is not Israeli - it's that he
ignores the context of the prisoner deal. The writer is the director of the
Terrorism and Low Intensity Warfare Project at Tel Aviv University's Institute
for National Security Studies.

In his last column ("May an American comment on Israel," July 28), Dr. Daniel
Pipes reduced a discussion of the pressures and dilemmas that confront Israeli
officials during hostage exchange negotiations into a debate over whether
experts should be allowed to air opinions on matters with which they have no
personal experience. This constitutes a glib subversion of an important
conversation.

The right to voice one's thoughts, irrespective of the degree of one's
first-hand knowledge of the issues in question, is a linchpin of academic, and
indeed democratic, discourse and is not in dispute. The problem with Pipes' last
two offerings doesn't lie with the fact that he isn't an Israeli citizen.
Rather, it is that he reduces a complex issue to a sound byte, completely
ignores the context of the matter at hand and harshly attacks Israeli officials
for their handling of this latest crisis.

To briefly review: Throughout this nation's history, at least five
administrations have exchanged imprisoned terrorists for Israeli hostages after
it was determined that an operational window to rescue these hostages by force
hadn't and wouldn't present itself. In fact, past administrations often paid
prices to secure the release of hostages that were equivalent to the price that
the current administration paid in the "Kuntar bargain."

In each of these cases, including the most recent one, the realization that it
would be impossible to affect a military resolution posed an agonizing dilemma
for the leadership and public. On the one hand, Israel was eager to return
captives to their homes and to demonstrate to the nation's soldiers and their
parents that no reasonable effort would be spared to redeem the country's
defenders. As such, the nation was strongly moved to enter negotiations with
hostile organizations and ultimately pay whatever price, within reason. Israelis
were fully aware, though, that by doing so, they risked not only appearing weak
and thus degrading their capacity to deter their enemies, but giving terrorists
an incentive to use this tactic in the future.

IN EACH case, Israel decided between these two equally valid yet diametrically
opposed arguments and their attendant dangers only after extensive public and
governmental debate. Over time, the surety that the nation would stoop to
bargain for hostages' lives even with its worst enemies became a key part of
Israel's social contract. It could not, then, be cast aside by the current
administration as lightly as Pipes might have liked.

With the above said, it should also be noted that while past decisions to
negotiate with terrorists were supported by the public, a vocal minority -
including some respected figures - has, throughout, disputed this choice's
wisdom. The opinions of this minority are widely seen as legitimate, and its
right to participate in the dialogue is never called into question. The
opposition though, even when it criticized the government's choice, never
denigrated those who made the decision, because it respected the gravity of the
circumstances.

Given these points, Pipes might be advised to revisit the precedents that
informed the latest swap and delve deeper into the full complexity of the
gut-clenching choices that confront policy makers in these situations. A good
first step in this regard would be to closely observe the upcoming negotiations
with Hamas for the return of IDF soldier Gilad Schalit. For more than two years,
the government has rejected Hamas' exorbitant demands. This, coupled with the
efforts it is investing to address the aforementioned opposing considerations,
should assure Pipes that Israel hasn't degenerated into mental midgetry and that
the nation's negotiators are doing the utmost to minimize the situation's bitter
consequences.

In this vein, it is worth noting that Hamas' demands for 450 convicts with blood
on their hands were submitted long before Hizbullah won its alleged sweeping
victory. Thus, Hamas's asking price cannot be linked to the Hizbullah deal.

Hizbullah's skillfully orchestrated attempt to enlarge the appearance that it
had triumphed in these last negotiations succeeded in tricking even those who
are not its supporters into unwittingly accepting this premise, and thus into
propagating the false idea that it had won a sweeping victory here. It is to be
hoped that now that the media frenzy has subsided somewhat, we can prepare
ourselves to face this upcoming, and considerably more complex challenge more
soberly. Israel will certainly welcome the advice of experts with vast
experience in such matters, such as Pipes and his like, in its attempts to
minimize the expected costs of returning Schalit home safely and as soon as
possible.

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August 1, 2008 Friday

A long good-bye

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 722 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

On Wednesday evening Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the citizens of Israel that
he would resign as soon as a new Kadima Party leader was chosen in September.

It may be a long good-bye.

Chances are Olmert will stay on for weeks, possibly months, beyond the September
17 Kadima primary. He will likely wait until his successor forms a government,
perhaps in October. If Kadima can't pull a coalition together, general elections
will probably be scheduled for early 2009; the winner will then need time to
form a government.

Olmert doesn't intend to spend the coming months in caretaker mode. Saying
Israel is "closer than ever to firm understandings that can serve as a basis for
agreements" on both the Palestinian and Syrian tracks, he is hoping for a deal
with Mahmoud Abbas and Bashar Assad.

THERE ARE two things Israel cannot afford. The first is a lengthy vacuum in the
conduct of our security, political and diplomatic affairs. The second is a bad
diplomatic deal that could be seen as binding on Olmert's successor.

Olmert must resist the temptation to give more than he should in bargaining, and
more than he would in other circumstances in order to tie up a legacy-building
accord.

But why not put diplomacy on hold until a new government is formed? Because the
clock is ticking, whether we like it or not. The reason Israel is negotiating
with Abbas - besides pressure from the international community - is that the
status quo is untenable.

Israel needs to remain both Jewish and democratic, as well as economically,
culturally and politically aligned with America and Europe. That means Jerusalem
must strive continuously for an accommodation with the relative moderates among
the Palestinians.

That said, it is the Palestinians who remain obdurate. They insist on an Israeli
withdrawal to the untenable 1949 Armistice Lines, and show no flexibility on
such key issues as Jerusalem and refugees. Abbas, moreover, may not be able to
deliver a deal even if he wanted to; his polity is fragmented and he's done
nothing to prepare the Palestinians for compromise - nothing to emphasize to his
own people the legitimacy of the Jews' sovereign claims.

Hamas, for its part, is spinning Olmert's resignation as proof that negotiating
with Israel is a waste of time. Yet it's nothing of the sort. Were Abbas cast
more in the mold of an Anwar Sadat or a King Hussein, a breakthrough would be
more likely. And seven years of Hamas bombardment of Israeli territory from Gaza
hasn't helped matters.

EVEN AS Israel looks inward, awaiting the formation of the next government, its
security and diplomatic concerns are ever more pressing. Hamas continues to hold
sway in Gaza and to build up arms for the next round of fighting. Hizbullah
ascendancy in Lebanese politics grows while it lays the groundwork for future
aggression. Iran perseveres in bringing centrifuges on-line as it spins toward a
nuclear weapon. The Syrian track demands skillful handling to ensure that no
genuine opportunity for peace is missed - and no bad deal is hastily arrived at.

Across the Atlantic, George Bush's term as president expires in six months. Time
flies, and we are mindful that there may be opportunities Israel can best take
while this unusually empathetic president remains in power.

Whether it is talks with Abbas, managing the security situation along our
northern border and with Gaza or pursuing efforts to free Gilad Schalit, the
country's foreign and security predicament cannot be put on hold.

THAT IS why now more than ever, personal animosities notwithstanding, Ehud
Olmert must demonstrably put country before self. It is imperative that fateful
decisions whose consequences may extend far into the future be reached via
leadership consensus.

Olmert must, as he has promised, coordinate with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni
and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, as well as with Transportation Minister Shaul
Mofaz in his capacity as minister in charge of strategic dialogue with the US on
Iran. He should also solicit input from opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu.

Ehud Olmert did not have the benefit of a smooth transition when he took over
from the stricken Ariel Sharon in January 2006. To the extent that he winds down
his tenure in an atmosphere characterized by consultation and stability he will
be doing both his legacy and the country a great service.

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August 1, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Juup (Julia) Sobelman, Jerry & Sylvia Dortz, Albert Rettig, Jacob
Mendlovic

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 499 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Unhumble Olmert

Sir, - Ehud Olmert has a hutzpa ("Olmert: Israel has become 'a nation of
grumblers,'" July 31). Even if he is right, who is to blame? He travels
first-class, stays in sumptuous hotels, and more - and if he does not receive
monies from friends, it's at the taxpayers' cost.

If Israel's needy cannot be taken care of; if Holocaust survivors cannot live on
their pittance - but also cannot "die soon enough"; if people in the South are
afraid to breathe and children have nightmares about Kassams - and our prime
minister cannot alleviate their situation, he ought to be ashamed. But he isn't.

Prime ministers such as David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and Menachem Begin lived
modest lives in modest houses. Olmert should think again before he blames the
Israeli "grumblers."

JUUP (JULIA) SOBELMAN

Petah Tikva

Sir, - He was a man of such promise. But he wasted the talent and opportunities
afforded him to lead Israel to a more secure future. It is our sadness over what
might have been that compels us to hope Ehud Olmert might one day atone for his
misdeeds and become a better human being.

JERRY& SYLVIA DORTZ

Ariel

UNHCR's role

Sir, - "Knesset caucus to focus on Palestinian refugees - alternative to UNRWA
seeks resettlement of some refugees in other countries" (July 30) prompted this
question:

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), established in 1950, superseded
the previous International Refugee Organization (IRO), established in 1946. The
IRO terminated its work in 1952, having resettled something in the order of
1,000,000 persons. Why not turn to the existing and experienced UNHCR to handle
the Palestinian refugee situation?

ALBERT RETTIG

Tel Aviv

Urban life

Sir, - I was glad to read your editorial "Save Tel Aviv's Kikar Hamedina" (July
27) advocating that the circle should remain an open space. It indicates that in
Israel, as elsewhere in the developed world, the quality of life in urban areas
is a major issue.

Yet when I visited Jerusalem last year, I noticed the monstrous building of Bank
Hapoalim on Zion Square and the Beit Ha'am main library on Bezalel St., with its
substandard book collection and dearth of computers.

Unfortunately, because Israelis are so preoccupied with security and defense
they do not have as much time as other Western nations to fight for the features
that make a city delightful: striking architecture, buildings congruous with
their surroundings, recycled older buildings, preserved historical neighborhoods
and parks. In Canadian cities there are vigorous watchdog groups.

It is precisely because besieged Israelis live in a pressure cooker that they
should have a special regard for harmonious cities. When one reads in the
Pentateuch of the beauty of Eretz Yisrael, one should consider not only its
natural scenery but also its built environment.

The developers who want to build the massive apartment towers in Kikar Hamedina,
overpowering the attractive district, will kill the goose that lays the golden
egg.

JACOB MENDLOVIC, Toronto

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August 1, 2008 Friday

Kadima's legacy of nothingness

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1846 words

HIGHLIGHT: Column One

After the dust settled on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's surprise announcement
Wednesday evening that he will resign from office after Kadima's leadership
primary on September 17, the main question is, What possessed him to act as he
did?

Olmert did not actually resign from office in the normal sense of the term. That
is, he's not planning to leave office any time soon. What Olmert did was force
Israel into a long period of governmental instability.

According to the elections law, when a prime minister announces his resignation,
his government is immediately transformed into a transition government that will
remain in power until either Olmert's successor forms a governing coalition or
until the winner of the next general election forms a governing coalition. If
Olmert's successor forms a new governing coalition after the September 17
primary, Israelis won't go to the polls until March 2010. But if Olmert's
replacement as Kadima head is unable to form a coalition, Israel will have a
general election by March 2009 at the latest. In the latter scenario, Olmert's
transition government will remain in power until the winners of that election
form a governing coalition. And that could take up to three more months.

So far from leaving office anytime soon, Olmert will remain in power at least
three more months, and perhaps for as long as 10 months.

Olmert's non-resignation resignation speech was filled with protestations of
patriotism. But it is hard to see how his announcement served the national
interest. If Olmert had wanted to do what is best for the country, then he would
have announced that his resignation was effective immediately. This would have
set the course for a general election in November.

In the interim, and in light of the intensifying security crisis with Iran, a
caretaker government could have been formed that would have encompassed all
willing Zionist parties represented in the Knesset. If such a government were
formed, Israel could have attacked Iran's nuclear installations with the full
backing of the Knesset and the people. The political cost of such a vital
operation would have been borne equally by all of Israel's political leaders and
so, in a sense, it would have been borne by no one. Under such circumstances,
Israel's political leaders would have been able to concern themselves only with
Israel's survival as they made their best decisions on how to prevent the
ayatollahs from acquiring nuclear weapons.

But rather than enable Israel to unite in the face of a threat to its existence,
Olmert opted for continued instability, continued uncertainly and a continuation
of the polarized status quo that leaves him in office and leaves Israel
strategically hamstrung at the hands of a governing coalition that the nation
does not want and does not trust. And this situation could easily last for
nearly a year.

There are two possible explanations for Olmert's behavior. First, it is
possible, as some commentators have noted, that by announcing his decision not
to seek reelection in Kadima's leadership primary - and lose overwhelmingly by
all accounts - Olmert may be trying to convince the police investigators to
allow him to leave office in his own car and not in the back of a paddy wagon.

There is a precedent for such a move. The late president Ezer Weizman resigned
from office in 2000 in exchange for an end to the criminal probe against him.
And the probe against Weizman - which centered on cash transfers in excess of
$540,000 that he received over an extended period from Edward Sarousi, a French
businessman - was similar to the sixth of seven ongoing probes against Olmert,
where he is being investigated for cash transfers he received from US
businessman Morris Talansky.

The other possibility is that Olmert is playing his familiar game of buying
time. Buying time has been the enduring theme of his tenure in office.

After Olmert led Israel to defeat in the Second Lebanon War two years ago, he
staved off calls for his resignation by appointing the Winograd Committee to
study his failures. Eight months later, the Winograd Committee issued its
interim report where it concluded that Olmert had failed in his stewardship of
the country during the war. In the face of the public outcry that followed,
Olmert bought himself another eight months by insisting on waiting until the
committee issued its final report.

As the criminal probes against him rose to the top of the national agenda in
late April with the revelation that Olmert had accepted cash-stuffed envelops
from Talansky for a decade, Olmert bought himself another four months by
pledging to resign if indicted. And now, of course, he has bought himself at
least three more months, and perhaps up to 11 months more in power. And who
knows what unanticipated crisis or windfall may intervene in the meantime and
add another few months to his lifespan as prime minister?

In his handling of all of these crises, the good of the country has not been
Olmert's primary concern. Indeed, it is far from clear that he ever considered
the impact his actions would have on Israel at all. Rather, from crisis to
crisis, from one stalling tactic to the next, Olmert has been guided by his
single-minded desire to remain in office. And this is not surprising.

OLMERT'S PATENT lack of shame is not the only reason that Israel's best
interests haven't factored into Olmert's calculations. By placing his personal
interests above the national interest, Olmert was loyally reflecting the
character of his party. Winning and maintaining power for power's sake,
irrespective of the national interest and ideological principles, were the
purposes for which Kadima was founded by Ariel Sharon.

Sharon founded Kadima as a self-consciously post- ideological party. And as
Kadima's first elected prime minister, Olmert is Israel's first post-ideological
premier.

Olmert and Kadima are the direct consequences of Sharon's decision to turn his
back on his party, and on the ideology that brought him into office in 2003 in
favor of clinging to power for power's sake. To remain in office amidst two
serious criminal probes, Sharon betrayed his ideological camp and Israel's
national security interests. This he did by implementing the discredited radical
leftist policy championed by Israel's media and legal fraternity of withdrawing
all Israeli military personnel and civilians from the Gaza Strip and
transferring control of the area to Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror
control.

Sharon, Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and their political consultants
presented Kadima's rejection of ideology as its chief selling point. By not
being committed to either left-wing or right-wing ideals, they assured us that
Kadima would always do the right thing for the country.

But the opposite occurred. Without the benefit of ideology to guide them,
Kadima's leaders have been led by nothing more than their personal interests.
And their primary interest is not to do what is best for the country
irrespective of ideology. Their primary interest is to maintain and expand their
power for as long as possible.

To maintain and expand their power, Kadima's leaders from Olmert to the party's
last backbencher have sought to align their policies with the nation's shifting
moods. The nation's mood swings from left to right are always followed by sharp
changes in Kadima's policies.

With the nation in a left leaning mood in the run-up to the last election,
Kadima announced its plan to give Judea and Samaria to terrorists from Fatah and
Hamas. Distinguishing their party from the radical left, which shares their
plan, Kadima's leaders explained that they sought to place Israel's major urban
centers in Palestinian rocket range not in the interest of peace - as the
leftist ideologues would have it - but in the interest of the hardnosed
"demographic" aim of putting all the country's Jews in one concentrated area.

Before the nation had an opportunity to fully understand what Kadima's
"convergence" plan entailed, Israel's body politic shifted to the right in June
2006 after the Palestinians attacked an IDF post near Gaza and kidnapped Cpl.
Gilad Schalit. Two weeks later it shifted further to the right when Hizbullah
carried out a nearly identical attack along the border with Lebanon and
supposedly abducted reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

Noticing the public's rightward shift, Olmert and his colleagues followed
immediately. When Olmert launched the Second Lebanon War, he sounded downright
Churchillian as he promised the nation nothing less than the total defeat of
Hizbullah and the return of our hostage servicemen.

But then, when Olmert's bombast was confronted with the hard reality of war, he
lost interest in being a right- winger. And so he fought the war like a radical
leftist and accepted humiliating defeat. Ever since then, Kadima has tacked to
the right and then to the left with no guiding rationale other than the
morning's headlines, the weekend's opinion polls, and the threats of its
right-wing and left- wing coalition partners.

In the meantime, the actual threats arrayed against Israel as a whole have
become more acute and more fateful. But Olmert and his colleagues can't be
bothered to deal with them. They are too busy. Deciding who you are each day
anew on the basis of the morning radio broadcasts is a time-consuming venture.
And their solitary aim remains constant throughout. They just want to stay in
power for another day, another week or with a little luck, for a few more
months.

THIS IS the sad and desperate face of post-ideological politics. While as prime
ministers, left-wing leaders such as Defense Minister Ehud Barak and President
Shimon Peres could only make mistakes in one direction, post-ideological leaders
like Olmert and his colleagues in Kadima can and do make mistakes in all
directions.

From 1977 when Likud first rose to power until 2006 when Kadima formed the
government, all of Israel's elections revolved around contrasting ideologies.
For 29 years, voters were required to choose which side of the ideological
divide they preferred. And making choices isn't easy. Both sides seem to have
something to offer.

Then Kadima entered the political stage dead on center and offered voters a way
to avoid making a decision. It professed to be all things to all people.

But of course, no one and no political party can be all things to all people.
And since Kadima's leaders won't choose whose side they are on for longer than
opinion polls stay constant, their party has been nothing to all people.

Here it bears noting that Olmert's slow, meandering exit from office against the
backdrop of growing dangers is a fitting end to this sad chapter in Israel's
history. For when a government of nothings is running the show, nothing takes
precedent over all things - even the most important things.

It can only be hoped that when the next election takes place, voters will have
learned the lesson of Kadima. Whether we choose the right ideological camp or
the wrong one to lead us, we cannot evade our responsibility to make a choice.

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August 1, 2008 Friday

No victors in Olmert's defeat

BYLINE: DAVID HOROVITZ

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1655 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editor's Notes. The people of Israel did not heave a collective sigh
of relief at the sight of the prime minister coming publicly to terms with the
impossibility of his situation on Wednesday night. There is no profound national
sense that salvation is now imminent

Ehud Olmert submitted, reluctantly, to the inevitable on Wednesday evening. But
there should be no rejoicing in Israel at his imminent departure.

Struggling to survive in a region overflowing with ruthless extremists sniffing
relentlessly for signs of vulnerability, Israel can never afford a vacuum at its
helm. And least of all today, with Hamas consolidating in Gaza and prevented
only by the IDF from replicating its coup in the West Bank, Hizbullah rearmed
and doubly dangerous, and an emboldened Iran orchestrating both these pincers
while advancing steadily toward a nuclear capability.

Olmert was disingenuous to the last, apparently still incapable of internalizing
that the mere fact of repeatedly asserting "achievements" does not render them
tangible and concrete. He was justified in hailing the progress of his
government in several areas, and notably in its economic stewardship - including
its allocation of greater resources to the Israel Defense Forces, the reduction
in unemployment, and the maintenance of overall financial stability at a time
when much of the West is moving into recession. The prime minister was arguably
the most astute member of cabinet when it came to understanding economic
dilemmas and gauging the most appropriate policies, and his acumen here will be
missed.

He was right, too, of course, to declare in his bitter but ultimately
statesmanlike farewell address that the most crucial task of Israel's
governments is to maximize the security of the state and its citizens, ideally
by completing a network of normalized relations with immediate neighbors and
more distant regional players.

But the Olmert government, contrary to what the outgoing prime minister would
have us believe, did not defuse the threat from the North, where Hizbullah
survived the monthlong 2006 war that defines Olmert's unhappy premiership. In
the South, where a fragile "cease-fire" currently holds, Hamas is overtly
utilizing its immunity from IDF pursuit to redouble its military capabilities,
this week brazenly distributing footage of its rocket- makers hard at work in
underground factories, refining its capacity to murder and maim our citizenry at
a time and at targets of its choosing.

Electing to depart from his mentor Ariel Sharon's assessment that there was more
for Israel to lose than to gain by seeking a rapprochement with Syria, Olmert
has succeeded so far only in irritating the Bush administration by enabling an
unreformed President Bashar Assad's international rehabilitation.

And as for what he accurately regards as the critical effort to achieve
substantive progress in negotiations with the fading Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian
Authority, Olmert's insistently repeated claim that the two sides are closer
than ever to a deal simply cannot be reconciled with the reports coming out of
the negotiations - the sense of deadlock, of frustration, and of gaps on key
issues, notably but not exclusively Jerusalem, that remain resolutely unbridged.

AMONG THE more unfortunate aspects of Olmert's demise is that he has indeed
forged a particularly strong relationship with George W. Bush, who is in turn a
particularly warm and committed defender of Israel. And the prime minister has
been correct to stress, as he did again on Wednesday, that the Bush presidency
was an ideal support structure upon which to try to build a permanent accord
with the Palestinians.

Olmert has tried to play up to the maximum Bush's ostensible sympathy for an
Israel whose permanent dimensions extend beyond its 1967 borders some distance
into the West Bank - as based on the 2004 presidential letter to Sharon in which
Bush wrote of "new realities on the ground" rendering it "unrealistic to expect
that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return
to the armistice lines of 1949."

And there can be no doubting the accuracy of the prime minister's assertion, in
an interview with this newspaper in January, that Israel's other world leader
friends, when they contemplate Israel's future, do so firmly on the basis of
1967 rather than "67-plus."

The recent stream of eminent personages who passed through Jerusalem - including
Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown - have unanimously trumpeted
their unshakable support for Israel, their belief that a peace deal with the
Palestinians is close at hand... and their conviction that it must be based on
the 1967 parameters. In the Knesset last Monday, for instance, Brown urged
Israel to seize the opportunity for a peaceful two-state solution "based on 1967
borders... alongside a peaceful, democratic and territorially viable state of
Palestine that accepts you as its friend and partner... with Jerusalem the
capital for both," a "just and agreed settlement for refugees," and "Israel
freezing, and withdrawing from, settlements..."

Understandably then, Olmert wants to make the most of the Bush term and vowed on
Wednesday to continue, in his final weeks in office, to work for substantive
progress on the Palestinian front - clinging to the prospect that some kind of
"shelf agreement" or document of "joint understandings" can be formulated in the
near future.

What Olmert must guard against, as he inevitably seeks to snatch some kind of
diplomatic "victory" and legacy from the jaws of his bitter personal and
political defeat, is the temptation to approve concessions that he would have
rejected in different personal circumstances - the temptation, that is, to
replicate the alleged trait that has prompted his political demise: straying
beyond the parameters of what is appropriate, and then attempting to finesse the
departure with lawyerly silkiness and sleight.

THE PEOPLE of Israel did not, I think, heave a collective sigh of relief at the
sight of Olmert coming publicly to terms with the impossibility of his situation
on Wednesday night. While some may have rejoiced, more, I suspect, viewed the
spectacle in sorrow, as an inevitable necessity that the prime minister had
accepted a little belatedly but, mercifully, had accepted without the nauseating
resort to hysterical counterattack indulged in by former president Moshe Katsav.

There is certainly no profound national sense that now, with Olmert going,
salvation is imminent. Tzipi Livni's main claim on the public's affection
appears to be that she is not Olmert - that she is, rather, a paragon of
personal propriety, quietly conscientious, resolutely undazzling.

"Mr. Security" Shaul Mofaz, meanwhile, is stained as a former chief of General
Staff and defense minister by the strategic failures revealed in the Second
Lebanon War and carries the rare distinction of having impetuously bolted the
Likud for Kadima even as his personal plea to Likud members to stick with the
party was en route in the mail.

And if it is Binyamin Netanyahu who is ultimately heading back toward the Prime
Minister's Office, he is not borne on waves of national enthusiasm, but
benefiting, rather, from the dismal cycle of Israeli politics in which the
strategy discredited longest ago becomes most popular merely by virtue of the
passage of time: hanging tough with Netanyahu gave way to negotiation with Barak
and then unilateralism with Sharon and Olmert, and round we may well go again.

CONCEDING DEFEAT even as he railed against it, Olmert insisted on Wednesday
night that he could provide "satisfactory" answers to all the accusations that
have been levelled against him. He complained, further, that as prime minister
he had been "below the law" - uniquely denied the opportunity to defend himself,
denied the presumption of innocence.

It is hard to square this assertion of injured innocence with the delaying
tactics followed by his lawyers, the obfuscations and resort to silence under
police questioning employed by some of his colleagues, the content of the leaked
transcripts (that we should never have seen) of his own evasive responses under
questioning, and the fact that a prime minister enjoys unique access to any and
every communications channel via which he might have chosen to champion his
integrity.

The assertion that this is a case of justice preempted rings false. The public
has been demonstrably prepared to maintain a presumption of innocence when
corruption allegations swirled around a succession of prime ministers. Olmert,
by contrast, has been impelled to the political exit by a combination of absent
public faith in his expertise and the sheer accumulation of legal scandal and
distraction - the mistrust engendered by his deficient stewardship of the war
against Hizbullah compounded by a heartfelt public concern that he could not
possibly devote the vital 100 percent attention to his job while simultaneously
juggling his daunting array of legal challenges. Nonetheless, if the welter of
accusation that has mounted against him proves to be more molehill than
mountain, the law enforcement authorities, and by extension the media, will have
to defend themselves against the charge that they helped hound a democratically
elected prime minister from office.

Olmert said on Wednesday that he hoped his case, and his fate, might come to
mark a turning point - galvanizing a redressing of "balance." His successor
would do well to look overseas for inspiration, and might consider adopting a
formula under which the investigation of certain accusations relating to the
period before a politician becomes prime minister is suspended until after his
or her term in office.

But his successor, of course, will largely be preoccupied from day one, as was
Olmert, with retaining power, in a system that spits out all but the thickest-
skinned operators and then conspires to deny them the capacity to govern
effectively. Olmert's unhappy period of governance is now drawing to an end.
Unfortunately for Israel, the challenges he had such mixed success in
confronting, and the unworkable political system in which he was required to
operate, are all still with us.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: THE SUCCESSION. Livni's main claim on the public's affection
appears to be that she is not Olmert. Mofaz bolted the Likud for Kadima even as
his personal plea to Likud members to stick with the party was en route in the
mail.

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August 1, 2008 Friday

A malaise that extends far beyond Ehud Olmert

BYLINE: DAVID KIMCHE

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 763 words

We tend to look at the immediate fallout from Prime Minister Olmert's statement
on Wednesday evening: Who will win the Kadima primaries? Will she or he be able
to patch together a working coalition before the Knesset reconvenes in October?
The media has focused on the aftermath, on the prospect of each of the
candidates, on the likelihood of an election before the end of the year.

The real story behind the demise of Ehud Olmert is, however, very different. The
real story is the utter disgust felt by a wide section of the population about
everything to do with politics and politicians, which reached a climax with the
daily outpouring in the media of wrongdoing by our prime minister. Talk to our
youngsters and you will hear that disgust in the most extreme terms. They, in
particular, are sick and tired with the government, with the Knesset, with the
political parties - with the double-dealing and the double talk, with the
promises that are not kept, and with the corruption.

We will see the result of this attitude in the next election - in the low
turnout, in the number of votes for esoteric protest parties. Why vote for a
party whose leaders are held in contempt, or for a party that has no real
identity?

Take the Labor Party, for instance. For years Labor stood for principles that
were clear and understandable; you agreed with those principles or opposed them.
But now? What does Labor stand for? Is it a pro-peace party? Is it a party with
social goals? Its leader, Ehud Barak, is vying for the votes of the Right. His
policies as minister of defense are more right wing than those of any other
minister in the government. His ministers dare not challenge him for fear of
becoming unglued from their ministerial chairs.

Or take Kadima. It came to power with a program of disengagement from Judea and
Samaria. That program is dead. The prime minister replaced it with a clear
objective of reaching a negotiated two-state solution. One of the two contenders
for his job will do everything she can to implement that policy; the other
contender will work against it. So what is the true policy of Kadima? To work
for peace or to work for the status quo?

With such a situation, it is not surprising that the Likud is in the lead. Its
opponents are in disarray. The large number of Israelis who had, in the past,
gone to the polls knowing what they wanted, and which parties would work to
deliver what they wanted, are now political orphans.

As for the Likud, it had, in the past, proved to be more corrupt than any other
party. Its central committee and other institutions became synonymous with
corrupt practices. The misdemeanors of the Kadima ministers under investigation
were all carried out during their Likud days, and this is true particularly of
the prime minister. So will the youth vote Likud, or will they vote with their
feet?

THE PROBLEM lies not only with corrupt politicians but also with a system that
calls for corrupt practices. Politicians need a lot of money to win primaries;
they need even more to win elections. That money - a great amount of it - comes
in envelopes from abroad.

Less than a week after the dramatic exposure of the Talansky envelopes I met a
good friend of mine in Europe, a wealthy businessman, who told me that he had
just been approached by one of the Kadima contenders. "He asked for a financial
contribution, the larger the better," my friend told me.

Wealthy Jews in the US are openly touting this or that prime ministerial
candidate. Sheldon Adelson, who has amassed some $26 billion from his casinos
and is the richest Jew in the world, openly supports Bibi Netanyahu. Adelson has
poured so much money into his free daily newspaper, Yisrael Hayom, that it has
become the second largest journal in the country, overtaking Ma'ariv, and that
paper's raison d'etre is not to make money - it is a freesheet - but to install
Bibi as prime minister.

What we need is a prime minister who has integrity, who speaks her or his mind,
and who is not afraid to tackle the malaise that has overtaken our political
system - a malaise that supersedes all other threats.

We have defense experts galore, economists, lawyers - you name them. But we
don't have leaders who can instill confidence, who can evoke enthusiasm, who can
clean out our political system, and above all, who can lead. That is a breed so
rare in our country as to have become an endangered species.

Unless we find such a leader, we will continue our downhill spiral. And politics
and politicians will become ever dirtier words, shunned by all the decent people
in our country.

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August 1, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Shulamis Bonchek, Moshe Mordechai van Zuiden, Lisa Cohn

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 213 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

BEGGARS AND CHOOSERS

I just returned from the Western Wall and am happy to report that all the
"beggars" are back. They were told not to approach or harass visitors, and they
really are on good behavior. It is now up to you if you want to perform the
mitzva of giving tzedaka (charity).

Shulamis Bonchek

Jerusalem

KEEPING UP WITH THE TIMES

Our Bridge of Strings is not alone anymore! Beijing has a new audacious monolith
that looks like two drunken high-rise towers leaning over and holding each other
up at the shoulders.

And Pyongyang's 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel, once dubbed by Esquire magazine as
"the worst building in the history of mankind," is back under construction after
a 16-year lull.

Each of these an ugliness undreamed of, completely out of touch with their
surroundings and at a budget much too steep for the ailing local populations.
Yes, do we keep up with the times!

Moshe-Mordechai van Zuiden

Jerusalem

INTO THE MIX

It is no secret that there are many who are anti- religious or anti-haredi, but
part of the blame goes to some - and I emphasize some - of the haredim
themselves. Ramat Eshkol was a mixed community. Then came wonderful, tolerant
haredim. But now come the others, and threats and hatred are entering the
community. What is the next step?

Lisa Cohn, Jerusalem

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Mailbag

BYLINE: Stan Hayes, Dalia Goldberg, Shivta Wenkart, Marvyn Hatchuel

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 688 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

My personal 12 steps

Re: ... and I'm an alcoholic (July 18)

Dear editor,

After reading Diana Bletter's article with great interest, I wanted to send you
another 12 steps that might help young people,or other who may be heavy drinkers
who are not re-ady to admit they may be alcoholics:

1. I drank for happiness and became unhappy.

2. I drank for joy and became miserable.

3. I drank for sociability and became argumentative.

4. I drank for sophistication and became obnoxious.

5. I drank for friendship and made enemies.

6. I drank for sleep and woke up tired.

7. I drank for strength and felt weak.

8. I drank for relaxation and got the shakes.

9. I drank for courage and became afraid.

10. I drank for confidence and became doubtful.

11. I drank to make conversation and it slurred my speech.

12. I drank to feel heavenly and ended up feeling like hell.

Stan Hayes

Nahariya

We love our rights, we hate our obligations

Dear editor,

I would like to join in the discussion again if I may. The problem of education
and of society in general is that people have been emphasizing the rights
everybody has in a free society, but they have forgotten that in a society such
as this people have rights but they also have obligations. The two must be
emphasized together for they cannot exist each one alone. While children have
rights - to be treated kindly, to be entitled to schooling and to receive a
standard of living acceptable for health and development - this obligates them
to good behavior, respect for their elders and teachers, and the laws of the
land.

Democracy obligates its citizens to fulfill their obligations without having to
be reminded to respect others, respect the laws and their enforcers, and to act
in such a way that shows this respect and understanding for the system under
which they live.

Traffic accidents are the same malaise. Only human drivers cause accidents.
There is no such thing as a road or a car which causes accidents - only human
beings who do not respect the laws and act accordingly cause them.

If we do not learn and teach our children that society obligates us, as well as
gives us rights, then we will go on muddling along, blaming everyone else for
our mistakes and hoping for the best.

With all due respect to parents who haven't the time to teach their children
what is right...

Dalia Goldberg,

Kfar Menachem

Dear editor,

Sorry, nice letter from Lawrence Cantor, but it did not hit the bull's eye. You
don't suggest new tricks to a learned grandma, the opposite: she always can
teach you!

Now, anyway kids learn to read on the screen of the PC in order to play computer
games...

Shivta Wenkart,

Arad

A successful Rhodesian get-together

Dear editor,

Following David Kaplan's article A Shtetl in Africa (June 13), I would like to
report that we had an overwhelming response from over 280 Rhodesian olim who
came to the "get-together" held in mid-JulyÊat the Ra'anana City Bowling Club.
AsÊthe writerÊexpressed, "more than the number of JewsÊstill left in that sad
African country."

The renewal of bonds of friendship, by some who had not seen each other since
making aliya,Êwas remarkable, combined with a spirit of chavershaft that was
unique.

A special fund was launched by Vice Chairman of the S.A Zionist Federation David
Bloom to provide assistance for the residents of the Jewish Old Age home in
Bulawayo (Savion Lodge), to which many presentÊresponded immediately.

Thinking back to the days when the Jews of Rhodesia were sending food and other
gift parcels to Israel, the spirit of Zionism in reverse was manifest. Here were
these olim now helping their old compatriots in their present state of distress.

In my opening "Welcome" I mentioned what I believe to be a record unequaled by
any other Jewish community - namely that Rhodesian Jewry provided the highest
percentage perÊcapita of olim from any "free country in the Western world."

Furthermore, seven of the lastÊeight presidents of itsÊNational Zionist
BodyÊmade aliya following their terms of office - an example that could be
followed by many more Jewish communities. We thank you for having publicized our
get-together in your article.

Marvyn Hatchuel,, Ra'anana

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August 1, 2008 Friday

Letters

BYLINE: Gerry Mandell, Sharon Schwartz, Jan Sokolovsky, Yehudit Spero, Cherille
Cohen, Meira Schwartz, Pessy Krausz, Editor's note

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1284 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Who's being petty?

Sir, - Re your review of Douglas J. Feith's War and Decision by Cornell
University Prof. Glenn C. Altschuler ("More faith than fact," Books, July 25):

The book is an insider's view of a segment of American policy-making leading up
to and during the Iraq War until summer 2005. Prof. Altschuler first describes
the book as "Detailed and well-documentedÉ the most thorough and
thought-provoking defense to date of the response of the US government to 9/11."
But in the following paragraph he writes that Feith's "account is provincial and
petty."

Well, which is it? Or can provincial and petty writing be thought-provoking to a
Cornell professor? It is Prof. Altschuler's writing that seems petty and -
Cornell being remote from Washington - provincial. In addition, he boldly
states, without supporting evidence, that "The debacle in Iraq has not made
AmericansÉ safer and more secure." Maybe, maybe not. But at least the jihadists
know America is not going to roll over without a fight.

I am not a policy wonk, yet I found the book fascinating. The documentation was
massive and the tone measured even when critical of the CIA, State Department
and individuals both in and out of the Bush administration.

Critics accuse President Bush of being a "cowboy" hell-bent on going to war, who
lied to the world to justify the assault. The portrayal is of someone who says,
"My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts." Prof. Feith's book
obliterates that characterization. He documents the substantial efforts made to
avert war. And for those who have forgotten or ignored the state of the prewar
world - a state in which the UN Security Council passed 16 anti-Iraq resolutions
- he offers a second chance to become informed.

From the temper of Prof. Altschuler's negative review, I make the following
assumptions: He still rants that President Bush stole the election in 2000, and
he will vote for Barack Obama in 2008 and ever after.

OK, I'm petty too.

GERRY MANDELL

Omer

Bringing values back

Sir, - Amotz Asa-El is correct to mourn the demise of service-oriented
politicians, although we all know that the old guard also had its share of
corruption. But at least two factors currently provide us with an unprecedented
opportunity to bring values back into government.

One factor is the exodus from the Likud Party of many of its most self-serving
and opportunistic politicians - please note that Avraham Hirchson, Tzahi Hanegbi
and Ehud Olmert himself are all former Likud members. The second factor is the
fact that the Likud is projected to more than double its representation in the
next election and to take over the reins of government, thereby bringing in a
new group of legislators who, we hope, will see the Knesset as a place to serve
rather than a place to profit.

In the Likud/Anglo movement, a new grouping within the Likud party, we are
working to shape the next government. We have chapters all over the country and
have been organizing events from Haifa to Jerusalem in which we discuss these
very issues with current and likely future MKs.

As our movement grows and our influence increases, we hope to create the kind of
values-oriented "elite" that Mr Asa-El so misses ("Israel's next elite," July
25).

SHARON SCHWARTZ

Haifa

All about life choices

Sir, - In "A tourist in her own land" (July 25, 2008) Naomi Chazan relates with
great sympathy the problems of Zeina Ashrawi as she attempted to enter Israel.
However, she dexterously obfuscates or omits virtually every fact. The
underlying issue is the rights of residents of east Jerusalem as contrasted with
the rights of citizens of Israel. These are not the same, and no one should
think they are.

After Israel reunited Jerusalem in 1967, its Arab residents were offered full
citizenship. Some accepted, but many refused, mainly because they could not
adjust to living under Israeli sovereignty. They were generously offered the
status of resident, which most accepted. They became entitled to many of the
privileges of citizenship, including National Insurance and health coverage.
They received blue Israeli ID cards, and yellow Israeli license plates for their
cars.

The two big differences in status are well-known - residents cannot vote in
Israeli elections, and their status, with eminent logic, is dependent on their
continuing to be residents. If a resident leaves the country for over seven
years, his or her resident status expires, as was the case with Ms. Ashrawi, and
entitlements from the Israeli government are lost. Had the resident chosen to be
a citizen instead, obviously those entitlements would be unaffected by prolonged
absence from Israel.

A non-citizen non-resident can't have it both ways. But, without saying so
clearly, this is what Naomi Chazan and Ms. Ashrawi apparently want.

Prof. Chazan tells us Ms. Ashrawi was "the proud holder of a Jerusalem identity
card." There is no such document. She had an Israeli ID card, which noted that
she was a resident, not a citizen. She refers to a "mistake" that Ms. Ashrawi
made - i.e., when she went to the US as a teenager and apparently remained
there. That was not a "mistake" - it was a life choice, which had consequences
for her status as a resident of Israel.

She has a Green Card from the US, which usually requires a statement of intent
to immigrate to the US and reside there permanently. We are told that until last
year she was able to obtain a returning resident visa annually, but that this
year she was "unceremoniously" refused. However, this is the law. We are not
told how many years Ms. Ashrawi has lived outside Israel, but it is clearly more
than seven. There is no indication that she intends to return to live here
permanently. Contrary to Prof. Chazan's assertion, Jerusalem is no longer Ms.
Ashrawi's home.

How ironic that this plea for the liberalization of the "rights" of non-resident
non-citizen former residents should appear so soon after three terrorist attacks
by Arab residents of Jerusalem, whose freedom of movement was unchallenged
because of their blue identity cards and yellow license plates.

Quite true: The Israeli public is now urging a thorough review of this policy,
but I doubt there is a will to liberalize it.

JAN SOKOLOVSKY

Jerusalem

Girl with guts

Sir, - Sarah Honig, with her gutsiness, is simply the best ("Put them to death,"
July 25). Her articles are right on the mark, all of the time. She writes what
people are thinking but are often too "chicken" to say. She never sugar-coats
the pill, but socks it to us like it is. Personally, and I know this is true for
many of my friends, Ms. Honig's column is the first thing we turn to in the
weekend magazine.

Long may she continue her in-depth analysis of what is really happening in
Israel.

YEHUDIT SPERO

Beit Shemesh

Farewell, Short Order

Sir, - I was devastated to read that the Short Order food column has ended,
after a decade! ("Bean there, done that," July 25.) I was possibly among Judy
Montagu's most ardent fans. I cut out and used all the recipes with great
success, and wholeheartedly endorse her farewell statement "Simple cooking can
produce superb eating." It really did for me, my family and guests. I shall miss
not only the excellent recipes, but also the interesting little anecdotes that
always accompanied them.

CHERILLE COHEN

Ra'anana

Sir, - I cannot believe I will no longer be able to read Judy Montagu's Short
Order column. It was more than just recipes....

MEIRA SCHWARTZ

Jerusalem

Sir, - Judy's decade seems too brief / To create in us such grief - Give us all,
please, a reprieve / Do not take your leave.

PESSY KRAUSZ

Jerusalem ,

Editor's note: Check out Judy Montagu's new bi-weekly column In My Own Write on
the Opinion pages every other Wednesday.

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August 1, 2008 Friday

Wake up, Tzipi

BYLINE: AMOTZ ASA-EL

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1065 words

HIGHLIGHT: Middle Israel

Dear Tzipi,

As you are surely aware, your lead is narrowing. Last weekend's polls indicated
that Shaul Mofaz is only two percentage points away from you, and gathering
momentum.

Though there are many differences between the two of you, you have one thing in
common: Both of you think we are idiots. Mofaz thinks his main card is his
military record. And you want us to make do with your morality, while you avoid
the issues.

Fortunately for you, Mofaz's strategy is embarrassingly unimaginative and
anachronistic, and in fact can only have been devised by a foreigner like the
campaign adviser he has hired.

Using military expertise as a political ticket here and now is about as
up-to-date as promising America to cancel the Prohibition. For the past 50
years, we have had scores of generals swarming through our corridors of power as
bees through a hive, usually proving much better at stinging each other and
stinging the electorate than at producing honey.

To say that what Israel now needs at its helm is another general is to forget
that generals Dayan, Sharon, Rabin and Barak gave us respectively the wars of
'73 and '82 and intifadas of '87 and 2000. Mofaz can be counted on to follow
suit, and in fact promises this for the record. Moreover, Mofaz and his adviser
may think that a prime minister must know to deploy troops, maneuver tanks and
unleash jets, but Middle Israelis - such as yourself - reject this thinking, by
which David Ben-Gurion should never have become prime minister and the General
Staff might as well replace the government.

Tragically, you remain speechless. Hopefully, you'll soon understand the time to
speak to us has arrived, and that capturing us means saying something like this:
"My fellow citizens, The heroic chapter in our history is over; there is no
Ben-Gurion or Begin in our midst, nor a Rabin or Sharon. Yet unlike those who
see in this a sign of decline, I see in this a milestone and an opportunity. Our
wars may not be over, but the time has come for a post- heroic era of civilian
rule, and I intend to herald it.

"Much is being said about the need for moral leadership. I obviously agree. But
moral bankruptcy is not only about theft, rape and embezzlement; it is also
about bravado, machismo and phony heroism. That is what happened to Judah's last
Jews, who thought they knew heroism better than Jeremiah, and that is what
happened to the outgoing prime minister when he ignored my advice to stop the
last war in its second week, when our gains had been gained, and our losses had
yet to multiply.

"Sadly, he was a product of the previous era, the one in which too many
politicians were either heroes or sycophants. I am not a heroine but I am also
not a lackey; I am not larger than life, but I am also not too small to lack my
own vision, message or conviction. I don't think wars are our calling, and I
don't think we need more generals in politics. The more we will lead generals
into politics, the more our generals will behave like politicians. This is part
of what went wrong in summer '06. And so, if elected I'll have generals fixing
the army and civilians fixing the country."

THAT, TZIPI, is how your address will open. It then should unveil a domestic
vision.

Mofaz is a political novice. He never said anything novel, let alone profound,
on the budget, our tax rates, the status of the Supreme Court, religious-secular
relations, conversions, political reform, university tuition, school management
or local government, to mention but a few pressing issues that are way beyond
him, but deep in the realm of national leadership. And the reason he has so
little to offer on non-military matters is simple: He doesn't know.

You, Tzipi, do know. We saw this when you headed the State Companies Authority
for Binyamin Netanyahu in the '90s, and then when you were justice minister for
Sharon this decade. You know both the economy and the legal system, and you are
also thoroughly familiar with the Dovrat plan, which was endorsed by a
government in which you served. You should now make that commitment plain. You
will also have to openly back electoral reform, in the spirit of what your
colleague Menahem Ben-Sasson rightly argues - that only locally elected
lawmakers will weaken the party structure that has contaminated our public
arena.

To convince that you are prime-ministerial material, you must now take a stance
on all the major domestic issues, and lead the debate there to the arena in
which our real life is conducted every day, and where Mofaz will be as lost as
an Eskimo in the Sahara.

You tried to change the complexion of the Supreme Court, because you had a view
about its composition and clout. What's his view? He has none. You played a role
in selling the big banks. What can he tell us about the economy: Is he prepared
to repeat his demagoguery about Netanyahu's reforms? If not, why? If yes, push
Mofaz deeper into the populist swamp, have him repeat his shallow mantras about
this thriving economy being too private, worldly and "anti-social," and make him
explain just how he intends to finance the expanded child allowances he is
quietly promising Shas.

Soon enough Mofaz's economic ignorance will land him where Amir Peretz ended up.
Corner him about the global crisis. How could he not know that a statement like
the one he made in favor of attacking Iran would torch the commodity markets?
What does he think about the deficit target; is it good or bad, does he even
know what it is? Why is such ignorance less relevant than what he thinks is your
insufficient knowledge of the military? How about educational reform: Does he
believe school principals should have the power to salary and fire teachers? Or
does he think this too will be solved if we bomb Isfahan to the stone age? Or
conversion: Is he prepared to risk his special ties with Shas, and distance
ultra-Orthodoxy from Judaism's admission process? Is he prepared to demand that
their schools teach a core curriculum of secular studies in return for state
funds?

Taking this course will promise you victory, Tzipi, but it has a price: you must
take a stand - on everything. You have to come out with a broad, deep and
detailed vision, you must tell us not just how you will contrast the past, but
how you will shape the future. And if this price is too high for you, then maybe
this whole leadership business is really not for you.

www.MiddleIsrael.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: The foreign minister. The post-heroic era is already here.
(Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

964 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 1, 2008 Friday

Requiem for a rat

BYLINE: CALEV BEN-DAVID

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1135 words

HIGHLIGHT: Snap Judgment. A plucky little fighter who become one of the IDF's
most honored veterans

Palestinians: Israel uses rats against Jerusalem Arabs

- The Jerusalem Post, July 20, 2008.

The Palestinian Authority's official news agency Wafa says Israel is using rats
to drive Arab families out of their homes in the Old City of Jerusalem. "Rats
have become an Israeli weapon to displace and expel Arab residents of the
occupied Old City of Jerusalem," Wafa reported under the title, "Settlers flood
the Old City of Jerusalem with rats."

The report continued: "Over the past two months, dozens of settlers come to the
alleyways and streets of the Old City carrying iron cages full of rats. They
release the rats, which find shelter in open sewage systems."

Wafa quoted unnamed Arab residents as saying that they had tried to eliminate
the rats with various poisons, but to no avail. Israel's goal was to "increase
the suffering of the [Arabs] in Jerusalem by turning their lives into a real
tragedy and forcing them to evict their homes and leave the city," Hasan Khater,
secretary-general of the Islamic-Christian Front in Jerusalem, was quoted as
saying.

Legendary IDF commando Lt.-Col. Yehuda "Ratchka" Akh- Bar, dies at 73 - The
Jerusalem Post, Sept. 17, 2023.

Yehuda Akh-Bar, founding chief of the IDF's elite Sayeret Rodentus commando unit
and a fabled veteran of many of the military's most top-secret missions, passed
away this week at age 73. The cause of death was cancer.

Akh-Bar, the diminutive hero known to all as "Ratchka," was a beloved and
near-mythical figure in the security establishment, a plucky little fighter who
overcame a score of shortcomings to become one of the IDF's most honored
veterans.

"Ratchka was a true warrior and valued comrade," said his close friend, former
IDF chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. "It's true he had a sharp bite at
times, but there was no one else I'd ever want beside me in an enemy sewer."

Ratchka was born and raised Jacob Ratzinger in Jerusalem's haredi Mea She'arim
quarter, the scion of a long line of respected rodent rabbis. When he reached
18, he broke with his family, changed his name and joined the army.

"Sitting around all day studying Talmud and eating out of other people's garbage
just wasn't for me," he later recalled, "and the military seemed the best way
out."

He was originally assigned, along with most other animal recruits at the time,
to the IDF biological research test unit stationed at the Ness Ziona Institute.
But Ratchka successfully fought to be given full combat status, and was
transferred to a Givati Brigade unit in the South. He soon distinguished himself
as a fearless scout carrying out risky reconnaissance missions deep into Gaza.

"Those Gazan cats were tough, let me tell you," Ratchka later said in an
interview. "Hamas also at the time had its own rodent terrorist leader - a
fanatical but fearless little mouse named Farfur. We finally met up one night in
a dark alley in Khan Yunis, that only one of us crawled away from."

The targeting killing of Farfur earned Ratchka swift promotion, and Akh-Bar
successfully pushed for the creation of a new elite IDF unit, Sayeret Rodentus -
popularly known as "the rat patrol."

"We went where all of the other IDF units couldn't or wouldn't go," Ratchka once
proudly boasted. "The slimiest drainpipes, the filthiest sewers, the grimiest
dumps - although nothing was as bad as Yasser Arafat's bedroom in the Mukata."

THE DETAILS of that latter mission, like many of the others carried out by
Akh-Bar and the rat patrol, remain classified. But the veil of official secrecy
surrounding the unit was nearly blown in the summer of 2008.

"After a spate of terror attacks in Jerusalem," Akh- Bar later wrote in his
heavily censored memoir Paws of Victory: A Zionist Rat's Tale, "we were assigned
to carry out house-to-house searches in the Old City, checking for signs of
Islamic Jihad recruitment among the local Arab residents. We were in the middle
of a mission when some of the locals detected our presence, and we had to fight
off a particularly vicious Hizbullah-trained cat. The next thing I knew, we were
being condemned by PA officials and were all over the Palestinian press.
Luckily, they thought we were part of some crazy settler plot, and never figured
out just what we were really up to."

The following year, Akh-Bar led the rat patrol on its most celebrated exploit -
the crippling of the Iranian nuclear development program.

Dropped deep behind enemy lines by their sister unit, the Israel Air Force Bat
Battalion, Ratchka and his comrades penetrated the Natanz uranium enrichment
plant, chewed through the electrical wiring of its cooling system and sent the
entire installation into irreversible meltdown.

Although later awarded the IDF Medal of Valor for this feat, Ratchka always
declined to confirm rumors of a personal run-in with Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad during the mission. "Let's just say I've sunk my teeth into a lot of
foul-tasting items in my life," he would respond to questions about the
incident, "and there are some things even worse than rotten apple cores."

ALTHOUGH AKH-BAR later retired from military service, his adventures were not
quite over. Invited to lecture at the UK's famed Sandhurst Royal Military
Academy, he found himself arrested at Heathrow Airport and charged with war
crimes by a British court, acting in response to a suit brought by a local
Palestinian rights organization.

But Ratchka proved himself as able a fighter in the court as on the battlefield,
turning the tables on his hosts by acting for his own defense, and winning
acquittal with his stunning final summation of his case.

"I just threw their own words back at them," Akh-Bar noted, "by quoting
Shakespeare's great speech for Shylock: 'I am a Jewish rat. Hath not a Jewish
rat eyes? Hath not a Jewish rat paws? Fed with the same cheese, hurt with the
same traps, as a Christian rat is. If you trap us, do we not bleed? If you
poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not bite back?'"

Later in life, looking to still perform public service, Ratchka was recruited by
rodent environmental organizations campaigning to restore the former Hiriya
dumping ground outside Tel Aviv to its old glory.

"Cleaning up the Hiriya dump turned out to be the worst move since draining the
Hula swamps," said Ratchka. "It was a tough fight, but we finally managed to get
the garbage back where it belonged - although it still doesn't have quite the
same old smell."

In honor of his efforts, the Prime Minister's Office announced yesterday that
the Hiriya would be renamed the Ratchka Memorial Wastefill.

Lt.-Col. (res.) Akh-Bar will be laid to rest with full military honors in the
rodent section of Jerusalem's Mount Herzl Cemetery tomorrow morning.

He is survived by his wife Gili, their 657 children and 28,248 grandchildren.
May his memory be blessed.

Calev@jpost.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Cartoon

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

965 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 1, 2008 Friday

'Us' and 'them'

BYLINE: DAVID J. FORMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1115 words

HIGHLIGHT: Counterpoint

The day before the recent prisoner exchange, Yona Baumel, the father of Zachary
Baumel who is still missing from the First Lebanon War, was interviewed by CNN's
Ben Wederman. In response to one of Wederman's questions, Baumel said: "We know
that the chances our son is alive are small. But, as long as there is no
conclusive evidence to the contrary, with every breath in my body, and I do not
have many left, I will continue to pray for his return. What we want is
closure."

No one can understand the depth of feeling contained in these few short
sentences. The pain of 26 years that has accompanied the Baumels is impossible
to fathom. Watching the return of the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev
could only have intensified their need for closure, which would finally provide
a measure of relief to their anguish.

The prisoner exchange that returned Regev and Goldwasser for burial offered the
world a lesson in satanic behavior. The international community watched as
Hassan Nasrallah's spokesman refused to reveal whether the two kidnapped
soldiers were alive or dead, continuing to cynically toy with the heartstrings
of the families until the last possible minute.

For two years, not a definitive word about their fate; for 22 years, not an
authoritative word about the fate of Ron Arad; for 26 years, not a single word
about the fate of Baumel, and his comrades-in-arms, Yehuda Katz and Tzvi
Feldman.

HOW COULD we have expected anything different? Chezi Shai, the commander of
Baumel's tank, fell into Syrian hands. For two years, no one knew whether he was
dead or alive, or where he was.When his whereabouts were inadvertently revealed,
it took another year before he was returned in one of those lopsided prisoner
exchanges.

It seems that within too much of the Arab world, evil inclinations know no
boundaries. When Baumel was captured, he was strapped to his tank and paraded
through the streets of Damascus to the frenzied cheers of thousands of Syrians,
after which he mysteriously vanished.

In prisons throughout the world there is a warped code of ethics among inmates -
a hierarchy of crime. The lowest form is the molestation and/or murder of
children. Often those who are convicted of such offenses do not survive their
incarceration, as other prisoners abuse them and even kill them. And yet, child
murderer Samir Kuntar, upon his return to Lebanon, received a hero's welcome.
Every Lebanese faction suddenly united in his joyous reception, and there was
not a word of condemnation by one leader within the Muslim world for Kuntar's
acts or for his enthusiastic homecoming.

Arab masses are often exploited for public relations advantage. Remember the
pictures of the refugees from southern Lebanon marching along the roads toward
Beirut, packs on their backs, as a result of Israel's retaliatory bombardments
for an act of war by Hizbullah - needing to escape because Hizbullah chose to
fight from within civilian populations. Such scenes generate a sympathetic TV
audience.

Hamas takes us into hospitals after an attack against a terrorist cell, and
shows in gory detail the wounds of children who were caught in crossfire,
fashioning an indelible image of Palestinian suffering.

Yes, the Arabs have proven to be quite adept at PR.

TO UNDERSTAND the callousness of those who perpetrate and condone such behavior,
let's compare their conduct to Israel's.

Israel has more than a thousand Arab prisoners. There are no secrets as to where
they are, or whether they are alive or dead. Visits by international
organizations are granted. Samir Kuntar received and sent letters and enjoyed
conjugal visits. When has Israel ever dragged an Arab terrorist through its
streets to be jeered by a crowd?

There were at least 500,000 Israelis who fled the North as a result of the
purposeful bombings of our civilian population by Hizbullah. Families in the
central and southern part of the country took them into their homes. Hotels,
youth hostels, field schools, kibbutzim opened their doors to them; tent cities
were set up to house them.

Israel could readily show footage of severed heads and arms and legs of those
killed in suicide bombings, but to safeguard the sensibilities of the families
of those murdered, chooses not to.

Compare the hysteria of the Gaza streets that accompanies every terrorist killed
by the IDF, their bodies raised high, with cries for blood and revenge, to the
quiet dignity of the Regev and Goldwasser funerals, where there were no calls
for vengeance.

And what of Smadar Haran, whose husband and daughter were murdered by Kuntar,
and whose baby daughter's death was caused by him; or the family of Eliahu
Shahar who was also slain by Kuntar? Despite their excruciating losses, they
stood with the Goldwassers and Regevs, lending their support to Kuntar's return
for Eldad and Udi.

How does one explain the behavior of the all too many Nasrallahs of this world,
who have the seeming support of so many Muslims? Their acts characterize people
who are devoid of feeling, people with veins of ice and steel, who take perverse
delight in others' misery, as well as that of their own. They are predators -
beasts of the field.

But what I find so troublesome, even incomprehensible, is that since the
prisoner exchange, Israel has failed to point out the differences between "us"
and "them," between a civilized society and a bestial one. If we want to contend
with religious fanatics, we must defeat them not only on the battlefield, but
also in the court of public opinion. One of the centerpieces of our PR campaign
must not only be Gilad Schalit, but also Baumel, Katz, Feldman, Arad and Guy
Hever, whose continued disappearance glaringly points to the inhumanity of those
who know what happened to them.

Further, Nasrallah, Ismail Haniyeh and company must be linked to their fellow
butchers in places like Sudan and Somalia where Muslim leaders wreak genocidal
havoc. They must be shown to be no different than those who felled the Twin
Towers and those who carry out dastardly acts of terror against innocent
civilians in Bali, London, Madrid, Jordan, Egypt, Kabul and Baghdad.

Finally, even as we expose to the world the ugly face of extreme Islam, we must
simultaneously show the international community Israel's collective personality,
articulated so movingly by Ofer Regev, as he stood before his brother Eldad's
grave: "We live in a world where we believe our enemy is exactly like us. We
think we can speak to people who also want to raise a child, grow a flower and
love a girl - exactly like us. But, the enemy has proved that it is not like
'us.' And still, we will not stop trying. I am proud that I belong to those who
love and not to 'them' who hate."

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Eldad Regev's funeral, where his brother Ofer declared himself
proud to belong to those who love and not to those who hate. (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

966 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 1, 2008 Friday

Watching American Jews drift away

BYLINE: DANIEL GORDIS

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 1213 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is senior vice president of the Shalem Center in
Jerusalem. His next book, Saving Israel: How the Jewish State Can Win a War that
May Not End, will be published by Wiley in the spring.

For me, July is the cruelest month. Maybe it's because it's always hotter than I
remember. Or the fact that at my age, birthdays feel more ominous than fun. Or
maybe I'm just jealous of my kids - they're on vacation, while I trudge off to
the office each morning. Who knows?

A few years ago, my wife took up bird-watching. She trolled the relevant Web
sites, eventually got the right kind of binoculars and bought the book with all
the pictures of the various birds, in which she meticulously writes down which
one she's seen, where and when. She knows the places to go for the best
sightings; she's been known to get up at an ungodly hour to go stare at these
birds.

Occasionally, she tries to get me to share her enthusiasm. I've gotten very good
at pretending that I see the bird, when actually, all I can find in the
binoculars is a tree. And I'm terrible at staying still for the eternity that it
takes to see the bird actually do something. Bird-watching isn't for me. But
something about the intensity of her hobby struck me as inspiring. So I decided
to make July better, and last month invented a new hobby - tourist watching.

Tragically, I don't have a book in which I can record my sightings. There's no
page with a picture of the three women in their 20s I overheard on Jerusalem's
Rehov Emek Refaim, one saying to the others, "I'm telling you. I've checked this
out. There is simply no place in this country to get your hair cut except for
the Sheraton." At the King David, I heard a teenager with a thick New York
accent mutter to his sister, "Geez, a whole country without a Starbucks.
Unbelievable."

Yes, I thought, it was unbelievable. But I was proud of myself - I forced myself
not to ask him why he'd bothered coming here in the first place, or if life at
the King David had really gotten that rough. The fact that it's not an
officially recognized hobby doesn't make it any less amusing. I actually think
people are way more interesting than birds - though not necessarily always more
intelligent.

OCCASIONALLY, THOUGH, some very smart people do make their way through. Some
friends of ours from the "old country" were here for a conference during July,
and came over to visit. They were having a great time, for the most part. But
they all confessed to having been very upset by a lecture given by Maj.-Gen.
(res.) Ya'acov Amidror, and they were hoping that another speaker would be a
"tikkun" (their word, not mine) for Amidror. Wow, I thought - Amidror must have
said something outrageous. So I asked. And what was it that Amidror, formerly
the head of research for the Intelligence Corps, had said that was so upsetting?
He'd said that there's no chance of peace with the Palestinians and that there
wouldn't be for the foreseeable future.

These friends of ours, nationally respected leaders of American Jewish life,
simply couldn't bear the pessimism. With their deeply rooted sense that people
at their core are decent and reasonable, they couldn't really understand
Amidror. They needed a "tikkun," because having internalized America's ethos
about conflict, they simply know that every war has a solution, that every
disagreement can be settled. Enormously bright, exceedingly well- educated and
chronically optimistic, our friends were now confronting an Israel that they
didn't know how to relate to.

At first, their despondency confused me, but eventually, I began to understand.
For them, Israel has become about settling the conflict. When it comes to
Israel, they see their primary roles, as American Jewish leaders, as getting
reasonable minds to pressure the relevant parties to put an end to the fighting.
When they think of Israel's hopes, they think almost exclusively of peace. When
asked what they want most for Israel, they respond that they want security - and
peace. Beyond that, they have little to say. When asked to imagine an Israel
that might not know peace for the next several generations, they cannot. And
most importantly, when asked why Israel ought to continue to exist if it will be
at war well into the indefinite future, they have no idea.

One of these visitors put it this way: "Why has Israel given up hope?" he wanted
to know. "And with no genuine chance for peace, why forge on?" Those seemed like
reasonable questions, but as my daughter, just out of the army, pointed out to
me a few days later, they were also wrong. "We've given up hope for peace,"
Talia said to me, "but that doesn't mean we've given up hope." Surely, the
Jewish state has a few hopes even beyond peace, no? And as to why forge on,
Talia pointed out, that's only a legitimate question if Israel's sole goal is to
live in peace, if it has no other reason for being. "But wanting peace isn't the
same thing as being about peace," my daughter said. She was right.

I actually found those conversations very worrisome. For if these people,
exceedingly decent and very smart - think of Israel only in terms of peace,
American Jewry is bound to drift ever further away from caring about Israel. If
Israel is only "about peace" and peace is unachievable, then Israel is at worst
a source of shame, and at best, irrelevant. Either way, American Jews are going
to slip away from us.

THEY ALREADY are. In a relatively recent study by Steven Cohen and Ari Kelman,
"Beyond Distancing: Young American Jews and Their Alienation from Israel,"
American Jews were asked if the destruction (not the withering away, but the
destruction) of the Jewish state would be for them a personal tragedy. Among the
older generation, the vast majority said that it would. But among the young
generation, half said that it would not.

Yes, you read this correctly. Half of those young American Jews did not think
that the destruction of the Jewish state would be a personal tragedy for them.
In a generation or two, these will be the Jews at the helm of the American
Jewish community. If the conflict has not subsided by then, and these are the
people at the helm across the ocean, what will happen?

Our friends were right. A "tikkun" is needed. For their not being able to say
anything about why Israel matters if it's not at peace (i.e., if it's not more
like America) isn't their fault. It's ours. If we're not talking about that, why
should they? If our leadership is silent on this subject, why shouldn't theirs
be?

The intellectually vacuous leadership we're now used to is more dangerous than
we knew. It's bad enough that no one's outraged anymore by continuing scandals
because we no longer expect anything better. But listen carefully to the
American Jews who visit, and you see that our leadership is destroying them,
too. It's not hard to understand why they chuckle at the occasional prime
ministerial call for aliya. After all, if our leadership has no vision for this
place, why in the world should they think about joining it?

When half of America's Jewish young adults don't think that the destruction of
Israel would be a tragedy, we're in trouble. It's almost distressing enough to
get me to drop the tourist watching and to go back to the birds. But as the
Talmud says, "Who is wise? The one who can foresee consequences." I'll stick to
watching the tourists. It's distressing, but important. For they, more than our
leaders, are actually pointing to where we're headed.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: American tourists. If Israel is only "about peace" and peace is
unachievable, then Israel is at worst a source of shame, and at best,
irrelevant. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved

967 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

August 1, 2008 Friday

Verbal junk food

BYLINE: SARAH HONIG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1174 words

HIGHLIGHT: Another Tack

He punctuated his carefully enunciated phrases with frequent throat-clearings,
hemmed a lot and hawed even more, yet among all the hems and haws, Barack Obama
told the truth, even if maybe not only and certainly not all of it.
Nevertheless, it's a sure bet to take him at his word when he declared that "if
someone was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at
night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that."

We can all be darn tootin' convinced of Obama's sincerity. He doubtlessly would
make sure that his little girls were safe. Would he be equally as resolute to
look after the daughters of Israel? Aye, to quote Hamlet, there's the rub. A
very big rub at that.

It was a flawless ploy for Obama to inject his offspring into his message. This
imparted the highest degree of folksy empathy: "Like you, I'm a dad. I too would
feel impelled to take action." And these syrupy supportive sentiments crossed
the ocean with satellite immediacy and appealed directly to the hearts of
registered Jewish voters, which they were foremost intended to sway.

LET'S FACE it; Obama didn't spare us a day of his hectic schedule to demonstrate
genuine identification with the suffering of the hard-luck residents of a small,
outlying, battered Israeli town. Had their sad lot really touched him, he would
have come earlier during the seven years of Sderot's ongoing nightmare. But he
only came when the American presidential campaign switched into high gear and
the votes of various less-than-knee-jerk-liberal Jewish sorts (yes, they exist)
were judged significant enough to make a pitch for.

However, even they weren't Obama's primary target. The hop-and-skip to Israel
was incorporated in the framework of a whirlwind grand tour taken to provide the
freshman senator and erstwhile community organizer with an instant education in
world affairs. Israel was just one more unavoidable stop with the added bonus of
cajoling wary voters. The Sderot photo-op became a diploma in diplomatic savoir
faire. Trainee-statesman Obama is now an overnight expert who can rebut carping
critics with reminiscences from his half hour in Sderot.

His apparent compassion there was hardly surprising. What else would he say at
that venue and on such an occasion? He after all came to garner campaign capital
and prescribed etiquette obliged him to declaim what his hosts and audiences
waited to hear. Sderot's inhabitants were all extras in his meticulously
stage-managed extravaganza. They had to play the role of the grateful recipients
of his beneficent commiseration with their travails.

The rest of us Israelis were cast as bit players in the rock star's sideshow. We
couldn't rebuff the affection he seemingly bestowed on us. We aren't so crazy as
to snub a potential US president. We had to be gracious and perform the parts
cynically assigned us - quite likely not for our own good. How could we react
when the trendy harbinger of change opined omnisciently that it's "in Israel's
interest" to achieve peace with the Palestinians? We could do nothing but
exclaim: "Aw shucks! No kidding! Bless you for showing us the light that evaded
us for all these decades until your trailblazing persona graced us with its
fleeting presence!"

Did Obama really suppose we hadn't figured that one out on our own? Why say the
obvious? Because Israel provided nothing but the backdrop for an expedient
publicity stunt. Israel hardly deserved anything more original than regurgitated
slogans. At best Obama's catchphrases could be meaningless lip service to
mediocrity, feeding the masses with verbal junk food. That's the optimistic
scenario.

UNHAPPILY THE more realistic likelihood is that already - even in the shallowest
of contexts - Obama is preaching to us and indicating what he expects should he
win in November. He places the onus for "making peace" on us, as if we hadn't
tried. His much-heralded "change" boils down to promising lots more of the same
- greater meddling than even George Bush's excesses - while unreservedly
adopting Bush's half-baked "two-state vision."

Granted, Obama's familiarity with the intricacies of our struggle for survival
in this land for over a century is minimal. He may actually believe that
terrorist intimidation arises from Israel's existence, that so-called
Palestinians harbor just grievances, that poverty and privation fuel their
animus. He might not know that genocidal Arab belligerence preceded Israel's
birth and that Arab bloodlust is the root of the conflict, not its outcome.

But even someone with warped perceptions and severe information deficits must
realize that peace prattles are the most hackneyed cliches in our troubled
existence. What's missing is Arab goodwill, not peace-brokers.

The fact that Obama consented to make allowances for Israel's "need to defend
itself" sounds too uncomfortably like all past preambles to bare-knuckled
pressure from a host of unfriendly Washington administrations. None of them ever
straightforwardly owned up to outright antagonism to the Jewish state. They all
had our "best interests" in mind. They merely insisted that the road to peace
must be paved with Israeli concessions, even if we bleed en route. They knew
better than us what's good for us and it was no skin off their noses.
Condoleezza Rice is merely the latest representative of such schoolmarm
superciliousness.

The unsettling fact is that Obama is surrounded by characters who make Condi
look like a Lover of Zion. Around him is a virtual rogues' gallery of one-time
honchos who spare no effort or wile to weaken Israel. At least some of them will
get to whisper in the neophyte president's ear, should Obama make it to the
White House.

Too many American presidential hopefuls, though they regaled us with endearing
noises while running, proved actual horrors in office. Jimmy Carter's name
easily comes to mind. With Carter's Israel-bashing gang hovering so closely
around Obama, the vibes aren't good. Zbigniew Brzezinski and Tony Lake in
particular have much to answer for - not only vis-^-vis Israelis. These tireless
promoters of kowtowing to the Third World and appeasing Islam orchestrated the
policy that put Iran's ayatollahs in power and allowed them to menace world
peace to this day. Ahmadinejad's threat of nuclear annihilation against Israel
is their legacy.

When Carter demonizes Israel as an apartheid state, he echoes Brzezinski, who
never spared Israel his bristling tongue-lashings. More recently Brzezinski
censured Israel's self-defense against Hizbullah and urged America and the
international community to espouse Hamas as a worthy legitimate interlocutor.

The Brzezinskis, Lakes, Tony McPeaks, Madeleine Albrights, Lee Hamiltons and
their ilk were obviously not going to hog the limelight during Obama's lightning
Israeli excursion. They knew they'd spoil the show. For that's all it was - a
show of making nice, of recruiting images of sleeping children to effect a
lulling ambiance. Brzezinski et al. will bend Obama's receptive ear out of our
earshot. Aye, there's the rub.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Barack Obama in Sderot. Why did he wait till the campaign to
come to the besieged town? (Credit: AP)

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August 1, 2008 Friday

The view from Nahariya

BYLINE: BARBARA SOFER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 1155 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Human Spirit

Last Sunday, I had coffee with bereaved Miki and Shlomo Goldwasser in their home
in Nahariya. The photos of their son Ehud were prominent in the living room. A
hand- carved mezuza case with his photo attached had arrived from a stranger in
Mitzpe Ramon. Miki's back was stiff and aching from the week of mourning. Two
thousand Israelis had made their way to Nahariya, but today the Goldwasser home
was eerily quiet.

Miki shared with me and my two Jerusalem friends the sickening experience of
seeing her son's casket on television. Until then, despite all of the briefings
and reports, she had clung to a mother's last glimmer of hope that the reports
of her son's death were false, one more tortuous tactic on the part of
Hizbullah. Only when she saw the casket did she internalize that Udi was dead.

Yair Goldwasser, Udi's younger brother, who had also been involved in the
campaign for the MIAs, arrived home and joined us. He wanted to know about an
article that had run two days earlier in The Jerusalem Post harshly criticizing
his mother. Readers in the US had just alerted him, and the family members
hadn't yet read the article.

And so, with terrible awkwardness, we sit and read the opinion piece, "Put them
to death," by Sarah Honig, my fellow columnist whom I much admire. I tried to
explain the nuances in English.

THERE WAS much in the column with which the Goldwassers agreed, particularly the
central point about the need for capital punishment for terrorists. But Miki's
face turned white as she heard the many charges laid at her door, especially the
conclusion that she had "pushed us another step closer to losing our existential
war." Honig wrote of Miki's "cleverness" in her June 18 letter to Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert and the cabinet using "scare tactics like her warning that if Kuntar
weren't let out, the next hostages may be families and youngsters." Miki winced
at the term "scare tactics." In addition to the prime minister and cabinet, the
meeting to decide on the prisoner exchange was scheduled to include the chief of
staff, the Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs and MIA emissary, Ofer Dekel - presumably
not a group easily scared or influenced.

The column continued: "It may have been her prerogative to shout to all and
sundry that she doesn't give a hoot about why Kuntar was convicted in the first
place, nor does she care about the consequences of his release. It is legitimate
for a distraught mother to focus only on her personal pain. But it's
illegitimate to cynically contrive to mess with the minds of the rest of the
nation, from whose ranks emboldened Hizbullah's next victims will surely come."
Isn't Miki Goldwasser part of that nation, and not an enemy of it? Indeed she
has received widespread affection, respect and support in her struggle.

And it's true that Miki and Shlomo Goldwasser were more inclined than others to
release Kuntar. His incarceration, they argue, hasn't prevented other despicable
acts of terror. Indeed, Miki predicts that the puffed-up hero's welcome he
received will soon fade and his downfall will be swift. "His real horror will
begin now," Miki said. "He'll have to look behind him wherever he goes."

About her criticized theory that a deal could prevent further kidnapping she
said only, "No one can prove that I'm wrong." And there's another issue: The
Goldwassers have been consulted by numerous soldiers as to whether or not they
should take up combat positions in the face of what they perceived as
lip-service in "making every effort" to bring captured soldiers home.

WHETHER WE agree with the Goldwassers or not, the final deal that brought about
the return of the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev had to arouse pain,
disappointment, and anger in Israelis and friends of Israel. The soldiers'
abduction in the first place, the Second War in Lebanon, the negotiated
ceasefire without the return of the soldiers, the decision to negotiate with
Hizbullah, the payment of such a high price including the freeing of a monster,
and the sight of the soldiers' coffins are a nightmare to us as a nation. We
hate having to deal with those who want to see us all dead. We despise returning
a child murderer. We loathe being in a position of vulnerability. At the same
time, we realize there is no greater vulnerability than our love for our
children - our own personal children and those of our nation. And when it comes
to our children, how often do we suspend our own rules, logic and principles of
ideally balanced reward and punishment?

This is not a case, as Honig suggests, of political correctness or
incorrectness. Blaming Miki Goldwasser for cynicism and manipulation is wrong.
Nor does anyone have the right to lecture her about the capacity for murder and
cruelty of the enemy, reminding her of details of the horrors Kuntar inflicted
on the Haran family. Like the Harans, the Goldwassers live in Nahariya. Miki and
Shlomo stayed home throughout the Second Lebanese War and faced the falling
katyushas. They have been consumed for the last two years with an
around-the-clock struggle to bring their son and the other MIAs home. Every
night and day since the kidnapping, she imagined the maniacal tortures inflicted
on him.

SADLY, WE don't have a string of successes in bringing home our soldiers. Before
reading the next sentence, try naming all seven of our MIAs. Zach Baumel, Zvi
Feldman, Yehudah Katz have been missing for 26 years, Ron Arad for 22 (he's
50!), Guy Hever for 11, Majdy Halabi for three. Amid all the sadness and fury,
can't we admit that there's some measure of relief in burying Udi and Eldad in
Jewish graves in Israel? For all our very real military intelligence and
prowess, wish as we may, we have been unable to rescue Gilad Schalit who is so
near in Gaza and not in a far-flung country like Uganda. We're angry, but we
have no answers.

Our enemies are both cruel and cunning. That we are willing to pay high prices
for the return of our beloved children, when the tiniest hope exists that
they're alive, and even for the return of their bodies, is no secret to our
enemies and to the world. Some call that a weakness, but others might call it a
strength.

The frustration of not having good military or diplomatic solutions to the
tragic situation of our MIAs has unleashed misplaced anger and finger-pointing,
and not just in Honig's column. The self-reviling expressions in our national
dialogue do us no good. Imagine the glee with which Nasrallah must greet our
internal strife, our name- calling and our talk of national shame and
gullibility.

Let us resolve to continue the internal dialogue with greater respect and
sensitivity, especially during these days in which we remember the destruction
of the Temples, one of which fell because of something as seemingly benign as
ill will among the populace. We cannot afford the accusations and the despair as
we struggle to meet the many challenges with which we are confronted.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Miki Goldwasser. Imagine the glee with which Nasrallah greets
our talk of national shame and gullibility.

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The Jerusalem Post

July 31, 2008 Thursday

Olmert, a dignified end

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 673 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

In the end, it was a dignified acknowledgement of an untenable reality.

In a brief, and rather sad, address to the nation last night, Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert briskly and proudly detailed what he considered to be the key
achievements of his government, stressed that he still felt entirely capable of
doing his job, insisted he had satisfactory answers to the numerous corruption
accusations that have been levelled against him, but nonetheless bowed to the
inevitable and signaled the end of his hold on power.

In comments he made to journalists over the weekend, Olmert had spoken bitterly
and resentfully about an ostensible deliberate effort within the police and
state prosecution hierarchies to oust him, and in so doing raised fears that he
would follow in the footsteps of former president Moshe Katsav, who turned
viciously and publicly upon the law enforcement authorities, seeking to
devastate their credibility to salvage his.

But Olmert last night eschewed Katsav's undignified hysteria. He did refer to
relentless attacks upon him, from his very first days in office, launched by
self-styled champions of justice. But he leavened such criticism with firmly
stated respect and fealty to the rule of law, and commendably stressed his pride
in being a citizen of a democratic state in which a prime minister is not "above
the law."

His concern, he said, not without justification, was that the prime minister not
be "below the law." Stoutly declaring his innocence, while admitting to having
made unspecified mistakes down the years, he lamented that, as prime minister,
he was denied the presumption of innocence afforded ordinary citizens, and that
he had not been able to defend himself fairly against what he said were
misrepresentations and the besmirching of his good name.

His message, then, was that it was unfair for him to be forced out of office.
And yet, having asked himself which was more important - his personal justice or
the good of the state - there could be only one conclusion.

On the path to that decision, of course, cold political calculation had played
its part. Olmert last night preempted almost certain defeat, and deep
humiliation, had he chosen to compete in the Kadima leadership vote on September
17. His reluctant announcement came only after even the demolition of the
credibility of a chief witness in one of the corruption affairs, Morris
Talansky, under cross-examination last week, had failed to revive his prime
ministerial fortunes. It came after that weekend assault on the purported
malevolent forces arrayed against him had failed to ignite public sympathy.

But Olmert, in departure, has mercifully spared Israel the shameful potential
ignominy of having a prime minister indicted while in office. And while this
newspaper has argued that he should have stepped down after the failures of the
Second Lebanon War, and that he was further compromised by the demands on his
attention necessitated to fight for his good name, it has also been our
consistent contention that there should be no rush to judgement as regards the
corruption allegations.

His announced intention to step down, therefore, serves to underline how high
are the stakes when a serving prime minister is investigated for alleged
criminal offenses.

Olmert had said a little less than three months ago that he hoped to rapidly
clear his name. He failed to do so, and consequently has now recognized the
impossibility of his position.

Attention, politically, now switches to the succession battle within Kadima. But
attention legally turns to the police and the state prosecution.

On a personal level, one can only hope that Ehud Olmert is indeed able to clear
his name by providing the promised satisfactory responses to the allegations
that have been levelled against him. If he is not now indicted, and, moreover,
then convicted, however, Israel's law enforcement authorities will face the
charge that they were indeed complicit in hounding an elected prime minister
from office, with dreadful implications for Israeli democracy.

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July 31, 2008 Thursday

The wonders of normative Judaism

BYLINE: Larry Derfner

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 675 words

HIGHLIGHT: You don't have to talk about it. It's a part of you. RATTLING THE
CAGE

So let me tell you about my son Alon's bar mitzva last week. It was magic, the
whole day, from the morning service where Alon made us awfully proud with his
reading of the Torah portion, to the party at night, where the lights seemed to
have an especially warm glow. With all the family and friends around, I think a
consensus emerged that there was a whole lotta love in the air.

And between the atmosphere and the little speeches and remarks made by Alon, my
wife, me and the people closest to us, I think the bar mitzva had a particular
personality, a particular meaning. I think it had to do with the idea that "life
is with people," and that we had just witnessed the debut of a fellow who had a
lot to bring to this life, and wasn't it something?

It was only a few days later, during the reviews, when I realized that except
for the synagogue service itself and Alon's commentary on the Torah portion,
which he wrote with the rabbi, not a word had been mentioned all day about
Judaism or Israel. There was nothing about being a good Jew, or a good Israeli,
or isn't it great that we're Jews and great that we're in Israel, and God bless
Israel. There wasn't a word about God, either.

HMM. HAD we left something out? I asked some people in my family (including my
wife), who are not atheists and who feel much more strongly about keeping Jewish
traditions than I do, and they all said no. It would have been contrived,
because neither Alon nor the rest of our family are preoccupied with being
Jewish or Israeli. It wasn't necessary.

I agree. It wasn't necessary to make the point that for Alon and us, the bar
mitzva was part of being Jewish and part of being Israeli, and that it was an
affirmation of both. The point was implied. I think it was obvious. If Alon
didn't care about being Jewish, he wouldn't have taken the bar mitzva as
seriously as he so palpably did. The same goes for his parents. (With his kid
brother, it must be said, the seriousness of intent was less palpable.)

And as for the Israeli connection, if we didn't feel it, we wouldn't be here.
It's as simple as that.

This is what I would call normative Judaism, normative Israeliness. You don't
have to talk about it. It's a part of you. Good, bad, so-so, whatever, it's a
part of you.

And that's fine with me. That's exactly the kind of Jew, the kind of Israeli, I
want to be, and I'm very happy that that's the sort of Jewish, Israeli family
I'm part of. A normative one.

I must say, I don't think I knew the depth to which being Jewish is a part of me
until I sat through the bar mitzva service. Was I moved! (I'm told I wasn't
alone.) Afterward, a traditionally Jewish friend who knows my atheist views said
I'd looked like I was moved, which I confirmed, and she asked whether it was
just the father- son-coming-of-age thing that did it, or might it also have had
something to do with the words and melodies of the Jewish service? In other
words: Confess, atheist!

Alright, I confess. I think there was an element, at least, of Jewish religious
identification in what I was feeling. Towards the end, I found myself singing a
couple of those prayers with a joy I only remember feeling once before, when I
was sitting in synagogue one afternoon at Hebrew school. Maybe I was remembering
my bar mitzva. Maybe I was remembering my father.

Is there a contradiction here? I don't think so. I think it's completely
consistent to be an atheist and to feel spiritually uplifted in synagogue once
every 40 years or so. I'm sure a lot of other normative Jews can tell the same
story. (Actually, Alon's kid brother has a bar mitzva coming up in another four
years, so my next religious epiphany might not take nearly as long to arrive as
this last one did.)

At Alon's bar mitzva, I didn't want to talk too much because it was his day. But
since this is my column, I'll take the liberty to say one more thank you,
strictly on my own behalf: I want to thank Israel for helping me stay a
normative Jew, and helping me pass this on to my kids. I'm not sure I could have
managed it anywhere else.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: A BAR MITZVA boy from the '40s. Thanks to Israel for keeping us
normative Jews.

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The Jerusalem Post

July 31, 2008 Thursday

Letters

BYLINE: Rhona Yemini, Hillel Davis, Judy Prager, Maurice Jones, Zaki Cooper, Eli
Tabori, Steve Luckert, Ruth & Yitz Greenwald

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1160 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Bring on the bores

Sir, - I don't know whether John McCain will take kindly to being portrayed as a
bore by Shmuley Boteach - but he should. "Can bores be president?" (July 29) was
one of the cleverest endorsements of McCain that I have read, and I agreed with
every word.

To the devil with charisma.

RHONA YEMINI

Givatayim

Noteworthy vs not worthy

Sir, - Hillel Halkin went a step further than the greedy yeshiva student who
stole Barack Obama's note from the Western Wall and the sensation-seeking
newspaper that published it. He had the audacity to trash the content of a
personal and private prayer.

Obama's requests for forgiveness and protection from pride are noteworthy for
going way beyond the self-centred request of just wanting to be president.

I would like to place a note in the Wall asking that all our leaders always pray
for protection from pride, and to be an instrument of God's will ("Compared
prayers," July 30).

HILLEL DAVIS

Jerusalem

About 'venting'...

Sir, - In her interesting and entertaining "The story behind 'Dear Sir'" (July
30) Judy Montagu said mere "venting" of anger is not a letter to the editor.

I beg to differ.

We receive our Jerusalem Post at 6.30 a.m. I check the news and comment
articles, and as soon as something really gets at me, I start composing a letter
- usually by 7.30. If nothing else, it gives me a feeling of satisfaction that I
have done my bit to right perceived wrongs and aggravation in our convoluted
lives here.

JUDY PRAGER

Petah Tikva

...and preventing

Sir, - Fourteen years ago I was editing the Cyprus Mail. An Israel-bashing
columnist on the paper (ex-PLO hack, now think-tank pro) could dish it out but
had a problem with taking it.

One weekend I'd put the paper to bed, only to find on publication that he'd
tampered with a letter describing the columnist as a "worm" in the Mail's
otherwise "very nice apple." He'd cut the "worm" reference.

I wrote him a memo warning that he'd be sacked if he did something similar
again. He threw the memo in my face.

I hit him and lost my job, returning to Britain.

I've no regrets. Letters are worth defending.

MAURICE JONES

UK

UK leads in interfaith

Sir, - It was heartening to read of the interfaith gathering convened by the
Saudi Arabian government ("Not just another interfaith parley," David Rosen,
July 30). While there remain many difficulties and challenges posed by Jewish
relations with Christians and Muslims, this initiative is certainly a step in
the right direction.

However, high-level international gatherings attended by political and religious
leaders in isolation are not sufficient. If we are to build on the good will
created by such conferences, we need a sophisticated network of interfaith
organizations at the grassroots level. The UK has taken a lead in this area, and
the Jewish community has been in the vanguard of these efforts.

According to the latest survey, there are 263 interfaith organizations in the
UK, of which 25 are national. The oldest amongst these is the Council of
Christians and Jews, established in 1942 amid the horror of the Shoah to combat
prejudice and anti-Semitism.

Britain is developing the framework at national and local levels, building
stronger interfaith relations and better links between the Jewish community and
the rest of society.

ZAKI COOPER, Trustee

Council of Christians and Jews

London

Was it just a monologue?

Sir, - There are several angles to the choice of Spain as the venue for the
interfaith "dialogue," one of them being the awkwardness of inviting religious
leaders to a place where they are forbidden to carry their sacred texts or
display their religious symbols. Also, the meeting couldn't be held in the
Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina since non-Muslims aren't allowed there.

But beyond that is Spain's history as an Islamic possession, and the trumped-up
myth of the nearly utopian, Islamic Andalusia of yore.

Muslims understand the term "dialogue" in a sharply different way from
Westerners. For them, it does not mean an attempt to rationally debate a topic
in order to arrive at the truth. Truth is already given: It's called Shari'a -
Islamic Law - and the only acceptable dialogue is one that will lead to its
implementation.

Poul E. Andersen, former dean of the church of Odense, Denmark, warns against
the false hopes of dialoguing with Muslims. During a debate at the University of
Aarhus, Ahmad Akkari, one of the Muslim participants, stated: "Islam has waged
war where this was necessary, and dialogue where this was possible. A dialogue
can thus only be viewed as part of a missionary objective."

When Mr. Andersen raised the issue of dialogue with the World Muslim League in
Denmark, the answer was: "To a Muslim, it is artificial to discuss Islam. In
fact, you view any discussion as an expression of Western thinking."

Wouldn't a more accurate term for this event, therefore, be "interfaith
monologue"? ("Don't confuse interfath dialogue with groveling," Isi Leibler,
July 30)

ELI TABORI

Paris

Revision,

not innovation

Sir, - To clarify some points raised in "US Holocaust Memorial Museum launches
exhibit on Bergson rescue group" (July 16): The museum has not launched a new
exhibit, but revised a section in our permanent exhibition dealing with American
rescue efforts and the War Refugee Board. This revision was planned long before
we received the petition mentioned in the article.

Research conducted for our 2002 exhibition The Art and Politics of Arthur Szyk
that devoted a great deal of attention to the Bergson Group helped inform our
review and the changes subsequently made in the permanent exhibition.

Changing an exhibition is a complex, time-consuming process, and not one any
serious museum does quickly or takes lightly. While we are always aware of the
public's concerns, we do not change our exhibits as a result of public pressure
or petitions, but only after careful historical analysis and review. Within the
confines of available space, we strive to ensure comprehensiveness, accuracy and
educational effectiveness.

STEVE LUCKERT, Curator

Permanent Exhibition

US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Washington

Born in the bedroom

Sir, - Re "A different position on childbirth" (Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, June 29):
Our three children were born at home in England, by choice, between the end of
the 1950s and the middle of the 1960s. It was encouraged both because of the
shortage of hospital beds and the risks of disease in a hospital environment.

A home midwifery service was provided. My husband was allowed in the bedroom to
keep me company until the actual delivery. He waited in the next-door room and
almost pulled down a mantleshelf as he helped me "push" by pushing on the shelf
when he heard the midwife's instructions. When our third child was born, he
didn't manage to leave in time, and was there with me when the baby was born,
within 10 minutes.

They were all healthy and well, and are now the parents of our nine
grandchildren and one great- grandchild.

RUTH AND YITZ GREENWALD

Givatayim

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July 31, 2008 Thursday

Shas against women

BYLINE: ELANA MARYLES SZTOKMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 505 words

HIGHLIGHT: The haredi party prefers a system of blackmail and domestic abuse
over divorce reform. The writer is an educator, researcher and activist
specializing in education, society, religion and gender, and a founding member
of Mavoi Satum for Agunot and Mesuravot Get, www.mavoisatum.org. Her blog, "For
Serious Jewish Women," is at www.elanasztokman.com.

Yesterday, the women of Israel suffered a major setback in divorce reform as
Shas blocked the divorce finances bill by using a coalition threat. This bill
would reverse a very damaging law that requires that the man serve his wife a
get (religious divorce) before any financial settlements can be made. This
system promotes the use of the get as blackmail, since women are unable to
receive any financial rights - not even the National Insurance Institute (Bituah
Leumi) payments reserved for single mothers - until after the get is served.

Shas MKs threatened the coalition by saying that this new bill would break up
families. Indeed it will - it will enable women to obtain their freedom from
abusive husbands. But for Shas, it is clearly more important to keep women
imprisoned at all costs. Keep the blackmail in place, they argue. It seems the
status of women in this country is regressing to the Middle Ages.

According to the Israel Women's Network, there are approximately 10,000 agunot/
mesuravot get (women denied divorce) in the country. In my view, this is likely
an understatement. After all, there is not a single aguna who is not also an
abused spouse. Understandably, a man who uses the get as a threat against his
wife, who holds her freedom over her head often for years or decades, does not
get this way overnight. Abuse is gradual, left to fester through repeated
patterns of verbal and emotional violence. According to a University of Haifa
study, one out of every seven women in Israel is in an abusive relationship. We
can all do the math. That's a lot of women likely to become agunot.

WHAT IS truly horrifying about this situation is that Israel remains perhaps the
only Western (presumably) country in which abused women are left hanging. In
other parts of the world, evidence of abuse in marriage is automatic grounds for
divorce. Here, abusive men are given the ultimate power over their wives. They
can hold the get over their heads and keep them chained forever.

This is what makes Shas's actions so terrifyingly repugnant. When Shas MK Nissim
Ze'ev yelled, "Do you know how many cases people opened in the beit din
(rabbinical court) and then closed because they managed to get to shalom bayit
(peace in the home)?" he effectively advocated this backward, damaging system.
An abused woman should never be sent back to do "shalom bayit." It can cost the
woman her life.

This bill is vital because it can enable women to achieve at least financial
freedom while they are struggling to escape from an abusive life. This kind of
financial freedom - which unlike the get itself is not dependent on halachic
rules that determine female passivity in the process - can enable a woman to get
on with many vital aspects of her life. She can set up a new home, become
financially independent and free herself from potential blackmail. She may not
be able to remarry without the get, but for many women, the ability to remarry
is hardly the main point. All they want is the freedom that they deserve as
human beings.

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The Jerusalem Post

July 31, 2008 Thursday

Tolerance, without state funding

BYLINE: EVELYN GORDON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1069 words

HIGHLIGHT: The majority has every right not to finance a lifestyle it considers
inimical to its interests. Civil Fights

Education Minister Yuli Tamir's defense of a new law exempting haredi schools
from teaching the core curriculum deserves attention. Since we cannot force the
haredim to accept the core curriculum, Tamir argued, it would be pointless and
wrong to condition funding for their schools on their doing so. She thereby
expressed an attitude that has burdened Israeli policy debates for decades: that
what is not legally prohibited must be state-funded.

The new law, passed last week, amends a 1950s-era law stating that to receive
government funding, schools must teach a core curriculum determined by the
Education Ministry. For decades, this law was systematically ignored: Haredi
high schools never taught core curriculum subjects such as English, math and
civics, but received state funding anyway. In 2004, the High Court of Justice
finally intervened, ruling (properly) that the government could not simply
ignore the law. Yet recognizing that schools could not be stripped of funding
overnight, it postponed implementation of its ruling to give them time to either
change their curricula or prepare themselves for losing their funding.

The current government's dependence on Shas made its response a foregone
conclusion: last week's amendment, which requires the state to fund 60 percent
of a school's budget even if it does not teach the core curriculum, while also
entitling such schools to seek additional funding from local governments. Yet
variations on Tamir's justification have come up too many times in other debates
to be dismissed as merely another capitulation to coalition pressure.

Indeed, her stance is seductive precisely because she is half-right: The haredim
will never voluntarily adopt the core curriculum, and it may well be impossible
to force them to do so at a price society would find tolerable. For instance,
Israel is not going to send in the army, as president Dwight Eisenhower did to
enforce integration in American schools; our army has more pressing
responsibilities.

That fact, however, in no way obligates the government to finance this lifestyle
choice.

Tamir's concern that halting funding would harm haredi children, who should not
be made to suffer for their parents' choices, is simply nonsense: Haredi parents
care for their children no less than do non-haredi parents, and haredi society
as a whole probably cares more about education than does general Israeli
society, despite its different view of what a proper education constitutes. If
it possibly could, the haredi community would find alternative funding for its
schools, such as increased overseas donations. And if it could not, parental
pressure would grow for curriculum changes that would enable state funding to
resume. After all, haredi schools in other countries do comply with local
curriculum requirements, so this is clearly not a religious impossibility.

That, obviously, is a major argument in favor of financial sanctions: They often
do effect societal change. If faced with a choice between closing their doors
for lack of funds and changing their curriculum, many haredi schools might view
math and English as the lesser of two evils.

BUT EVEN if funding cuts had no effect, because the haredim succeeded in finding
alternative funding, a country still has every right to deny state funds to
goals the majority deems inimical to its interests and devote them instead to
goals it deems essential to its interests. Democracy requires tolerance for
dissident lifestyles. It does not require the state to finance them.

This confusion is not unique to haredi issues. It is equally evident in, for
instance, the widely held belief that denying state funding to controversial
cultural events (such as the Batsheva dance troupe's famous striptease to the
Passover hymn "Who Knows One") constitutes "censorship," and is therefore
impermissible. Yet denying government funding in no way deprives artists of the
right to paint, sculpt or stage whatever they please; it simply requires them to
do so at their own expense rather than the state's.

But perhaps nowhere is this confusion more pernicious than in the debate over
drafting haredi yeshiva students. Typically, this debate vibrates between two
poles - those who say that exempting haredim from service is unfair, and
therefore they must be drafted, and those who argue that a haredi draft is
unenforceable at a price Israeli society would be willing to pay, and therefore
they must not be drafted. And in fact, both are correct: The exemption is
utterly unfair, but enforcing the draft probably would be impossible at a price
society would find tolerable.

YET THERE is a third alternative, which is almost never discussed: leaving the
exemption in place, but ceasing to fund it. Specifically, the government could
stop paying stipends to most yeshiva students (a limited number of grants to
exceptional scholars, like those offered exceptional university students, should
remain). Precisely because these stipends are what enable thousands of haredim
to survive financially without working, they are also what enable them to afford
draft-dodging in a country where army service is usually a prerequisite to
working legally.

Here, too, fears that innocent haredi children would suffer poverty if the
stipends were canceled without enforcing army service is nonsense. Either haredi
society would find other funding sources (i.e. donations), or haredi parents,
who care no less about their children than do non-haredi parents, would do what
was necessary to keep their children fed - even if that meant leaving yeshiva,
joining the army's special haredi battalion and then getting a job. Since
haredim in other countries do work, this, too, is clearly not a religious
impossibility.

Eliminating the stipends probably would impact on haredi behavior: Some haredi
men would almost certainly feel financially constrained to leave yeshiva. But
even if the impact were nil, the majority still has every right not to finance a
lifestyle it considers inimical to its interests. That money could and should be
devoted instead to purposes that the majority deems more important - for
instance, rescuing our ailing university system.

A democratic society must have room for dissident views and lifestyles. But that
is not the same as saying that it needs to fund them. And until Israeli
policy-makers internalize this difference, too many debates will remain stuck in
a sterile rut.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: HAREDI CHILDREN. Fears they will face poverty if their fathers'
government stipends are cancelled are nonsense. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

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The Jerusalem Post

July 31, 2008 Thursday

Reappraising Jewish-Hispanic relations

BYLINE: ASHLEY PERRY (PEREZ)

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 754 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is an editor at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
for the Middle East Strategic Information Project. This article first appeared
in JPost.com's "Sephardi Perspective" blog

In a recent column entitled "Give it a rest" (July 25), Prof. Samuel Freedman
laments the American Jewish community's "obsession" with building ties to the
African- American community.

In listing reasons why the African-American community isn't as interested in the
relationship, Freedman claims it has other, greater concerns; one of them being
that Hispanics are surpassing them as America's largest racial minority.

The Jewish community has been slow to realize this, and has undertaken far less
community building with the Hispanic American community than with others.
Hispanic Americans should be natural allies of the Jewish community, especially
in political terms.

Dr. Steven Windmueller, director of the Irwin Daniels School of Jewish Communal
Service at Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles,
asserts that Jews and Hispanics in America have much in common.

These two cultures have both developed a similar pattern of community building,
with a special focus on family, mutual aid societies and transnational links to
their "motherlands." The idea of diaspora, of course, holds different meaning
for various nationalities. Yet this notion of a cultural, philanthropic and
political connection may provide a shared agenda.

THE FOUNDATION for Ethnic Understanding compiled a landmark survey in 2003 which
found that 75 percent of Hispanic and Jewish Americans consider it "very
important" to work together to fight discrimination. Interestingly, 65% of
Hispanics polled felt the Holocaust is not taught enough. However, when asked to
"describe the relationship" between Hispanics and Jews in the United States,
40%-45% believed it was only "fair." This demonstrates the room for growth and
the need for dialogue between the two communities.

One area I have rarely seen addressed is the sense of shared history and roots.
Few in or outside of the Jewish community are aware of the high number of
"Hispanic" or "Spanish" Jews. Although today only a few hundred Jews in the US
speak Ladino, there are thousands whose culture is rooted in Spanish tradition.

Sephardi music is imbued with a familiar sound for Latino dance lovers, and more
than one music historian has found Jewish roots in the familiar salsa, samba or
meringue dance beat. There is even a Jewish/Latino/Ladino rap group, the Hip Hop
Hoodios, who pepper their rhymes with Spanish and Ladino.

PERHAPS EVEN more numerous than the Jews with Spanish and Latino roots are the
Hispanics with Jewish roots. It has been suggested that almost half of the
Spaniards and Portuguese alive today have Jewish ancestors, so it stands to
reason that many of those who left the Iberian Peninsula for South and Central
America had Jewish roots. In fact, many Jews fled Spain and Portugal for the New
World because of the Spanish Inquisition, only to find that it followed them
there.

It is estimated that Mexico City alone has over 20,000 anusim or conversos. In
2003, a genetic test conducted by Family Tree DNA of men living in New Mexico,
south Texas and northern Mexico found that 10%-15% had some Jewish DNA. In
Brazil it has been estimated that 10%-25% are descended from forcibly converted
Jews. The names Alvarez, Rivera, Lopez, Mendez and even Perez could indicate
Jewish ancestry.

Dr. Dell Sanchez, since finding out he had Jewish roots, has been on a quest to
learn how many Hispanics have Sephardi ancestry, and claims "experts are saying
that at least 10% of all Hispanics have Sephardic Jewish roots."

Many Hispanics like Sanchez are finding Jewish roots through otherwise
inexplicable traditions handed down through their family, deathbed confessions
by parents or good old-fashioned genealogy.

There are now enough Hispanic Jews who can build bridges between the communities
and find areas of cooperation. In Chicago, the Sephardic Model Seder, a special
Passover celebration, is held every year by the Alliance for Jews and Latinos -
a group that aims to return to the common denominator of their distant pasts.

LAST YEAR in Texas, the American Jewish Committee co- sponsored a three-day
workshop with Mexico's Institute for Mexicans Abroad to highlight the
discrimination some immigrants feel in the US.

In this election year, Jews should reach out to other groups to build coalitions
on issues of shared importance. To do this, our shared history and traditions
must be evoked. Sephardim, anusim and Hispanics with Jewish roots should be
thrust into the foreground of this endeavor and become a conduit for relations
between the two communities.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: LATIN AMERICAN crypto-Jews (Credit: From the film 'Longing: The
Forgotten Jews of South America')

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The Jerusalem Post

July 31, 2008 Thursday

A jam-packed journey of self-discovery

BYLINE: JOEL KOCEN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1309 words

HIGHLIGHT: After his latest trip here, an American Jew finally resolves the
tension between his two identities. The author is a semi-retired businessman in
Rancho Mirage, California.

My wife Jo Ann and I have taken many trips to Israel, but it was our eighth, at
the beginning of this summer, which provided an epiphany. We had a lifetime of
experiences in just three weeks.

During our stay we visited Sderot, a city under siege. We saw Gaza, an enclave
of hate surrounded by barbed wire with despair inside, its people devoid of hope
and its leaders determined to keep them in misery with "Death to Israel" as
their mantra.

We had a few days of pure vacation in Tel Aviv - a city that is as alive,
vibrant and luxurious as any in the world, with beaches, restaurants, shops,
skyscrapers and busy people. Arts and commerce coexist in perfect harmony. These
Jews know how to live.

We then got down to the business of the trip: Haifa's six-day meeting of the
American Technion Society, whose mission is to support the Technion-Israel
Institute of Technology and its programs. We were to see what was going on and
decide if we would commit funds for its endeavors.

A word about Haifa. Mix Route 22 near Boston with Silicon Valley and throw in a
large touch of San Diego's biotech labs, and you get a feel for that northern
town. Combine the wellspring of brainpower, the determination of the Technion's
faculty and students and the huge investment of capital from around the world,
and you get a location in which every major corporation searching for tomorrow
has a building, a lab and a staff.

This location has fueled Israel's transition from agriculture to hi-tech. The
economy is booming (5 percent annual growth) and optimism permeates the air.

Do you want to look into the future? Look no further than the labs and
classrooms of the Technion. We witnessed time-lapse photography through electron
microscopes that disclosed the secrets of cancer cells mutating; patches
allowing the regeneration of bone tissue; nano robots that cruise through the
body delivering medication; computerized face-recognition programs that can pick
a terrorist out of a crowd; embryonic stem cells morphed into a biological patch
to fix a diseased heart; and the list goes on and on.

At the end of our American Technion Society meeting, our group of 70
participants gathered to decide if we would pledge resources to further the
university's programs. In the space of 45 minutes, $16,000,000 was pledged. Jews
and Israel came together for tikkun olam, repairing the world.

In Jerusalem we were treated to yet another aspect of Israeli existence, as we
got into the down-and-dirty game of political scandal. In a candid
off-the-record briefing from David Horovitz, editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem
Post, I got the most comprehensive view of Israel's challenges, both military
and political, that I have heard anywhere. He did not blow smoke or spout false
optimism, nor did he say that "all is lost." He gave us a dose of realism that
was sobering and thought provoking. He let us know that America is in this
struggle with Israel. Israel is fighting the free world's war with radical
Islam, and we better appreciate it.

During our visit to Jerusalem, the scandal involving Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert's taking of money from a New York financier was the news de jour.
Speculation was rampant that Olmert would resign, maybe even that day.

We listened to the debate in the Knesset with Ehud Barak calling for Olmert's
resignation. Our guide translated as the politicians flung out charges and
counter charges. Those guys really know how to land a political punch.
No-holds-barred democracy at its roughest.

As we prepared to fly back to the US, we were asked by our Israeli friends to
come and spend the day with them at home in Modi'in. The town is exactly like
any town in Middle America. The home is modern, and replete with computers for
every member of the family. They have the most modern appliances, two cars and
every gadget you can imagine. The husband is employed in a hi-tech company, and
the wife is director of social services for the city of Kiryat Malachi. Their
daughters have careers of their own, and the son will soon go into the army.
These Israelis share the same American values we do: the good life, family
around and careers. And they are willing to work for it.

On our way back to California we stopped off in Washington to attend the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual policy conference. We were to
hear, over the ensuing three days, speeches from an awesome array of candidates,
congressional leaders, Israeli leaders, administration spokespeople and famous
opinion makers. American political power brokers came to court 7,500 interested,
influential, and financially sympathetic voters. The American Jewish political
community came to listen, make decisions - and discuss their positions on
pressing Israeli-related legislation with their congressional representatives.
We are a political force to be reckoned with, and we knew it. So did the media,
which covered all phases of the event.

Politician after politician, including the secretary of state, declared Israel's
unrestricted right to defend itself. All made the analogy that the United States
would not tolerate a foreign missile falling on its soil without major
retaliation, and Israel is entitled to no less.

Then there were the three presidential candidates (Hillary Clinton had not yet
suspended her campaign). John McCain spoke first. Clear, unequivocal, and solid
in his support, he knew the situation in Israel intimately, having traveled to
the region countless times both as a private citizen and as a representative of
the US government. Clinton spoke the next day. If we didn't know better, we
would have sworn she was an Israeli citizen; she knew everyone who is anyone in
Israel.

Barack Obama's speech was spellbinding. Though most of it was in general terms,
he brought the crowd to its feet with the words, "Jerusalem will remain the
capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." No other candidate had said
those magic words, and the crowd hooted and hollered. I thought perhaps Obama
had won the day. But, alas, the very next day "following protests from
Palestinian and Hamas government officials," he reversed himself.

On the third day of the conference, we all went to see our congresswoman.

I, with our delegation of 30 from Palm Springs, pleaded with Mary Bono to
support pro-Israel legislation. It was one of my proudest moments as an American
Jew to stand in that office in the nation's capital and exercise my
constitutional right to petition the government .

TWO WEEKS later we had resumed our hectic lives in the desert. As members of the
board of directors of the Jewish Community School of the Desert, Jo Ann and I
attended the annual graduation and close-of-year ceremonies. The ceremony began
with two students bringing in the stars and stripes and the Israeli flag.

The students, all 64 of them, marched in, kindergarten first, and on through the
sixth grade. The national anthem was sung by all, followed by "Hatikva."

The students entertained us in a program ranging from Israeli rap and "Over the
Rainbow" in Hebrew to American Broadway showtunes. Here was a blend of cultures
presented by American children who were as comfortable as Jews as I had been
uncomfortable when I was that age.

And then the revelation hit me. I was no longer conflicted being a Jew, an
American and an unabashed supporter of Israel. The America in which I had grown
up had changed, and I had hardly noticed. When I was a child and the kids in the
schoolyard would shout, "Jew, if it came to war, who would you die for?" I would
say, "For America, of course." But what if a Jewish relative in Israel were in
peril; what would I do then? Now I knew the answer: We would die for either or
both.

This change is profound. We don't have to be "either/or." Being American, Jewish
and loving Israel is one continuum. And that is why these last weeks have
changed my life.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: JEWISH COMMUNITY School of the Desert graduation. Unconflicted
identity (Credit: Courtesy)

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976 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

July 31, 2008 Thursday

The geography of Tisha Be'av

BYLINE: STEPHEN GABRIEL ROSENBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1273 words

HIGHLIGHT: The land of the Bible was always a wedge between larger powers. The
writer is a fellow of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archeological Research in
Jerusalem.

The location of Jerusalem is sacred, but how did that come about? According to
tradition, it may well be that Mount Moriah is where Abraham was told to
sacrifice his son Isaac, but why there? Jerusalem existed before that event, and
its early name Rushalimum suggests that it was the foundation of the Ugaritic
(Syrian) lady Shalem, goddess of the twilight, the completion of the day, sister
to lady Shahar, goddess of the morning, twin daughters of the chief god El. But
why was it a place sacred to her or any other deity?

Israel's geographical features run north to south. To the west is the Great Sea,
the Mediterranean and the Coastal Plain, then further east the Shephela, the
higher ground, and a range of mountains, the Judean Hills that run north into
the Carmel, and then a steep drop eastward down to the Jordan Valley. Travelers
from the coast to the Jordan and beyond had to cross these mountains that rise
up to a thousand meters above sea level. There were two convenient crossing
points between the sea and the Jordan, "saddles" in the mountain range that
offered access at the lower level. One was Shechem (later called Nablus) and the
other was Jerusalem, and both had ample supplies of water.

These two locations became the crossroads for trade and travel, where the donkey
caravans could easily meet the "Derech Hamelech," the Royal Road that ran along
the mountain tops, on the watershed between east and west. The two crossing
points, Shechem and Jerusalem, grew into cities that supplied the caravans with
food and shelter as well as providing them with a shrine to the local god of
travelers. As Shechem was in a valley and not suited for defense, the kings of
Israel later moved their capital to Samaria, but Jerusalem grew up on a
defensible hillock surrounded by three valleys and remained the capital of
Judah.

The shrine of Shechem later arose on Mount Gerizim, while that of Jerusalem was
built on Mount Moriah, next to the town. For King David, who founded a dynasty,
a simple tented shrine was enough. He was a nomad who had led a life of hide and
seek in times of danger. For his son Solomon, a tent was not sufficient, and he
built a grandiose temple of stone and cedar wood, the two most permanent of
local materials.

AS TIME went by, the Temple, built to the glory of God, became the focus of much
idol worship. Solomon's grandson Abijam introduced idols, as did the later kings
Jehoram, Ahaziah and his mother Athaliah. A hundred years later Ahaz built an
altar to foreign gods, as did his grandson Manasseh and his son Amon. After the
pious reign of Josiah, the next (and last) four kings all served idols in the
Temple.

All that was bad enough, but the Temple also became a national treasury, holding
deposits of gold that attracted the envy of foreign rulers, always short of
cash. Worse, the Temple of Jerusalem was located in the most vulnerable area of
the Middle East, for the land of Israel was the meat in the
Mesopotamian-Egyptian sandwich.

When Pharaoh Rameses II went to confront the Hittites at Kadesh in Syria, he had
to race through Israel to get there. His predecessor Thutmose III also came
north through Israel to fight his enemies and defeat them at Megiddo. It was one
of the first of many battles fought there, for Megiddo was also at a break in
the hills, the Carmel range, and it also became a city of shelter and shrine.
Just this season an Early Bronze Age temple has been excavated there.

The most fatal battle at Megiddo was in 609 BCE between Pharaoh Necho and our
king Josiah, who foolishly tried to stop him from reaching the Euphrates at
Carchemish. Josiah was mortally wounded, Necho partly annexed Israel-Judah,
setting off the slippery slope to the Babylonian Exile.

The Babylonians, like the Assyrians before them, tried to neutralize Egypt in
their quest to dominate the Middle East. Israel stood between the two, so the
Babylonian need to conquer it was overriding. Jerusalem was based in the
hinterland and had not fallen to the Assyrians, who did not really need it, but
the Babylonians were more obsessive and conquered Jerusalem in 597 BCE, as
recorded in their annals. For them it was a matter of geography, to protect
their rear when en route to Egypt.

For us it was a matter of pride and, as we rebelled against them, the
Babylonians came back, destroyed the city and the Temple, and took our best
people into exile, 11 years after their first conquest. The rebellion was ours,
but it was the geography that was against us in the first place.

FIFTY YEARS later, the Persians, having conquered Babylon, allowed the return of
the exiles to an area around Jerusalem, called Yehud, and left the city and the
new Second Temple alone. Jerusalem was not in their way: The Persians ruled the
whole known world, and their passage to Egypt, which revolted occasionally, was
clear through the Coastal Plain, controlled by their allies, the post-
Philistines. Alexander the Great, who defeated the Persians, also managed to
conquer Egypt without disturbing Jerusalem, which stood inland. Jewish tradition
suggests that he visited the city and was too impressed by the high priest to
attack it. In any case he had no need to do so, his lines of communication with
Egypt being clear.

Later, however, under the Seleucids and the Hasmoneans, Jerusalem became a
powerhouse of nationalism and revolt against any colonial power. But our own
Hasmoneans squabbled among themselves, and to restore order the Roman general
Pompey seized Jerusalem in 63 BCE. Soon after the Romans appointed their
client-king Herod, who civilized the city by massive building projects. His
oversize Temple Mount, the largest cultic podium in the empire, was obviously a
symbol of pride and splendor in the tradition of Solomon. It attracted foreign
admiration but also envy and greed, and the Roman emperors sought to gain a
foothold by sending their own daily sacrifice to the Temple.

The Romans did not need Jerusalem to gain access to Egypt but, after they set
their sights on Nabatea in Transjordan, they needed it to control the road to
Jericho and the southern fords of the Jordan.

The Romans also needed law and order in all their colonies, which they failed to
get in Palestine, due to their own misrule and policy of suppression - unlike
the more sensible and laid-back rule of their Persian predecessors. The Jewish
Revolt of 66 CE in the Galilee, that spread to Jerusalem, was anathema to the
Romans, a blot on their beloved Pax Romana. Jerusalem, the capital of
resistance, had to be neutralized, and then our own rebelliousness, together
with the lack of unity among the different factions, brought on the terrible
end.

Jerusalem's location made it impossible for the Romans to isolate, and its
treasures had made it too tempting to ignore. We now know that the Colosseum,
the symbol of bread and circuses that enabled Titus to continue the rule of his
father Vespasian, was financed by the treasures stolen from Jerusalem. For
Titus, the Temple had been in the wrong place at the right time.

The land of Israel, the land of the Bible, has always been a wedge between
larger powers. In the ancient past, the successful capital of Judah, Jerusalem,
often demonstrated what could be achieved in difficult times and on difficult
terrain. At many times that attracted the envy of the larger nations, who
coveted the very terrain on which that success had been achieved. Some accepted
the situation and allowed Jerusalem to flourish as before. Others, like Babylon
and Rome, who needed the soil of Jerusalem to achieve their imperial aims, did
not, and so they destroyed it and its Temple.

rosenbeg@zahav.net.il

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: MODEL OF the ancient temple. The Colosseum, the symbol of bread
and circuses that enabled Titus to continue the rule of his father Vespasian,
was financed by the treasures stolen from Jerusalem. (Credit: Israel Museum)

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The Jerusalem Post

July 30, 2008 Wednesday

Blowing smoke over Jerusalem

BYLINE: DOUGLAS BLOOMFIELD

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 709 words

HIGHLIGHT: Washington Watch

John McCain should know better, and so should pro- Israel voters. The GOP
nominee-to-be must think we're a pretty gullible bunch of nudniks if he expects
us to believe that he will move the US embassy to Jerusalem "right away" if he
is elected president.

It won't happen, and he knows it.

But that's what he said when CNN's Wolf Blitzer last week asked if as president
he would move the embassy. "Yes," he answered. "Right Away. I've been committed
to that proposition for years."

Who does he think he is, George W. Bush? Candidate Bush made the same pledge
eight years ago. He promised to move the embassy on his first day in office, but
backtracked to say he'd "begin the process" on the first day. We're still
waiting.

Like his predecessor, Bush has signed waivers every six months delaying the 1995
congressional mandate to move the embassy. McCain voted for that law, but hasn't
pressed the issue except on the campaign trail, and he hasn't objected once to
Bush's waivers of his own 2000 campaign promise.

McCain has spent weeks accusing Barack Obama of backtracking on Jerusalem after
telling American Israel Public Affairs Committee members he supports an
"undivided Jerusalem" and then explaining he meant to say the final status of
the city should be negotiated by the Israelis and Palestinians.

Republicans and hard-liners who wouldn't vote for him anyway have pointed to
that as evidence that the Democratic candidate is no real friend of Israel and
cannot be trusted. The flaw in their argument is that Obama's position is the
same as that of Senator McCain and, currently, President Bush as well as all
previous presidents.

In June McCain told a Miami audience the embassy should be moved "before
anything else happens," adding, "The subject of Jerusalem itself will be
addressed in negotiations by the Israeli government and people." He didn't
mention whether the Palestinians would be among those "people."

MCCAIN DOESN'T need to make such empty promises to convince anyone that he is a
proven friend of Israel, so why this pandering? Is it a sign of desperation or
just a slip of the tongue? "It is such a transparent political ploy; his
advisers should know better than to keep trying to play us for fools," said Neal
Sher, a former AIPAC executive director.

A look behind the curtain may help understand this deviation from McCain's
promise of straight talk. His top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann,
served in that role for Bob Dole when he ran for president and introduced the
Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act in 1995. Coincidence? Since Dole was never
among Israel's top 91 friends in the US Senate unless he was seeking the
presidency, it was widely assumed that his real motivation was raising Jewish
money.

It's an old ritual, trying to use the embassy issue to embarrass your political
opponents in a transparent bid for Jewish support. Republicans tried it on Jimmy
Carter in 1980, and Democrats returned the favor during the Reagan
administration. In 1995, with Dole preparing to challenge him, it was Bill
Clinton's turn to be put on the spot.

It was one of those apple-pie issues that is hard to vote against, and sponsors
knew it. Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin quietly tried to discourage bringing it
up, but Dole, working with AIPAC, which shared an opposition to Clinton's and
Rabin's peace policies, delighted in putting the screws on both leaders.

Dole raised the money he was looking for, but not the votes. Nearly 80 percent
of Jews voted for Clinton.

Moving the embassy has never been a high priority for any Israeli leader in
meetings with American presidents. They see it as a political football in an
American game they prefer staying out of.

All recent prime ministers have understood that an agreement on Jerusalem is
critical to any peace settlement with the Palestinians - and that symbolic
action like American politicians trying to force the embassy move can only make
an agreement more elusive.

But the game continues even though seasoned political observers understand it's
a sham. This year is no exception. Any politician who tells you he's going to
move the embassy before the Israelis and Palestinians come to an agreement on
the city's final status and borders thinks you're wearing a name tag that says
"chump."

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Where's our Jerusalem?

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 747 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

The image of municipal workers, backed by armed Border Police, demolishing a
practically new residential dwelling in east Jerusalem makes for bad publicity.
It also exposes an underlying incoherence in Israel's approach to the capital's
Arab neighborhoods.

On Monday, city wreckage crews came to the northeast Arab village of Beit Hanina
to demolish a building, four floors of which had been built without a permit.
The demolition was carried out after every legal "i" had been dotted and "t"
crossed. Municipal officials argued convincingly that Arab builders had violated
so many ordinances as to make this case one of the most flagrant and egregious
in recent years.

The Post summed-up the story: "Palestinians and left- wing Israelis complain it
is difficult for Arabs to obtain building permits in Jerusalem - forcing them to
build illegally. The municipality insists it is evenhanded in enforcing building
codes in all parts of the city." The truth, we suspect, lies somewhere in the
middle. The number of housing demolitions in the Arab sector, city officials
insist, is significantly down.

But Monday's justifiable demolition raises a far more significant issue: How can
Israel claim to govern east Jerusalem when it has virtually no presence in most
Arab neighborhoods - not even a post office or police station?

BEIT HANINA is situated inside the security fence and within the capital's
municipal boundaries. Further to the east is the outlying Jewish neighborhood of
Neveh Ya'acov.

There is no shortage of lovely homes in Beit Hanina. Residents pay taxes and
receive health and social benefits that are the envy of West Bank Palestinians.
Still, Beit Hanina is probably not somewhere you'd take a visitor to boast that
Arabs are treated equal to Jews in Jerusalem. There is an ambiance of squalor.
Many streets have no sidewalks; roadbeds are potholed; residents burn garbage in
rubble-strewn lots. Conditions would be vastly improved if residents didn't
boycott local elections, and gave themselves a say in the allocation of
municipal resources. Still, Arab intransigence does not negate Israeli
responsibilities.

In the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee on Monday, Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert essentially ruled out the chances of a "shelf agreement" with the
Palestinians within the next six months. And even if some kind of "historic
agreement" could be pulled out of the hat, Olmert said it would not cover
Jerusalem. He then insinuated that the capital's Arab-Jewish population mix
spelled trouble. "Whoever thinks it is possible to live with 270,000 Arabs in
Jerusalem must take into account that there will be" more terrorist attacks.

This leaves us befuddled. The massacre at Mercaz Harav yeshiva was carried out
by a resident of Jebl Mukaber, a village which abuts the Sherover, Haas and
Goldman promenades in Talpiot/East Talpiot. It's also on the Israeli side of the
security barrier. Is Olmert proposing to turn Jebl Mukaber over to Palestinian
control? Both "bulldozer terrorists" came from the Sur Bahir area, which is
mostly inside the security fence. That village (and its Umm Tuba satellite) lies
next to Kibbutz Ramat Rahel and Har Homa. Does Olmert honestly think the
residents of Talpiot and its environs will be better off if Sur Bahir is turned
over to the Palestinians?

THIS GOVERNMENT owes it to Israelis to publicly and explicitly delineate which
parts of the city the Jewish state claims. Why not tell us what Mahmoud Abbas
and Ahmed Qurei presumably already know?

And once it does, Arab neighborhoods that are to remain under permanent Israeli
control should reap the full benefits of Jewish sovereignty - regardless of
whether an agreement with the Palestinians is achieved.

This means swift implementation of the "Marshall Plan" Mayor Uri Lupolianski
unveiled in November 2007. Rather than embroiling Arabs in red tape, the
municipality would actively facilitate the construction of residential housing
in east Jerusalem. With doubts about the limits of Israeli sovereignty
dispelled, it would make sense to invest in infrastructure, classrooms and
public gardens. Neighborhood "city halls" could be situated in places like Beit
Hanina to streamline the processing of building permits, improve service
delivery and provide ombudsman services.

However the diplomatic process plays out, the Arab and Jewish sections of
Jerusalem must receive equal treatment - not to buy loyalty or affection, but as
a concrete manifestation of Jewish sovereignty.

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July 30, 2008 Wednesday

Letters

BYLINE: Trudy Gefen, Zev Chamudot, Gilbert Sievers, Yonatan Silverman, Josh
Hasten, JJ Gross, CT Hollander, Toby Willig, Batya Berlinger

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1126 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Selective solidarity?

Sir, - Jewish peace activist Edith Lutz, who lives Germany, boasts that her
quest, following the biblical principle of "solidarity with the suffering," is
to "help the suffering people of Gaza" ("We aren't lefties," Letters, July 29).

However, one gathers that for her and her fellow activists that principle does
not hold regarding the tens of thousands of Israeli Jewish victims of
Palestinian terror; nor the 8,000 Jews expelled from Gaza who are now living in
insecurity and penury.

One wonders why a trip to Sderot to show solidarity with the seven-year-long
suffering of its citizens from some 5,000 missile attacks from Gaza is not on
her group's itinerary, for the sake of showing at least a vestige of
"evenhandedness." The heavy toll those missile attacks have taken in human lives
and physical and mental injury - mainly of children - as well as the resultant
financial woes, have almost turned Sderot into a ghost town.

So, Ms. Lutz, how about your movement doing something to show it is not
one-sided on the Arab-Israel conflict?

TRUDY GEFEN

Kiryat Ono

Sir, - I was deeply perturbed by Edith Lutz's letter, and would assert that she
and her friends appear to be suffering from a pathological astigmatism which
totally impairs their vision.

She quotes scripture - "Love thy neighbor as thyself" - but then defiles those
sacred words by misdirecting her love toward those who educate and train their
children for hate-filled terrorist acts and shows disdain for Israel when it
attempts to safeguard its borders against these contemptible villains.

As Shakespeare pointed out, the devil can (also) cite Scripture for his
purpose."

ZEV CHAMUDOT

Petah Tikva

Sir, - Edith Lutz proclaims her sense of injury that "our peaceful action was
reported against the background of many people's fear that Iran might send
weaponry to Gaza." Can she explain how her actions are going to prevent future
Iranian weapons shipments?

GILBERT SIEVERS

Jerusalem

Raising eyebrows,

though not hopes

Sir, - Imad Mustafa's seven-minute interview raised my eyebrows not just one,
but two notches ("Syrian ambassador to US tells Israel: Let's end the state of
war," July 28).

In the first place, he spoke to a forum of Americans for Peace Now, which in
itself speaks volumes. The group's representatives are already running wild with
glee, as if peace with Syria was not only around the corner if Israel
capitulates, but within arm's reach.

Yet Mustafa uttered not one word about keeping the Golan Heights demilitarized,
or anything of the sort; nor a word about Syria's very inimical relations with
Hizbullah and Iran.

I view the ambassador's comments as a sort of Trojan Horse - best left outside
for very careful scrutiny before bringing it inside, if it is brought in at all.

YONATAN SILVERMAN

Beit Shemesh

Mistaken blame

Sir, - MJ Rosenberg is correct in pointing out that the last eight years have
not been wonderful for Israel. But he is mistaken in laying the blame on the US
administration that took over in 2000.

Yasser Arafat launched the "Oslo War" while President Clinton was still in the
White House, having derived inspiration from Israel's capitulation to Hizbullah
and retreat from Lebanon under the Barak government. Also, while Rosenberg
claims that the years 1997-1999 were virtually "terror-free," according to the
Foreign Ministry Web site, 65 Israelis were murdered in terror attacks during
that period.

I hardly think their loved ones look back at that time as being one of
tranquility ("When 'pro-Israel' means not giving a damn about Israel," July 29).

JOSH HASTEN

Jerusalem

Sir, - MJ Rosenberg attributed the quote "You can't be too rich or too thin" to
Jackie Kennedy, when, as most people know, these famous words were uttered by
the Duchess of Windsor.

JJ GROSS

Riverdale, New York

Every drop of

reporting counts...

Sir, - You have reported on the dire and dangerous lack of water in our land
("Knesset orders commission of inquiry into water shortage," July 29). Please
continue. An ongoing bombardment of facts and figures by learned experts, as
well as suggestions for water conservation from scientists, health officials and
engineers is needed to break the pervasive "It'll be fine" mentality and help
combat the attitude of "My using too much water won't make a difference anyway."

There is no greater public-service task for your respected paper to undertake.

C. T. HOLLANDER

Jerusalem

...when it

comes to water

Sir, - We are known as a nation that acts only after the fact; we never
anticipate. This is a terrible mind-set when it comes to disturbing facts that
have been long known.

When I came on aliya, people were aware that they shouldn't waste water. Water
desalination was under way and Israel Bonds made a great fuss about hopes for
the Dead Sea-Mediterranean canal. We have since worked extremely slowly in
constructing more desalination plants.

Today there seems to be no public shame over wasting water and the Dead-Med
project is still on the drawing board.

We have given water to Jordan, and continue to do so in the interests of peace.
We are continuing to destroy our aquifers, and there is even talk of handing
them over to a people that will squander the water and cause us increasing
hardship.

We need an all-out, immediate national project focusing on short- and long-term
solutions to our water problem. We dare not quibble about the cost, but must
just go ahead and find the national and political will. When that exists, so
will the solution.

If ever there was an issue to unite all Israelis, it is the issue of water.

TOBY WILLIG

Jerusalem

Separation bus

Sir, - Har Nof is home to all segments of the religious world, although the
majority (not, however, 95 percent, as you reported) are haredi. When we moved
in 20 years ago, there were about 10 secular families here (not 50% of the
population).

The 15A bus line was started about six months ago. It runs mainly in the
mornings and is an express route to the Geula neighborhood, where many men learn
in yeshiva. It runs only about eight times a day, and is an added line, not
coming instead of the regular No.15. I've gotten on it once, and neither the
driver nor anybody else told me where to sit.

While I understand the reasoning behind this "strictly kosher" line - it is not
always comfortable to have to move past men on a crowded bus - it has its
problems. I have only boys, and would like to sit together with them. And what
about women who get sick riding in the back?

Still, the 15A is a bus for men traveling to their yeshivot, and the general
population can use the regular 15, which has not decreased in frequency.

What's nice about Har Nof is that we live in relative harmony ("Egged opens
another 'mehadrin' sex-segregated bus line in Jerusalem," July 29).

BATYA BERLINGER, Jerusalem

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The story behind 'Dear Sir'

BYLINE: JUDY MONTAGU

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1094 words

HIGHLIGHT: IN MY OWN WRITE

I always enjoyed those few moments when the late Georgie Arazi stopped by the
Post's opinions room to share her trenchant but largely tolerant view of life as
this newspaper's letters editor, a position she held staunchly for 30 years,
well into the 1990s.

She was infallible in her judgment of any letter's worth, and as we smiled over
this or that curiosity, I little guessed that one day I would take her place.

While always popular with readers, letters were traditionally treated at the
Post like a sort of Cinderella: beneficial, but banished to the basement.
Georgie would select the letters and edit them, and - after the paper was
computerized in the '80s - dispatch them to a letters "queue," from where they
were plucked, in twos and threes and largely at random, by page designers on the
Night Desk looking to fill an empty corner.

When Bret Stephens, appointed chief editor in March 2002, asked me to take
charge of the letters, things changed. The column was given a designated spot
that allowed for eight to 10 submissions to be printed daily. With the redesign
of the paper the following year, it received the added bonus of a box.

This allocation of a stable and sizable "home" in the paper's opinion pages
meant that the Post's letters column - the point where the newspaper and its
readers meet - could begin to realize its full potential as a serious,
informative, educational and engaging part of the paper.

LAST WEEK the Post ran an op-ed by US author and journalist Ira Rifkin in which
he described an exchange he had on the letters page of The Capital, his "daily
fish wrap" in Annapolis, with an official from the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee who had written a guest column for the paper.

Even though Rifkin characterized the widely-circulated local paper as
"simplistic, unimaginative and factually unreliable," he decided to challenge
the views of the ADC official - a "firm believer in the Israel Lobby theory of
American Middle East policy" - via a letter to the editor because The Capital's
letters page is "among the paper's best-read.

"Verbal attacks on Israel in US papers and other media outlets are ceaseless,"
he wrote in the Post, and "bogus anti-Israel claims must be contested, no matter
how seemingly inconsequential the platform. Israel's narrative must be voiced -
again and again and again, if necessary - so that public opinion is not molded
by Israel's enemies alone."

If that holds true in a "minor paper," how much more so in a world title such as
The Jerusalem Post, known to and read by English speakers everywhere who want to
understand this country and its seemingly intractable conflict with the Arabs?

PICTURE a table, the kind we here sit around on Friday evenings, enjoying our
Shabbat dinner and discussing the week's events. As participants contribute
their views or challenge others', one topic naturally leads to another,
punctuated by lively exclamation, pointed observation and, often, laughter.

Now expand that dinner-table to encompass the global "family" of Post readers
e-mailing in their individual and idiosyncratic responses to articles in the
newspaper, and to each other, and you have the ethos of our letters column.

Why are letters to the editor so popular?

They are short, accessible and make their point quickly, so readers - often
pressed and with competing demands on their attention - get good value for a
small investment of time.

Op-eds and analyses are generally done by "experts" and might overawe some
readers; but anyone can write a letter! There is curiosity to see what a letter
is about, and who the writer is - after all, it could be someone you once knew
well, but haven't seen in years.

A letter to the editor, moreover, allows readers to answer the paper back and
put those experts in their place - which can be a rather satisfying experience.

THE LETTERS that appear in this newspaper, widely read as they are, can act as
an important information or hasbara tool. By laying out Israel's complex
historical and geographical reality in the authentic "voice of the people," they
help to counter media coverage, and opinion, that is all too often biased,
simplistic and devoid of context, on a playing field that is tragically -
sometimes almost comically - tilted against us.

For example, when a reader in Washington accused the Post of "gestures beneath
the standards of professional journalism," for "your unfortunate use of the
terms 'Judea' and 'Samaria' for parts of the West Bank... [as] political terms
used to imply that the Occupied Territories are part of the State of Israel or
its historical patrimony," another reader, in Jerusalem, calmly referred him to
"Ordnance Survey maps prepared for and by the British Mandate authorities in the
1930s, where he will see these terms also used."

WHAT constitutes a good letter in a quality newspaper such as The New York
Times, The Guardian - or The Jerusalem Post?

The mere act of "venting" - even justifiable anger - is not a letter. Readers
have to go away with something, which means they have done one of at least four
things: learned something new; seen something old in a new light; enjoyed a
clever use of language or metaphor; or had a chuckle - something that cannot, to
my mind, be overrated.

"Only now the authorities discover that mad cow disease has reached Israel?"
asked one letter writer in 2002. "Anyone familiar with the antics of our Knesset
members realized that long ago."

When Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon met his tragic end a year later, a reader in
Wisconsin evoked heated comment from other readers when he wrote:

"I am 58, heading for a humdrum retirement culminating in a cheap funeral...
Ilan Ramon was a hero in his country... he will be remembered and mourned by
entire nations. What better way to die? I would change places with him in an
instant."

Another reader, in Dublin, cut to the heart of the security fence issue with
this one-sentence letter: "I would rather be illegally alive than legally dead."

IN THE six years of my job as the Post's letters editor, I've developed a lot of
respect for the readers who write to us. A mixed bunch, often experts in their
own right, they tend to be educated and sophisticated, with a sense of humor.
And they can smell hypocrisy a mile away - be it on the part of local
authorities, international bodies, indeed anyone who throws stones at Israel
while sitting in his own fragile glass house.

So - did anything you read in our pages today rouse or rile you? The letters
column of The Jerusalem Post (letters@jpost com) awaits.

The door is open. Walk right in.

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The growing threat of narco-terror

BYLINE: MICHAEL FREUND

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1015 words

HIGHLIGHT: Fundamentally Freund

With a great deal of attention focused of late on Hizbullah's extensive arms
buildup, little heed has been paid to yet another dangerous development taking
place across the northern border: the resurgence of the drug trade in Lebanon.

Without much fanfare, the Shi'ite terrorist group has been presiding over an
increase in the cultivation and production of illicit crops such as opium and
hashish in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

And though the extent of the drug trafficking is still well below the levels
reached during the heyday of the 1980s, it is nonetheless on the upswing once
again.

That alone should have policymakers both in Israel and the West concerned, if
only because the lucrative narcotics trade plays such an important role in
financing Hizbullah's network of terror and mayhem.

In its recently released 2008 World Drug Report, the UN Office on Drugs and
Crime noted that Lebanon continues to be one of "the most important cannabis
resin producers in the Near East," along with Egypt.

While production is down since the height of the civil war, when the Bekaa
Valley was awash in drugs, the report found that the area used to cultivate
opium poppy, from which heroin is made, and cannabis soared in 2007 to an
estimated 6,500 hectares (16,000 acres).

And as Reuters put it (September 26), the most recent harvest has emerged as
"what locals describe as one of their best cannabis crops since the 1975-1990
civil war." Local Lebanese farmers aren't the only ones getting into the act. An
article in the Yemen Times three months ago revealed that at least 20 drug lords
are now operating openly in the Bekaa Valley.

One of them told the paper that there was little to fear from the Lebanese army
or police, as they rarely ventured into the area, and that even when they do, it
is merely "to clear a few marijuana or opium fields for the press, just to show
that the Lebanese government is addressing the drugs problem." Everyday life in
the Bekaa, the correspondent concluded, "is dominated by the industrial
production of, and trade in, drugs."

Needless to say, the renewed strength of Lebanon's drug trade has had a direct
spillover effect on Israel. After all, at least some of the illegal drugs being
grown in the Bekaa, which is under Hizbullah control, end up in the hands of
dealers and users in Tel Aviv.

On March 25, 33 kg. of heroin were confiscated on the Lebanese border in what
was hailed as one of the largest local drug busts in recent memory. And in
February, Israel broke up a drug-smuggling ring involving an IDF sergeant.

Since 2000, 24 people, including IDF officers, policemen and civilians have been
arrested for involvement in the drug trade between Lebanon and Israel.

But the damage doesn't stop there, for in addition to weakening Israeli society
by facilitating the availability of harmful drugs, Hizbullah has also exploited
the situation for military purposes.

As analyst Yossi Melman noted in Haaretz (March 31), Hizbullah "allows Lebanese
dealers to smuggle drugs into Israel, in exchange for which they provide
Hizbullah, through their Israeli contacts, with intelligence information on the
deployment of the IDF in the North, and purchase maps and equipment for
Hizbullah." Like any good drug cartel, Hizbullah's ambitions aren't limited
merely to the neighborhood marketplace, but extend far beyond, stretching from
Europe to South America to the United States.

In November 2007, for example, authorities in Los Angeles indicted a criminal
gang involved in cocaine and counterfeiting activities, and at least one of the
suspects had links to Hizbullah (The Los Angeles Times, November 7).

And earlier this year, a report by the Bulgarian parliament's Interior Committee
found that terrorist groups such as Hizbullah and Islamic Jihad were actively
involved in Bulgaria's drug trade and were using it to fund their terrorist
activities back home (Sofia News Agency, April 9).

Likewise, Hizbullah has an active presence in the southern hemisphere, where it
is said to be heavily involved in drug trafficking and other illegal activities.
In remarks delivered two weeks ago at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, Michael Braun, the assistant administrator and chief of operations at
the US Drug Enforcement Administration, said that "the nexus between drugs and
terror is growing at light speed... One of the most prominent regions where the
drug-terror nexus is at its strongest is the tri-border area in Latin America,
where the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay join. Both Hamas and
Hizbullah are active in this region."

It is clear, therefore, that Hizbullah increasingly poses not just a terrorist
threat to Israel and the West, but a narco-threat as well. The group's tentacles
literally extend around the globe, and it is actively involved in helping to
spread the poison of illegal drugs far and wide, from which it profits
handsomely.

Indeed, some analysts estimate that Hizbullah earns upwards of $500 million
annually from the drug trade alone, which in part helps to explain its ability
to rearm so broadly and quickly.

It is therefore essential that steps be taken to tackle this menace. After
months of political turmoil, Lebanon finally has a president, so it is high time
for the US and Europe to press Beirut to take a far more aggressive stance
regarding stamping out drug cultivation in the Bekaa.

No more excuses must be accepted, and any further Western aid to the Beirut
government should be linked to its performance on eliminating bumper drug crops
that are being grown right under their noses.

And at home, Western governments need to start underlining the direct link that
exists between drugs and terror.

Many Americans now understand that when they fill up their cars with gasoline,
they might be putting money into the pockets of those who are hostile to them.

The same is no less true when it comes to illegal narcotics, which often help to
fund terrorist groups abroad that aim to harm the West and its interests.

For by doing drugs, users are not only betraying their own health and
well-being, but that of their country too.

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July 30, 2008 Wednesday

Don't confuse interfaith dialogue with groveling

BYLINE: ISI LEIBLER

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1249 words

HIGHLIGHT: Candidly Speaking

A global conference promoting interfaith dialogue sponsored by the current Saudi
regime sounds somewhat like South African proponents of apartheid holding a
global kumbaya extolling the virtues of racial equality.

That is not to deny that King Abdullah broke new ground by hosting an interfaith
conference and for the first time inviting Jews to participate in a Saudi-
sponsored event. Rabbi David Rosen, chairman of the International Jewish
Committee on Interreligious Consultation, exuberantly described it as "an
historic event" and a prelude "to the opening up of Saudi society," although he
did caution that "time will tell if this is the beginning or just another event
of no consequence."

Regrettably, being hosted by King Abdullah had such an intoxicating impact on
some Jewish participants that they lost their bearings and indulged in excessive
praise of their host that degenerated into groveling.

Rabbi Brad Hirschfeld, chairman of the National Center for Learning and
Leadership, stressing that he was not na·ve, claimed that immediately after he
had blessed King Abdullah "with whom God shares divine glory," he saw the king's
eyes fill with tears. Rabbi Michael Lerner, head of the radical Tikkun group,
suggested that "for those of us who despair about Christianity and Judaism
having gone astray... the notion that Islam might be the spark that generates a
new religious revival based on mutual respect and spiritual intensity could
dramatically expand our understanding of the endless potential for God to
surprise us."

Walter Ruby, from the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, compared King
Abdullah's initiative to Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, forgetting that the
Soviet reformer initiated dramatic reforms within his country, whereas Saudi
Arabia still represents the most extreme example of fanatical Wahhabi style
Islamic extremism.

In fact, state sponsored export of Wahhabism has produced a global network of
jihadist Islamic schools and institutions which sanctify violence. This has led
to the creation of centers throughout the world nurturing terrorist cadres and
incubating many of the suicide bombers who are at the forefront of terrorist
activities.

Saudi Arabia denies entry to Jews and prohibits all religions other than Islam
the right to establish houses of worship. Saudi imams openly promote virulent
anti-Semitism, depicting Jews in mosques and on TV as descendents of apes and
pigs who should be killed. To this day, the Saudi educational system continues
to incorporate obscenely anti- Semitic texts.

CLEARLY, KING Abdullah in his old age did not become transformed overnight into
a liberal. But he is astute enough to realize that his country is under great
threat from the expanding Iranian dominated Shi'ite crescent and is desperately
seeking to bolster the regime's poor standing in the United States and Europe.
That was the prime objective of Abdullah's interfaith conference.

Not surprisingly, the conference took place in Madrid rather than Jedda or
Mecca.

Initially, "Rabbi" Yisroel Dovid Weiss, the New York Natorei Karta crackpot who
had previously attended the Iranian Holocaust denial conference, was designated
to be the only Jew to speak from the podium. After protests supported by an
American Muslim imam engaged in interfaith activity, the Saudis backed down and
disinvited Weiss. He was substituted by US interfaith guru Rabbi Arthur
Schneier, who had hosted Pope Benedict XVI at his Park Avenue synagogue during
his recent visit New York.

No Israeli rabbis were invited. Rabbi David Rosen, being Israeli with dual
nationality, was designated as an American. In fact, aside from a brief
exchange, Israel was kept off the agenda.

More importantly, whereas King Abdullah extolled the virtues of peace and
condemned terrorism, participants were informed that only at a subsequent
conference would "terrorism" be defined. Hitherto Moslems have denied that
attacks against Israel were acts of terror, describing them as legitimate
resistance.

IT IS inexplicable why Jewish participants lacked the courage to raise the
crucial issues that would not resonate with their hosts. How could Jewish
leaders participate in such an event without even relating to the obscene,
state- sanctioned religious anti-Semitic incitement openly promoted by the
country sponsoring the event? How could they remain silent when a Saudi deputy
minister of culture stated that "Islam is a moderate culture and we are
determined to prevent extremists from hijacking Islam"? Surely they had an
obligation to point out that while all three major monotheistic religions
incorporate elements of militant piety and violence, Islam, with its dominant
jihadist branches, today represents the most violent doctrine. To remain silent
on these issues enabled the Saudis to exploit interfaith dialogue as a vehicle
to obtain respectability and cover up their extremism.

Jewish representatives also failed to protest when the concluding communique of
the conference called "for international organizations to work to issue a
document stating respect of faiths and religious symbols and criminalizing those
insulting them." This seemingly innocuous statement embodies a call to legally
sanction Islamic bullying against all who criticize or question Islamic beliefs
or behavior as exemplified by the violence and vicious campaign in relation to
Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Jews who are sensitive to the
demonization of religious practice must nevertheless strongly oppose this.

Failure to oppose such initiatives parallels liberal American Jewish leaders
endorsing Muslim demands to outlaw security profiling, despite the fact that 95
percent of acts of global terrorism emanate from that group.

WE ALSO do ourselves a great disservice if we endorse the false allegation that
Islamaphobia is rampant. It is in fact a tribute to tolerance in Western
countries that despite the violence and intimidation emanating from Muslims,
overt aggression or discrimination against them has been extremely limited.
Indeed, unlike synagogues, mosques rarely require armed guards, and in Europe,
much of the violence directed against Jews actually emanates from Muslims.

We must also demand reciprocity. Tolerance and rights for Muslims in Western
countries must be matched by tolerance to non-Muslims in Islamic states.

None of this detracts from our obligation to raise our voices against those who
would condemn an entire religion because of the criminal behavior of
individuals. Yet it is galling that in the Muslim arena there are virtually no
such condemnations in relation to incitement against Israel, Jews, or even the
US.

Bottom line: Dialogue with the Catholic Church only succeeded because of
openness and a will to proceed by both parties. Reputable Jewish organizations
must recognize that dialogue with Muslims becomes counterproductive when they
fail to present the Jewish case for fear of offending the other party or demean
themselves by groveling to appease or curry favor with their hosts. All that is
achieved is a faade of goodwill which ultimately only strengthens extremists at
the expense of the few genuine moderates within the Islamic community.

It was particularly scandalous and shameful that at a conference presided over
by Saudi Arabians who babbled on about tolerance and goodwill, the Jewish
participants did not insist on raising the issue of state-sponsored clerical
anti-Semitism which is endemic in the country which hosted them.

ileibler@netvision.net.il

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July 30, 2008 Wednesday

Not just another interfaith parley

BYLINE: RABBI DAVID ROSEN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 968 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is international director of interreligious affairs for
the American Jewish Committee and interfaith adviser to the Chief Rabbinate.

Last week, an amazingly colorful array of Arab princes and Muslim clerics came
together with representatives of the world's major faiths in the Prado Palace in
Madrid. While the Western media generally failed to appreciate the magnitude of
the event, the Arab media understood how important it really was. Not only was
this the first international multifaith conference ever initiated by an Arab
Muslim leader, it was inaugurated by the king of the Muslim world's heartland,
Saudi Arabia, where the most conservative Islamic Muslim outlook prevails.

At the opening event, King Abdullah emphasized his conviction that authentic
religion is expressed in a spirit of moderation and tolerance, that concord must
be elevated above conflict. To address the global challenges of our time, he
called for cooperation and collaboration among the different religions.

This green light for interfaith dialogue and collaboration opened the gates for
the curious but cautious. As a member of the Jewish delegation - composed of
some 15 rabbis and scholars - we seemed most affected by his "permission." The
Arab media interviewed us incessantly, and prominent Arab figures approached us,
many of whom had never before met a Jew - let alone a rabbi.

Many of their questions reflected stunning prejudices, distortions and
misconceptions - such as the old canard that Jews drink blood on Passover or
that all Jews are rich and control the Western media. But the very fact that
they could vent them to us with seeming innocence presented opportunities to
address and try to overcome these misrepresentations. The encounter ignited a
humanizing flame that began to burn away the demonized image of the other. For
this alone it was worthwhile.

AS IS often the case at conferences, conversations outside the formal
proceedings offered far greater opportunity for meaningful exchange - especially
at meal times. (I should point out that the Muslim organizers had specially
ordered kosher food for the Jewish participants, a testament to the
consideration and respect shown by our hosts.)

At one meal, our Saudi interlocutors were at pains to emphasize the 85-year-old
king's courage. His desire, said one of them, was not only for Saudi Arabia to
play a more engaged role in the world and with the world's religions, but also
to open Saudi Arabia to the world.

The World Muslim League (WML), which reflects a very conservative Islamic
religious ideology, was given responsibility for organizing the conference so
that the initiative had significant Islamic religious "cover." At the same time,
it was patently clear that for the WML, these were uncharted waters. The
preparations, list of invitees, invitations, the program itself - all betrayed a
lack of familiarity with the interfaith territory and with specific religious
communities in particular. But that too highlighted the remarkable novelty, and
thus significance, of King Abdullah's decision to sponsor this event.

While I had been invited not as an Israeli, but as a Jewish leader in the
interreligious field, the fact that I am an Israeli citizen had been excitedly
reported in the media. In the highly choreographed proceedings, there was a
moment of some passion. It came in the wake of an almost inevitable mantra
expressed by a panelist in the penultimate session: While dialogue with Jews was
permissible (and perhaps even desirable), he said, dialogue with Israel was not.
The panelist called on me to respond to his comment.

I replied that an authentic dialogue is not one in which one side defines the
character of the other, but rather seeks genuinely to understand others as they
see themselves. Judaism has always been inextricably connected to the land of
Israel. While this must not be used to justify actions or policies that conflict
with Judaism's ethical foundation, to deny or try to separate this bond is to
fail to acknowledge, let alone respect, the way most Jews define themselves.
Moreover, because of the centrality of the land of Israel to Jewish life,
without Israeli religious representation, no claim to full and genuine dialogue
can ever be credible.

While a few reacted negatively, alleging that the irenic discussion had now been
politicized, there were also constructive Muslim responses emphasizing that by
extension of this principle, Jews need to appreciate what Jerusalem means for
Muslims, as well as Muslim solidarity with their Palestinian brothers and
sisters.

PERHAPS MOST notable of all was the respectful spirit in which the discussion
took place. Many noted that it had actually served as something of a release.
With clear intention, neither official Israeli nor Palestinian religious
representatives had been invited to the conference. One assumes that the Saudis
were trying to preclude the possibility of polemical or disruptive elements in
its first foray into interreligious dialogue. I personally hope that this
absence reveals Saudi intentions to specifically address the challenges in the
Holy Land in a future meeting. However, in a way, the absence of any mention of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had created the feeling that there was an
elephant in the room. The opportunity to refer to it in the context of
respectful debate actually helped clear the air.

While the concluding statement was an anticipated pious declaration of all
things good, it does reflect the expressed Saudi intention to continue this
newly embarked upon process. This should not be underestimated: The highest
authority in the very heartland of Islam has taken a lead in interfaith outreach
with the declared intention of addressing contemporary challenges and resolving
conflict. I believe we will look back on the gathering convened on July 16, 2008
in Madrid as a very significant development, both for the Middle East and for
the world at large.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: KING ABDULLAH shakes hands with a participant at the interfaith
conference in Spain two weeks ago. (Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

July 29, 2008 Tuesday

Why terror thrives

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 755 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

Someone set out to kill a lot of people on Sunday night in Istanbul, Turkey -
and did. Two bombs were exploded, 10 minutes apart, along a pedestrian mall in a
residential neighborhood. The first explosion attracted a crowd; the second,
which could be heard a mile away, was intended to kill those drawn to the site
of the first attack. Some 17 people lost their lives and over 150 were wounded.
Turkish president Abdullah Gul said the attack showed "the ruthlessness of
terrorism." Indeed it did.

Terrorism, meaning the systematic use of force against civilians to demoralize,
intimidate or subjugate countries or peoples, has been a scourge of humanity
from time immemorial. The assault against an El Al plane at Munich Airport on
February 10, 1970 was not the first instance of a civilian airliner being
targeted. That appalling distinction goes to a Puerto Rican communist who
hijacked a US airliner to Havana in 1961. Cuba gave him asylum.

It was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, however, that
trailblazed attacks on airliners with its September 7, 1970 hijacking of three
planes "to call special attention to the Palestinian problem." Sure enough, the
Palestinian cause has since became synonymous with anti-civilian warfare, from
the Munich Olympics' massacre in September 1972 to the Arab fratricide inside
Gaza this weekend. And the slaughter of innocents is now part of the Islamists'
struggle against "infidels." What the Palestinians began in the early 1970s is
now paying "dividends."

This past weekend, for instance, Muslim attackers killed 49 Hindu civilians in
western India, in 17 separate attacks. The modus operandi, as in Turkey, was a
small explosion followed by more bombs set off to kill rescue service personnel
and bystanders.

Yesterday, at least 25 Shi'ite pilgrims were killed and 52 wounded when female
suicide bombers (presumably Sunni Arabs) attacked a religious procession in
Baghdad.

Terrorism is now so ubiquitous as to be unremarkable. And always, obscenely, the
onslaughts are carried out "in the name of Allah."

TRAGICALLY, the international community has only itself to blame for making
terrorism permissible as a tool of war - depending on who is blown up, and who
is doing the blowing up.

This distinction was first articulated by the world's most coddled terrorist,
Yasser Arafat, on November 13, 1974, when the PLO chief made his debut
appearance at the UN General Assembly: "The difference between the revolutionary
and the terrorist lies in the reason for which each fights," he asserted.
"Whoever stands by a just cause and fights for liberation from invaders and
colonialists cannot be called terrorist... The Palestinian people had to resort
to armed struggle when they lost faith in the international community...." The
family of nations responded with a standing ovation.

Although Arafat would make a number of tactical flip- flops on the use of
violence against innocent civilians, he ultimately rejected gains he could have
made at the negotiating table - at Camp David in 2000, for instance - in favor
of unleashing the second intifada.

One can only fantasize about how much safer the world would be today had the UN,
instead of legitimizing Arafat's terrorism, charged him with war crimes. Would
disgruntled Muslims have established al-Qaida's global network - or Abu Sayyaf
in the Philippines, Al Shabaab in Somalia, or the Army of Muhammad in India -
had the international community sent a different signal all those years ago? But
not only did Arafat get a green light from the international community, the
world has since helped nourish self- defeating Palestinian tendencies toward
violence, intransigence and radicalism.

Seldom have the Palestinians been told to choose between violence and political
accommodation. When the Quartet gave Hamas precisely that choice, the
Palestinians stood their ground. Far from penalizing them, the world went wobbly
- the most recent example of this being a UK parliamentary committee, headed by
Labor MP Ann Clwyd, which wants to "dialogue" with Hamas and lift sanctions
against Gaza's Islamo-fascist regime.

VIOLENCE may be endemic to mankind, yet the community of nations nevertheless
managed to outlaw poison gas and criminalize genocide. Is it beyond people's
capacity to, belatedly, define deliberate attacks against civilians as a crime
against humanity? Wouldn't the world be a better place if terrorists found no
sanctuary, no financial backing and no diplomatic cover - because, simply, no
"reason" justified their actions?

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July 29, 2008 Tuesday

Letters

BYLINE: David L. Nemtzov, Haim M. Lerner, A. Weinberg, T. Blumberg, Zalmi
Unsdorfer, Marian Lebor, Edith Lutz, David Barth, Joseph Berger

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1221 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Break those waves

Sir, - As a former lifeguard at the Irish Sea 65 years ago, who nearly drowned
three years ago in the Mediterranean off Netanya, I read "Caution: Deep water"
(Editorial, July 28) with great interest. In spite of being close in and near
the lifeguard station, I was sucked under and out to sea by a riptide.

A very effective and relatively inexpensive way to prevent tragedies would be to
build "wave-breakers" off the swimming beaches. This could be done using sunken
old ships or rocks, or both. It would not have to be unsightly.

Your editorial could then be retitled "Caution: Shallow water."

DAVID L. NEMTZOV

Netanya

Canadian liberalism...

Sir, - While Gil Troy's assessment of the Palestinian approach to violence is
absolutely correct, what troubles me more is the criticism from Canadian
Israel-bashers he has encountered ("A pornographic approach to violence," July
28).

Canadians are justifiably noted for their sense of fairness, but when it comes
to Israel-bashing, the phenomenon of anti-Semitism seems to peek out from under
their cloak of liberalism. Behavior that is acceptable for anyone else, isn't
for the Jews - i.e., Israel.

I often wonder how Canadians would react to a sudden "intifada" by their native
peoples, targeting women and children in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

HAIM M. LERNER

Ganei Tikva

...and a new pornography

Sir, - The word "pornographic" takes on new meaning in Prof. Troy's view of the
Samir Kuntar exchange, used to illustrate his point that "A culture of martyrdom
that venerates the violent is a nation destined to fail."

The failure lies in the wrecked greenhouses that were left for the Palestinians
to build a new economy on; in the lack of schools, hospitals, clean streets,
decent housing and a growing economy where people would work for money rather
than the currency of murder-for-effect or the veneration of child-killers.

With all the wars and conflicts we have endured, we do not celebrate death, but
build cities and educate our children to rejoice in life.

A. WEINBERG

Rehovot

Truth vs falsehood

Sir, - Ira Rifkin's "To fight or not to fight on the home front" (July 24)
interested me for a number of reasons. For one thing, he writes from Annapolis,
Maryland, a short distance from Baltimore, which was home to me for many years.

His description of the Annapolis local newspaper, The Capital, mirrors so many
local newspapers in America these days. He labels it "our daily fish wrap,"
calling it "simplistic, unimaginative and factually unreliable," which has not
stopped it from becoming "a proxy arena playing out the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict."

He questions in depth whether to bother responding to ignorant diatribes
containing mass falsehoods about Israel. I can only agree with his conclusion
that they are difficult to ignore.

Furthermore, it is crucial that he, and others who are able, spread the truth.

T. BLUMBERG

Kiryat Arba

Mofaz's best card

Sir, - In "Olmert weighs quitting after primary" (July 27) you reported that
former chief of staff Shaul Mofaz intends using his security experience to trump
Tzipi Livni in the upcoming Kadima primaries. I think he has a much better card
to play.

As Israel's transportation minister he is surely the best qualified to bring the
discredited "road map" to a complete standstill - even total gridlock.

ZALMI UNSDORFER

London

Sir, - Hardly a day goes by that we don't read or hear transportation minister
Shaul Mofaz giving his opinion on how to keep the country safe. He cannot help
but talk about security, he told the Post in a recent interview. And in "An open
letter to Senator Obama" (July 23) he wrote: "The only truly important issue for
the State of Israel has been and will continue to be our ability to continue
living and surviving here as a people."

True enough. Yet Israelis currently face the gravest danger of all every time
they get into their cars.

In June, traffic fatalities reached a record high, with 45 killed and 176
seriously injured. A total of 2,731 people were involved in accidents. Why does
Mofaz have no substantive antidote to the terror Israelis face on the roads
every single day?

It is well known that more Israelis have been killed on the roads than in all
Israel's wars and terror attacks put together. I would have more time for Mofaz
as "Mr. Security," and more respect for him as a potential leader, if he had
shown the slightest skill in improving these shocking statistics.

In light of his inability to give road safety the attention it deserves, why
should we believe he knows best how to deal with Iran and other security
matters?

MARIAN LEBOR

Ra'anana

We aren't lefties

Sir, - I was quite shocked to read "Activists to test Gaza naval blockade"
(On-Line Edition, July 25).

The Free Gaza Movement, of which I am a member, is not directed by members of
ISM and ICAHD. Its organizer is the Free Gaza group, which is made up of
international peace activists. We come from different backgrounds, have
different positions and opinions, but are united in a single wish: to help the
suffering people of the Gaza Strip.

As a Jew, I feel obliged to follow the main principle of Judaism: "Solidarity
with the suffering," based on Leviticus 19:18. "Ve-ahavta lere'echa kamocha."

To stamp us as "lefties" is incorrect. Although my heart beats on the left, my
life's dedication is to justice, which is found neither on the Right nor the
Left.

I am inspired by the Ethics of the Fathers and the Prophets. And I follow the
philosophy of Martin Buber, an early Zionist who strove (unfortunately, in vain)
for justice and peace with the Arab population.

I am very offended that our peaceful action was reported against the background
of many people's fear that Iran might send weaponry to Gaza.

"The IDF spokesman would not say," you wrote, "what the navy intends to do" when
we enter Gazan waters. I have a suggestion: Let peaceful words speak instead of
words of might.

One word would be sufficient: Shalom.

EDITH LUTZ

Kall, Germany

Obama's confidence

Sir, - David Horovitz seemed to view favorably Sen. Barack Obama's ability to
answer his questions with confidence, not relying on his aides, compared to Sen
McCain's need to refer to Sen. Joe Lieberman for "reassurance." I would argue to
the contrary ("Obama's presidential vision for Israel," July 25).

As an Israeli and an American, I am concerned that Obama does not see the need
to answer to the American Zionist constituency. I am sure he answered with
assuredness because he knows he currently has a "lock" on the "Jewish vote" in
the US.

I wish he felt the need to answer to the nuances of the American Zionists, as
Sen. McCain seems to.

DAVID BARTH

Ra'anana

Sir, - There is a wonderful story about a visitor sitting on the balcony of a
luxury Israeli hotel who is approached by a waiter and asked what he is doing.

He replies that he is writing a book about Israel.

"Oh, how long have you spent in the country?" "I came yesterday," answers the
visitor.

"And how long are you staying?" "I'm leaving tomorrow."

Surprised, the waiter asks, "And what is the title of your book?" The reply:
"Israel - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow."

This story came to mind as I contemplated the grandiosity with which Barack
Obama pontificated on the issue of "settlements" - an issue whose multiple
facets he has no doubt been thinking about deeply for many years.

JOSEPH BERGER

Toronto

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July 29, 2008 Tuesday

Spiritual fast food

BYLINE: EMANUEL FELDMAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1149 words

HIGHLIGHT: There are no shortcuts to anything worthwhile. The writer served as
rabbi in Atlanta for 40 years, is the former editor of Tradition magazine, has
written nine books, and is presently on the editorial staff of the Encyclopedia
of Mitzvot.

The front-page headline in the New York Post was striking: "A-Rod brainwashed by
Kabbala. Wife blames Madonna, sues for divorce." I did a double take.

Who is A-Rod? He is Alex Rodriguez, the star third baseman of the New York
Yankees, who commands a $300 million contract and is considered the best
baseball player since Willie Mays.

Who is Madonna? She is the aging Hollywood pop star who has been dabbling in
what she calls the secrets of the esoteric Kabbala and makes sure the world
knows about her secrets.

What is Kabbala? The short answer is that it is the overall term for ancient
Jewish mystical lore. The long answer is that it is the study of the cosmic
ramifications of our behavior, of the hidden meanings behind the biblical text
and of the almost inconceivable meticulousness with which human beings must
align their actions with the demands of the Torah. That is to say, one cannot
even begin the study of Kabbala unless one is thoroughly conversant with Torah,
Talmud and the codes; is personally pious and dedicated to spirituality; and is
deeply learned in the ways of God. Neither Madonna nor A-Rod seems quite to
match these qualifications.

Were it not so sad, the image of the pop singer teaching Kabbala to the Yankee
third baseman could be a comic invention - the once-impregnable fortress of
Kabbala overrun by fools and miscreants.

This concealed and mystery-laden discipline, which represents hiddenness and
quiet meditation, has reached the nadir of its millennia-long history by being
dragged onto the headlines of a garish and sensationalist New York newspaper.
The unkindest cut of all is that the headlines link Kabbala with two individuals
who are not even Jewish and certainly have no Judaic learning whatsoever, who
cannot read or understand a Hebrew word, who cannot even pronounce the word
"Kabbala" correctly, who know nothing of its provenance, and whose closest
encounter with things Jewish is the corner deli. This transcends ludicrous; it
is absurd, grotesque and farcical. It is, in a word, unadulterated lunacy.

WHAT ATTRACTS the rich and famous to Kabbala? First and foremost are some very
creative modern witch doctors - medicine men who promote it the way elixirs and
potions and snake oil were once peddled to a gullible public. These pitchmen
claim that there are no prerequisites to learning Kabbala and that it demands no
personal obligations or responsibilities. This is a powerful mix: You unlock the
secrets of life, attain peace of mind and you don't have to invest anything of
yourself into it. There are no restrictions on the way you live, no thou-shalts
and thou- shalt-nots, no refraining from any behaviors that you enjoy, no
withdrawal from things you desire, no ongoing study or prayer requirements, no
arduous paths of self- discipline.

Just pay a nominal membership fee, read a pamphlet or two, and you're in.
Occasionally you simply sit in front of a lit candle, meditate, chant a few
mantras and - oh yes, wear a red string around your wrist, like Madonna does.
(The string is on special this week at your friendly Kabbala Center for $29.95
plus shipping and handling. Also available this week only at special prices are
incense, soaps, holy water and energy drinks.)

Why engage in a strenuous climb all the way to the top of a mountain in Nepal to
attain serenity from a guru, when with much less effort you can walk around the
block and drop in to your convenient neighborhood Kabbala Center in Los Angeles
or New York or other cities of your choice?

BUT WHY are celebrities especially attracted to such quackery? Perhaps because
these people are the least serene and therefore the most vulnerable of all. They
have been aiming all their lives at celebritydom and all its attendant
appurtenances: The limitless money, the adulation and genuflection of the
masses, the fulfillment of every whim and desire, the huge mansions and servants
and fawning assistants and yes-men, the power and the influence.

And now, after struggling and clawing their way up to the top of the greasy
pole, they find it to be an empty shell. Inside their own souls, in the dead of
night, there still lurks a hollowness, a desire for meaning and purpose, a
yearning for a life that transcends the crassness that surrounds them. Is this
what I have striven for all my life? Is that all there is?

Some react to this inner yearning by resorting futilely to drugs; others to a
restless, never-ending whirl of adventures and even more material pleasures,
which yields up even more frustration. A few of the more sensitive ones find
meaning in doing good works, worthwhile endeavors which bring them some inner
satisfaction and fulfillment. Most, however, seek shortcuts to ease the sense of
emptiness that besets them.

Enter Kabbala - which, they are told, can painlessly unlock their hidden selves
and make them feel good. But - as the life of Madonna herself attests -
tranquility continues to elude them. She is engaged in a constant, headlong rush
for publicity and notoriety to satisfy her insatiable needs for recognition. She
is eminently successful with the headlines, as per the A-Rod affair. But inner
peace continues to elude her. For there are no shortcuts to anything worthwhile
in life: The concert pianist has practiced countless years; the outstanding
athlete has worked at his skills for a lifetime (ask A- Rod); the great scholar
has invested endless hours of day and night labor on his studies; the truly
spiritual person has worked at it for decades. Madonna herself surely worked
hard to become a pop-star personality. Not even pseudo- Kabbala can grant
serenity without some personal investment of self-discipline and spirituality.

HERE IS some non-mystical advice. A-Rod, forget Kabbala. Go back to being the
best human being you can be. Go back to your wife and children. Take them to
church with you. Give 10 percent of your earnings to good charities. Help those
in need. Forget the incense, holy soap and the false promises of inner peace. Be
the best Alex Rodriguez you know how. You will be a much happier man. And your
batting average will undoubtedly improve.

Madonna: Forgive me for using a non-kabbalistic but Yiddish phrase - enough
already! There comes a time when getting yet another headline is simply not
worth it. You are almost 50. It is time to act your age. Remove the red string
from your wrist and enter the ranks of gracefully aging ex-movie stars. Join the
church choir. You too will find that tithing your earnings to legitimate and
worthwhile charities and devoting your energies to them will give you some of
the tranquility that you obviously yearn for. Drop the Kabbala the same way you
drop boyfriends. Let your fans remember you as a great entertainer and not as a
gullible dilettante.

The object lesson is the same for the rest of us ordinary non-celebrities:
Beware of fast-food religion and drive-in spirituality.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SPECTATORS HOLD up photos of Madonna behind New York Yankees'
Alex Rodriguez last Friday. Just as these two worked hard at achieving fame, the
truly spiritual person has worked decades at attaining inner peace. (Credit: AP)

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July 29, 2008 Tuesday

Happy to be Aish'd

BYLINE: SUSAN JACOBS JABLOW

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 659 words

HIGHLIGHT: The difference between the two outreach experiences is a result of
the broader context in which they took place. RIGHT OF REPLY. The writer lives
in Baltimore.

A few weeks ago, when I stood beneath the wedding canopy with my new husband,
among our wedding guests was a friend whom I first met nearly 17 years ago when
I was a 14-year-old attending an NCSY Shabbaton. The friend, who is now a
respected rabbi, teacher and school administrator, was then a 20-year-old
college student and youth group adviser. He was one of many young, enthusiastic
advisers in my junior high and high school years who took the time to listen to
my nearly endless questions about Orthodox Judaism and to encourage me on a long
and sometimes difficult path toward greater religious observance.

Although the frequency of our contact has ebbed and flowed over the years, we
have always stayed in touch, and he, and eventually his wife, have been my
teachers, spiritual guides, sounding boards and concerned friends.

My long-term friendship with this adviser and more than a few other NCSY friends
and mentors - some of whom also attended or were invited to my wedding -
illustrates an experience with youth outreach movements that is quite opposite
that of Danielle Kubes, the Jerusalem Post intern who wrote so derisively of her
participation in an intense three-week summer program ("You've been Aish'd...,"
July 17). The stark difference between Kubes' experience and mine - at least as
she describes it - is a result not of the intensity of the programs we attended,
but of the broader context in which those programs took place.

WHILE I also participated in a very intense summer program - a six-week NCSY
Israel travel/study program for girls that was by turns exhilarating, inspiring,
exhausting and emotionally overwhelming - that trip was preceded by years of
involvement in less intense NCSY programs and was followed by weekly contact for
several months afterward with one of my counselors, who helped me integrate the
lessons of the program into my non-Orthodox/public school life and to continue
the intellectual journey I had begun that summer.

And while over six years of NCSY involvement I did occasionally encounter naive
or overzealous advisers who seemed unwilling, or unable, to engage in
substantive discussions about what Kubes terms "stock responses" to a variety of
matters related to living an observant life, the vast majority of my advisers
were able to engage in serious discussions, listened with an open mind to
counterarguments and admitted when they did not have the answers I sought.

While they spoke in glowing terms about the benefits of an Orthodox lifestyle,
they also acknowledged the challenges presented by such a way of life,
especially for those raised in less observant homes. Most important, I never
felt that my advisers had befriended me on the condition that I become more
religiously observant. Instead, I knew they would be there, always encouraging
me on my religious journey, but never demanding me to adopt rituals with any
sort of speed, or even at all.

The enduring message I received from NCSY - from my first Junior NCSY Shabbaton
as a seventh grader all the way through my high school graduation - was that I
should be proud of my Jewish heritage and committed to learning more about it.
While increased observance was clearly a goal that was lauded by the
organization, on a person-to-person basis its thrust was on developing Jewish
identity and education. The thought was that a healthy exposure to a meaningful
lifestyle speaks for itself and requires no persuasion.

That was the case for me. All these years later, I'm delighted to be sharing my
traditionally observant life with a man who also connected to his heritage with
the help of Orthodox friends who reached out and kindly, not coercively, showed
him the beauty and meaning of traditional Judaism - and who stood by him as
constant friends and confidants while he struggled with various rituals and
precepts. It is my hope that most youth outreach workers adopt their methods,
and not the more coercive ones described by Kubes.

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July 29, 2008 Tuesday

The truth about outreach

BYLINE: NECHEMIA COOPERSMITH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 779 words

HIGHLIGHT: The Torah does not endorse leaps of faith, all-or- nothing decisions
or disengagement from the world. The writer is the chief editor of Aish.com.

What does it mean to "be Aish'd," a term recently discussed on these pages
("I've been Aish'd...," July 17)?

With the Jewish world experiencing rampant assimilation, intermarriage and
apathy, it's hard not to be surprised by the phenomenon of hundreds of thousands
of secular Jews getting turned on to traditional Judaism through one of the
myriad of programs offered by Aish HaTorah and similar organizations. What is
the secret of their success? For starters, let's look at the wide variety of
Aish HaTorah's programs and ask: What is the common denominator?

Since 1983 - long before Birthright came on the scene - Jerusalem Fellowships
has brought thousands of college students to Israel every year on subsidized
programs to tour the land, learn about Israel and get a taste of the depth and
meaning of their Jewish heritage.

Hasbara Fellowships, which started in 2001 in partnership with the Foreign
Ministry to combat anti-Israel propaganda, has become one of the leading
pro-Israel networks on campuses in North America, bringing 1,450 students from
over 200 campuses to Israel.

Honest Reporting, the popular media watchdog organization, was initially
launched by Aish HaTorah (it is now an independent organization).

The SpeedDating phenomenon was started by an Aish rabbi and students to promote
Jews meeting Jews.

Some 100,000 people attend live Aish HaTorah programs in hundreds of cities, and
Aish.com, the world's most popular Judaism Web site, attracts 2.5 million
monthly visits and has 260,000 unique e-mail subscribers.

WHAT'S GOING on here? Actually, it's simple. Aish HaTorah and other outreach
organizations have the most powerful "product" in the universe - the Torah.
Torah is the Almighty's instructions for living. The Torah teaches us how to
maximize our pleasure and potential in life. It's the owner's manual, the
blueprint of creation and the most revolutionary book in history. As the Talmud
says: "Turn it over, turn it over - everything is in it."

Torah sells itself. For the first time in their lives, many young Jews see
Judaism as a basis to answer the most important questions: How can I live a
meaningful life? How can I build successful relationships, deal honestly in
business and fulfill my personal potential? How can I really make a difference
in the world?

Who knew that Judaism was dealing with such important questions? Everything Aish
does stems from this. Give Jews who haven't had the opportunity to explore the
relevance of Torah, to grapple with Judaism's approach to some of life's
thorniest issues, and they will come away from the experience with a newfound
pride in their heritage. Many of them will want to continue expanding their
knowledge and nurture their commitment to Jewish values and practice. Aish's
approach is that every individual must go at the pace that is comfortable.

ONE OF the biggest challenges facing the Jewish people is apathy about Judaism
and Israel. Apathy stems from ignorance: Can we expect intelligent men and women
to care about something they know nothing about, except negative stereotypes,
misconceptions and "Holocaust Judaism"? Only with an understanding of the
meaning of being Jewish can a Jew make his or her own choice about their Jewish
identity. It can't be made in a vacuum.

The Torah emphasizes building a rational basis of belief, to engage one's mind,
stimulate the intellect through questioning and debate, and thereby nourish the
soul. It does not endorse leaps of faith, all-or-nothing decisions or
disengagement from the world. Jewish life requires both the mind and heart, but
the mind must lead the heart.

Aish HaTorah gives Jews from all backgrounds, in a language they can relate to,
the chance to deepen their education and taste the beauty and meaning of their
heritage. While Judaism introduced its values to the world millennia ago, young
Jews today realize that Judaism isn't about archaic ritual but about profound
wisdom that is important today as ever.

Young Jews are attracted to the idea of tikkun olam - the Jewish people's
history and destiny to serve as a light unto the nations. Once inspired, they
become motivated to take an active role in tackling the main challenges of the
day and bettering the world.

So what does it mean to be Aish'd? It means to become educated, to strengthen
one's Jewish pride through knowledge and understanding. It means to grow
Jewishly, one step at a time. It means replacing apathy with idealism. It means
standing up for Israel and respecting every Jew. It means taking responsibility
for the world, using the Torah as our guide, because that is the mission of the
Jewish people. And most of all, being Aish'd means to love being Jewish.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: HASBARA FELLOWSHIPS tour of Israel. Jewish life requires both
the mind and heart, but the mind must lead the heart. (Credit: Courtesy)

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July 29, 2008 Tuesday

Good things happen

BYLINE: RABBI AVI SHAFRAN

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 877 words

HIGHLIGHT: Foiled plots against the Jews shouldn't be dismissed as mere
coincidence. The writer is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of
America.

Like so much in our world that seems genuine at first, the photograph that
graced the front pages of some of America's most respected newspapers earlier
this month was in fact a fake.

As The Jerusalem Post reported at the time, on its front page, the digital
manipulation of the image, which depicted Iranian missiles being test-fired, is
readily apparent in the launch pad cloud of exhaust and the mid-air smoke trails
of two of the four missiles depicted. The clouds and trails are, incredibly,
identical. Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which released the photograph along with
some belligerent rant, was clearly doing some Photoshopping.

The alteration, first pointed out by political blogger Charles Johnson, seemed
intended to conceal the fact that one of the missiles, which the Iranians claim
could reach Israel, either did not fire or exploded on the ground.

This latest Iranian Photogate scandal (last year the same blogger exposed a
similar clumsy attempt at graphics monkey-business by Iran's Fars News Agency)
might be regarded as nothing more than an example of sloppy damage- control.

But a deeper thought hovers here.

IN OUR day, open miracles do not occur. According to the Jewish religious
tradition, direct divine intervention to turn what we call nature on its head
ended in biblical times. Still perceptible, though, in even our less holy times
are more subtle Heavenly intrusions, twists of "fate" that might wrongly be
dismissed as mere coincidence.

When Israel destroyed the assortment of Arab armies arrayed against it in 1967,
even hardened military men well aware of their forces' skill spoke of wonders.
The rescue at Entebbe in 1976 may have entailed special-forces acumen, but
sensitive Jews saw divine fingerprints on the operation as well. In 1981, when
the Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak was obliterated, they likewise perceived the
imprint of not only might but miracle as well.

And then there are the frustrated plots against Jews and the civilized world
(the former so often the first target of the latter's enemies), the miracles
that consist not of something happening but of something not happening. The
celebrated Jewish sage known as the Vilna Gaon is said to have once been asked
about a verse in Psalms that calls on the nations of the world to praise God:
"What sort of special praise can other nations offer that we Jews cannot?" His
response: Only those among the nations who hate us know of the secret plans they
crafted to harm us that failed to come to fruition. When the messiah arrives and
those people see the truth of God's plan, they will have a singular praise for
God, alone in their knowledge of how He undermined their evil designs.

WHEN, TWICE this month, Arabs turned bulldozers upon Jewish residents of
Jerusalem, amid the sorrow over the dead and wounded and the reminder of the
evil that exists in some twisted hearts, a realization also merited attention:
There are bloodthirsty Jew-haters at the wheels of countless vehicles large and
small in Israel every day of every month of every year. And so, each day we are
spared tragic news is a miraculous one.

And every time a Palestinian terrorist is intercepted, or has a "work accident"
- his explosives detonating in his lap rather than in the Jewish crowd he had
targeted - that, too, is a miracle.

As was an episode recounted in a book about Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher
of Lyon" (the title in fact of the book, by Brendan Murphy, Empire/Harper & Row,
1983): In 1943, after more than three years of German control over France, the
Great Synagogue of Lyon continued to function. That December 10, a Friday, the
Lyon Milice, the Vichy government's shock troops, decided it was time to end the
Jewish worship.

The synagogue's rabbi survived the war to tell how a member of the Milice
quietly entered the rear of the sanctuary that night during Sabbath services.
Armed with three hand grenades, he planned to lob them into the crowd of
standing worshipers from behind, and to flee before the explosions. After
quietly opening the door, he entered the room unnoticed by anyone but the rabbi,
who was standing facing the congregation, and pulled the pins.

What the intruder saw at that moment, though, so shocked him that he froze
wide-eyed in his tracks, barely managing to toss the grenades a few feet before
fleeing. Several worshipers were wounded by shrapnel but none were killed.

What had so flabbergasted the Nazi was the sudden, unexpected sight of his
intended victims' faces. The congregation had suddenly, as if on cue, turned
around as one to face him.

Because the would-be mass-murderer had entered the shul precisely at "Bo'i
b'shalom," the last stanza of the liturgical poem "Lecha Dodi," when worshipers
traditionally turn toward the door to welcome the Sabbath.

WE ARE certainly enjoined to do what we can, using all means at our disposal, to
fight evil. And world leaders are right to consider the full gamut of approaches
for dealing with a belligerent and potentially nuclear-armed Iran.

That is all fine, good and necessary. We do well to remember, though, that
whatever path may be taken by the world's nations, what ultimately will matter
is God's assistance.

Missiles can fail. And work accidents can happen.

And, if we are deserving, they will.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos: A SIGN from above? These pictures distributed by Iran's
Revolutionary Guards and purporting to show four missile launches turned out to
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July 29, 2008 Tuesday

Can bores be president?

BYLINE: SHMULEY BOTEACH

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 936 words

HIGHLIGHT: Whether Obama or McCain become effective leaders will have less to do
with their ability to excite crowds and more with their ability to actualize
their vision. The writer is the international best-selling author of 20 books.
www.shmuley.com

While the world was electrified last week by Barack Obama's tour of the Middle
East and Europe, John McCain was shopping for apple sauce with a family in
Pennsylvania. It was a photo-op of stupefying monotony and served to highlight
the vast wattage that separates the two candidates. Obama, in his shades, flying
with David Petraeus across Baghdad, could power Gotham. McCain could scarcely
power the Energizer bunny.

But this seeming discrepancy should call our attention to how something other
than personal magnetism has always been the central ingredient in great American
leadership.

First, if it's simply excitement that we're looking for, then McCain, as a navy
fighter pilot who spent five years defying bad-guy jailors in the Hanoi Hilton,
has an equal claim to the mantle. That's pretty heady stuff even by Tom Cruise
standards. Second, surely both Obama and McCain want to be known for being
serious, as opposed to merely entertaining. Both men would ultimately like to be
evaluated for their command of the issues and their judgment rather than a mere
ability to excite a crowd. Third, and most importantly, America is a country
that, since its founding, eschewed the charismatic leadership of the great
European monarchies to create simple, plain- spoken men whose claim to
leadership was towering moral stature.

In 18th-century Europe, kings cultivated an aura of awe-inspiring magnetism that
was enhanced by city-size palaces and retinues of thousands decked in gold and
silk. The very sight of the monarch was designed to inspire awe of his subjects
as they cowed before "the chosen of God."

Contrast this with the simple mansion, later called the White House, built for
the US president and first occupied by a corpulent John Adams, whose own lack of
charisma was powerfully captured in David McCullough's Pulitzer-prize winning
biography. What Adams did have, however, was a sense of moral courage that
caused him to be one of the most outspoken voices against British tyranny.

George Washington, who preceded him as president, was neither a gifted public
orator nor possessed of electrifying charisma. By all accounts, he was stiff and
aloof. What he did have, however, was moral authority, an unequaled sense of
gravitas. The same is true of Thomas Jefferson, who is not remembered for a
single speech. On the contrary, his charisma was manifest in his pen, with his
greatest legacy being the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln was a
gangly man who dressed poorly, laughed uncontrollably, told odd yarns and failed
to impress nearly all who met him. He was compared unfavorably to William
Seward, his rival for the presidency in 1860 and later his secretary of state,
who was refined and oozed charisma. What made Lincoln America's greatest leader
was an iron will and moral courage.

When he delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863, it took scarcely
five minutes and bored all who heard it. But when people poured over the text,
it became clear that he had articulated the moral soul of the American
experiment. What Lincoln lacked in charisma he made up for in rectitude, honesty
and virtue.

It is interesting to note that the three men widely considered to have been
America's greatest orators never became president. John C. Calhoun only made it
to vice president, while Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan had six
losing bids for the presidency between them.

A rejection of charismatic leadership in favor of quiet moral purpose traces its
roots all the way back to Moses. Born with a stutter, Moses inspired the people
not with flair but with overwhelming righteousness.

There is something to be said about the dangers of charismatic leadership. It
can be easily abused, causing the public to follow blindly. It can obscure the
real issues and substitute a false cult of personality. To make our point, we
need not focus on the most criminal examples, like Hitler, Stalin and Mao, all
of whom demanded and received blind obedience.

Rather, the most common example in our own time are rock stars, the most
charismatic of all personalities in Western culture. When a politician like
Obama begins to draw hundreds of thousands to a speech, as he did in Berlin, we
begin to refer to him as "a rock star." But surely Obama, an intellectual and a
serious student of the issues, is weary of the comparison.

None of this is to say that Obama's phenomenal oratory or his charisma are not
important ingredients in leadership. Less so it is to say that Obama would not
make a great president. Indeed, I personally love great oratory and have
listened to recordings of the world's greatest speeches on countless occasions.
I find nothing as uplifting. It is to say, however, that whether Obama or McCain
become effective leaders will have less to do with their ability to excite
crowds and more to do with their sense of moral purpose and ability to actualize
their vision rather than anything they might say about it.

The greatest American speaker of the modern era was the Rev. Martin Luther King,
Jr. No doubt, his mesmerizing speeches were central to the success of the civil
rights movement. But his words would not have amounted to a hill of beans had
King not been a man of towering moral purpose who used his words to get people
to do. It was the marches, rather than the words, that broke down the walls of
segregation. Had King not employed his stunning command of language to overturn
centuries of injustice, we might still have quoted his speeches, and we might
still have hung on his every word. But in the final analysis, it would have been
nothing more than entertainment.

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July 29, 2008 Tuesday

Ending Lebanon's free ride

BYLINE: CAROLINE B. GLICK

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1839 words

HIGHLIGHT: US military support for Lebanon grows even as the Lebanese armed
forces demonstrate at every turn that they collaborate with Hizbullah. Our World

Since Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora bowed to Hizbullah's demands in Doha
last month and agreed to grant the Iranian-controlled, Syrian-supported terror
group control over his government, Lebanon has become an official agent of a
terror group. That is, Lebanon, as a state, has become a sponsor of terror. But
no one seems to notice or to care.

Truth be told, on the surface the situation in Lebanon is quite complicated.
There is a power struggle of sorts going on today between Saniora's pro-Lebanese
sovereignty March 14th movement and Hizbullah. Even in its diminished status,
the March 14th movement is seeking to compel Hizbullah to subordinate its
Iranian proxy army to the government. But this is an exercise in futility.

As Hizbullah demonstrated clearly during its armed insurrection in May that led
to the Doha agreement, and as it continues to demonstrate in its attacks against
Sunni neighborhoods in Tripoli, it is fully willing to use its militia to force
its political opponents to accept its complete independence.

But then, while it is clear that the March 14th movement's leaders and
supporters oppose Hizbullah's independence from central authority, it is far
from clear that they oppose its terrorist operations. The fact of the matter is
that none of Hizbullah's political opponents in Lebanon have anything but praise
for its aggression against Israel and its clear intention to continue its war
against Israel for its Iranian commanders.

MAKING THIS point this week, Lebanon's Finance Minister Muhammad Shatah,
explained, "We are all in agreement that it will be crazy not to benefit from
Hizbullah resistance capabilities, but the dispute is whether this will be done
within the state or outside." The widespread support that Hizbullah's terror war
against Israel enjoys in Lebanon was prominently displayed on July 16 when
convicted baby killer Samir Kuntar and his fellow Lebanese terrorists were
released to Lebanon by Israel in exchange for the mutilated corpses of IDF
soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser who were killed in Hizbullah's raid on
their military position in Israel on July 12, 2006.

All of Lebanon's supposedly moderate leaders were at the Hizbullah-controlled
Beirut airport to accord Kuntar a hero's welcome. President Michel Suleiman
embraced Kuntar - who crushed four-year-old Einat Haran's skull - and his fellow
terrorists as "our freed heroes." Sa'ad Hariri, the head of the March 14th
movement, referred to Kuntar's release as "an historic day of joy." Saniora
hailed the corpses-for-murderers swap explaining, "The success of Hizbullah in
the negotiations led by a third party is a national success for the party and
for the struggle of the Lebanese because it secured national goals which Israel
always refused to respect." And Druse leader Walid Jumblatt hailed Kuntar's
release as "a national holiday."

HIZBULLAH'S DOMESTIC intimidation and international terrorism is enabled by the
Lebanese military which refuses to confront it. And this is nothing new. During
the 2006 war, when Suleiman commanded the Lebanese armed forces, the Lebanese
military actively collaborated with Hizbullah units. Then, as now, Hizbullah was
a coalition partner in Saniora's government.

During the war, the Lebanese military guided Hizbullah in attacking the INS
Hanit along the Lebanese coastline with an advanced, Iranian-supplied Chinese
C-802 missile. The Lebanese military pays pensions to the families of Hizbullah
fighters killed in battle. Since the war, the Lebanese military enabled
Hizbullah to reassert its control over south Lebanon, to expand its control
north of the Litani River and to massively rearm.

Moreover, throughout the war, Saniora acted as Hizbullah's mouthpiece. He
condemned all Israeli efforts to defend its territory from wanton aggression and
championed all of Hizbullah's demands in cease-fire negotiations. By the same
token, the Saniora government backed all of Hizbullah's attacks against Israel -
attacks which forced a million Israelis to flee their homes or live in bomb
shelters for the duration of the war.

IN JULY 2006, understanding the Saniora government's collusion with Hizbullah,
Israel's immediate reaction to Hizbullah's abduction of its soldiers and
bombardment of northern Israel was to hold Beirut accountable. In his first
press conference of the war, just hours after Goldwasser and Regev were abducted
and their comrades killed, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made this point
explicitly. He declared, "This morning's events were not a terror attack. They
were the act of a sovereign state that attacked Israel, without reason and
without provocation. The government of Lebanon, of which Hizbullah is a part, is
attempting to destabilize the region. Lebanon is the responsible party, and
Lebanon will pay the consequences for its actions."

Israel's initial strategy for fighting the war was to disable Hizbullah's war
machine by bombing Lebanese infrastructure targets such as highways, the
airport, bridges, electricity grids and the telecommunication systems. All of
these facilities enabled Hizbullah's war effort. It is possible that if Israel
had in fact attacked Lebanon's national infrastructures, the blow to Hizbullah's
war machine might have been strategically debilitating. In that event, the task
of land forces charged with defeating Hizbullah forces on the ground would have
been smoother.

But US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would have none of it. Already in the
earliest stages of the war, she began putting pressure on Israel not to attack
Lebanese infrastructure. Her demand was formalized in the G-8 declaration three
days after Hizbullah initiated hostilities.

Rice's support for Saniora's government was so strong and consistent, that she
eventually forced Israel to cave to all of Hizbullah's demands in UN Security
Council Resolution 1701 which set the terms of the cease-fire at the end of the
war. Rice defended her support by noting the democratic character of the March
14th movement and its success - with US and French support - in forcing most
Syrian forces to depart Lebanon in April 2005.

Despite its and the Lebanese military's open and active collusion with Hizbullah
throughout the war, in its aftermath, US support for Saniora's government
expanded exponentially. In the year following the war, US aid to Lebanon grew
from $41 million to $520 million. US military assistance to the Lebanese
military since the war has been in excess of $410 million, making Lebanon the
second largest recipient per capita of US military aid.

US military support for Lebanon grows even as the Lebanese armed forces
demonstrate at every turn that they collaborate with Hizbullah. It was
supplemented after the Lebanese military, under Suleiman's command, refused to
prevent Hizbullah's coup in May. Moreover, the day before Suleiman gave Kuntar
the red carpet treatment at the Beirut airport, Maj.-Gen. Robert Allardice, the
US Central Command's director of strategy, plans and policy, visited Beirut and
announced an additional $32 million in military aid.

Since 2006, the US has given Lebanon some 285 Humvees, 200 cargo trucks,
helicopter parts, assault rifles, grenade launchers, anti-tank weapons and urban
warfare bunker weapons. Another 300 Humvees, mobile communications systems,
several hundred anti-tank missiles and coastal patrol craft are on order.

Israel has recently begun openly expressing its alarm about these weapon
transfers. Given Hizbullah's now inarguable control over Lebanon and its sway
over its military forces, it is all but a foregone conclusion that these weapons
will likely be used by Hizbullah and its allied forces in the Lebanese army in
any future war with Israel. In recent weeks, senior Defense Ministry officials
have been dispatched to the Pentagon in an attempt to convince the US to stop
the weapons transfers. Yet while the Pentagon was only too happy to give Chief
of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Ashkenazi an unrequested medal, it has rebuffed
all of Israel's entreaties.

ALL OF this is depressingly familiar. In many ways, the Saniora government is to
Hizbullah in Lebanon what the Fatah terror group is to Hamas in the Palestinian
Authority. As is the case in Lebanon, the US trains, finances and arms Fatah. It
supports Fatah politically against Israel, claiming that Fatah has earned its
support through its moderation relative to Hamas. But as events have shown
repeatedly, Fatah is a terrorist organization and is only too happy to collude
with Hamas in attacking Israel and to form governments with it so long as Hamas
doesn't embarrass it too much.

Notably in the case of Fatah, the US cut off its assistance to the PA after it
and Hamas formed their unity government last year and only reinstated it after
Hamas ended the unity deal by seizing control of Gaza from its Fatah partner. In
Lebanon's case, US support for the country has grown as Hizbullah's control it
and its military have become more open. Indeed, today Rice is openly pressing
Israel to surrender Mt. Dov and Ghajar village to Lebanon even though it has no
legal claim to either. And this she does by claiming that an Israeli
capitulation to Hizbullah's demands will strengthen Saniora who is controlled by
Hizbullah - and believing that this will be a good thing.

With even the Olmert-Livni-Barak government calling openly for a revision of
Resolution 1701 to curtail the Lebanese military's ability to facilitate
Hizbullah's rearmament and assertion of control over southern Lebanon, and with
even Britain finally classifying Hizbullah's militia as a terror group, the time
has come to revisit US policy.

US JEWISH leaders and counterterror champions on Capitol Hill should begin a
campaign to compel the State Department to place Lebanon on its list of state
sponsors of terror. At a minimum, US military and financial assistance to the
Hizbullah-controlled government should be abrogated immediately.

The current government of Lebanon is only expected to remain in power for
another year. Hizbullah is expected to be the big winner in Lebanon's
parliamentary elections scheduled for next year. As Lebanese parliamentarian
Samir Franjieh from the March 14th movement explained in a media interview this
week, "Weapons eliminate the principle of majority [rule]. In... 2005 the March
14 [movement] won a majority of parliamentary seats in the elections. The result
was practically eliminated by the use of force. Having armed factions [running
for elections in 2009] would limit the freedom of voters."

It is reasonable for the US to seek to support pro- Western democrats in the
Arab world. It is unreasonable for the US to be bankrolling a terror-controlled
regime populated by terrorists and democrats who support their aggression. This
is particularly the case when the same terrorists are waging war not only
against Israel, but against its own forces in Iraq.

Olmert's July 12, 2006 declaration is still apt. Lebanon, must be forced to
suffer the consequences of its support for Hizbullah.

caroline@carolineglick.com

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SAMIR KUNTAR shakes hands with Lebanese President Michel
Suleiman, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, second right, and Prime Minister Fuad
Saniora, right. Shouldn't the State Department place Lebanon on its list of
state sponsors of terror? (Credit: AP)

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The Jerusalem Post

July 29, 2008 Tuesday

When 'pro-Israel' means not giving a damn about Israel

BYLINE: MJ ROSENBERG

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 718 words

HIGHLIGHT: Supporting the status quo is a wonderfully lucrative path of least
resistance. IN WASHINGTON. The writer is director of Israel Policy Forum's
Washington Policy Center.

I had a conversation the other day with a friend who asked me if I was really
sure Barack Obama is pro-Israel. "I mean, we know John McCain is."

We do? How do we know that? Besides what does it even mean to be pro-Israel?

There is a real irony here, one which most of us who deal with this issue in
Washington confront daily. It is that the politicians who are most deft at
spouting memorized "pro-Israel" talking points tend to care about Israel the
least. The ones who speak from the heart and the head, who study the issue and
try to come up with ways to break out of the deadly status quo are the ones who
care the most.

This includes Jewish politicians, many of whom pretend that they care deeply but
only discovered Israel when they decided that playing the Jewish card would help
them politically. One Jewish senator I know is well-known for being a fiery
uber-hawk on Israel. In fact, he has no interest in Israel at all and never has.
He cares deeply about America's domestic problems, on which he's a leader, but
is indifferent to Israel, Palestinians and Middle East issues in general. It is
precisely because he doesn't give a damn that he can mouth the Marty Peretz/Alan
Dershowitz line with such enthusiasm. It matters to him not at all, but it keeps
the campaign money rolling in (allowing him to keep doing the things he does
care about).

He's entitled I suppose. Not everybody has to care about this issue, and I'm
glad he has the financial resources to keep getting reelected. Nor do I mind
that he is playing the lobby for dupes. What I resent is that this guy,
indifferent to Israel, helps set the Senate standard of what is and isn't
pro-Israel. But, as I said, what does he care? Other than when he is talking to
AIPAC or the American Jewish Committee, he doesn't give Israel's problems a
thought.

THINK ABOUT it. There is no political downside to simply going with the lobby on
the Middle East. It's like what Jackie Kennedy said: You can't be too rich or
too thin. In American politics, you can't be "too pro-Israel." A politician
knows that all he has to do is say that he is for Israel and against the
Palestinians, and he will be deemed a "staunch supporter" of Israel and the
campaign money will flow his way.

In short, supporting the status quo is a wonderfully lucrative path of least
resistance. That is why it is the default position for every politician. It's
easy, risk- free, costs nothing but pays great returns. Of course, it also adds
significantly to Israel's security problems - and America's declining strategic
position in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, many, if not most, in the pro-Israel community seem not to
understand this. These are the people who think that George W. Bush is the "most
pro-Israel president ever" and that the last eight years have been wonderful for
Israel. They could not be more wrong.

Eight years ago, as president Bill Clinton was preparing to leave office,
Israelis and Palestinians were closer to an agreement than ever before. Israel
had experienced three years that were virtually terror-free, thanks to
Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation. The Clinton-engineered peace treaty
with Jordan had eliminated the threat from the east, especially given that
Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been neutralized and defanged by sanctions.

The eight years that followed were some of the bloodiest in Israel's history. A
second intifada took more than a thousand Israeli lives (and three times as many
Palestinians). Following its conclusion, and the end of Yasser Arafat's reign,
the US demand for elections in the West Bank and Gaza brought Hamas to power.
With the US abandoning the role of Middle East "honest broker,"
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were intermittent and fruitless. Settlements
expanded.

Today, in the summer of 2008, Israelis see a new frightening form of terrorism
manifested by two attacks by bulldozer in the streets of Jerusalem. And then
there is the utter destabilization produced by the Iraq War, which has moved
Iraq into Iran's orbit, facilitating Iranian trouble-making and making it more
of a threat to Israel than ever before.

This is not a status quo anyone should seek to preserve, let alone celebrate.
Politicians who endorse it serve neither America's nor Israel's interests.
Pro-Israel? No way. Pro-themselves? Indeed.

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May an American comment on Israel?

BYLINE: DANIEL PIPES

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 752 words

HIGHLIGHT: The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube
distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

May I, an American citizen living in the United States, comment publicly on
Israeli decision making?

I recently criticized the Israeli government for its exchange with Hizbullah in
"Samir Kuntar and the last laugh" (The Jerusalem Post, July 21); to this, the
eminent counterterrorism expert at Tel Aviv University, Yoram Schweitzer,
challenged the appropriateness of my offering views on this subject. In "Not
that bad a deal" ( July 24), he explained to Jerusalem Post readers how the
"contents and tone" of my analysis were "patronizing and insulting, overlooking
as they do the fact that the government and public have the right to decide for
themselves..., and to shoulder the resulting price." He also criticizes me for
offering an opinion on Israeli issues from my "secure haven thousands of miles
away."

Schweitzer does not spell out the logic behind his resentment, but it rings
familiar: Unless a person lives in Israel, the argument goes, pays its taxes,
puts himself at risk in its streets and has children in its armed forces, he
should not second-guess Israeli decision making. This approach, broadly
speaking, stands behind the positions taken by the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee and other prominent Jewish institutions.

I RESPECT that position without accepting its discipline. Responding to what
foreign governments do is my meat and potatoes as a US foreign policy analyst
who spent time in the State and Defense departments and as a board member of the
US Institute of Peace, and who, as a columnist, has for nearly a decade
unburdened himself of opinions. A quick bibliographic review finds me judging
many governments, including the British, Canadian, Danish, French, German,
Iranian, Nepalese, Saudi, South Korean, Syrian and Turkish.

Obviously, I do not have children serving in the armed forces of all these
countries, but I assess their developments to help guide my readers' thinking.
No one from these others countries, it bears noting, ever asked me to withhold
comment on their internal affairs. And Schweitzer himself proffers advice to
others; in July 2005, for example, he instructed Muslim leaders in Europe to be
"more forceful in their rejection of the radical Islamic element." Independent
analysts all do this.

So, Schweitzer and I may comment on developments around the world, but, when it
comes to Israel, my mind should empty of thoughts, my tongue fall silent and my
keyboard go still? Hardly.

ON A more profound level, I protest the whole concept of privileged information
- that one's location, age, ethnicity, academic degrees, experience or some
other quality validates one's views. The recent book by Christopher Cerf and
Victor S. Navasky titled I Wish I Hadn't Said That: The Experts Speak - and Get
It Wrong! humorously memorializes and exposes this conceit. Living in a country
does not necessarily make one wiser about it.

During the Camp David II summit meeting of 2000, when Ehud Barak headed the
government of Israel and I disagreed with his policies, more than once my
critique was answered with a how-dare-you indignation: "Barak is the most
decorated soldier in Israeli history - and who are you?" Yet, analysts now
generally agree that Camp David II had disastrous results for Israel,
precipitating the Palestinian violence that began two months later.

It is a mistake to reject information, ideas or analysis on the basis of
credentials. Correct and important thoughts can come from any provenance - even
from thousands of miles away.

In that spirit, here are two responses concerning Schweitzer's take on the Samir
Kuntar incident. Schweitzer argues that "to fail to do the utmost to rescue any
citizen or soldier who falls into enemy hands would shatter one of the basic
precepts of Israeli society."

I agree that rescuing soldiers or their remains is an operationally useful and
morally noble priority, but "utmost" has limits. For example, a government
should not hand live citizens to terrorists in return for soldiers' corpses. In
like manner, the Olmert government's actions two weeks ago went much too far.

Another specific: Schweitzer claims that "relatively speaking, the recent
exchange with Hizbullah came at a cheap price. It is debatable whether Kuntar's
release granted any kind of moral victory to Hizbullah."

If that deal was cheap, I dread to imagine how an expensive one would look. And
with Kuntar's arrival in Lebanon shutting down the government in giddy national
celebration, denying Hizbullah a victory amounts to willful blindness.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: CRITICISM OF Barak from outsiders was derided, but analysts now
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Caution: Deep water

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 729 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

There's nothing like a refreshing dip in the Mediterranean on a sweltering
summer's day. Yet the sea can be treacherous, as it was this past weekend. The
surf was up, and so were warning flags atop lifeguard huts.

Black flags prohibit any entry into the water; red signify dangerous currents
and undertows. Unfortunately, both colors were largely ignored.

The upshot: 15 drownings and near-drownings. Five swimmers lost their lives - in
Haifa, Atlit, Netanya and Tel Aviv. Many of the injured required
hospitalization, with some victims arriving at emergency rooms in critical
condition. There were yet more cases of bathers thrashing about helplessly, but
pulled out of the water without serious physical harm.

In all, it was a catastrophic weekend on our beaches, which is especially sad
considering that they are among the country's most enticing recreation and
tourist assets. Moreover, the tragedies were avoidable. Most of the drownings
and near-drownings (except for two septuagenarians at different locales)
occurred at unauthorized beaches where there are no lifeguards.

The weekend's tragedies only added to the already existing lawlessness on our
beaches: jet-skiers joyriding amid bathers and off-terrain vehicles speeding
among sunbathers and children building sand-castles. Just recently, a
28-year-old Swedish tourist was seriously injured when a jeep ran her over on a
beach near Haifa.

Swimmers who behave with willful disregard for their own safety are being no
less lawless, even if they only hurt themselves.

The police need to do more spot-checks of popular, though unguarded, beaches.
And on legal beaches, lifeguards should perhaps be granted the authority to
issue summonses to unruly swimmers who disobey their instructions.

It's easy for swimmers to pooh-pooh danger warnings, especially when the water
appears calm and lifeguard admonitions seem unreasonably stringent. But
lifeguards well know that things aren't always what they seem.

It's possible to get into deep trouble even in shallow water. Waves that crash
into the sandbars sometimes flow back out with great force, creating potentially
deadly rip- currents for even powerful swimmers. Such undertows can remain
invisible from the surface, which makes it unsafe to swim where no rescue
professionals are stationed.

ISRAEL'S authorized beaches number 91 on the Med, 22 on Dead Sea, 25 on the
Kinneret and five on the Red Sea. Bathing is forbidden along roughly half of
Israel's shoreline. With a growing local population plus the summertime influx
of tourists, protected beaches are thus very crowded places. This congestion
makes illegal alternatives - clean and unspoiled, and sometimes situated near
the authorized beaches - all the more alluring.

One solution, as Knesset Internal Affairs and Environment Committee chair MK
Ophir Paz-Pines maintains, is to "open up more beaches." And he has urged
Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit to do so. Paz-Pines describes legal beaches as
"packed sardine cans," and their next-door illegal neighbors as "neglected
backyards without rescue services, where swimmers risk their lives."

Yet beach expansion is easier said than done. Often there is a reason why the
coastline directly adjacent to a legal beach is closed off. In some cases, there
is a sheer drop only a short distance away from the water's edge; swimmers, near
the shore and with solid ground under them, might not realize they are a step
away from extremely deep and dangerous water.

Filling in nature's cavernous potholes is a task which local authorities cannot
manage, and for which the central government often cannot afford to pay.

THE UPKEEP of beaches is an expensive job even for large municipalities. And
cities are often unable to outbid swimming pools and country clubs for the
services of professional lifeguards. That said, the authorities need to find
ways to open more stretches of shoreline to swimming. Whatever can be done
without involving inordinately complex engineering projects should be
undertaken.

Finally, while municipal beaches must remain free to the public, more sections
of the coast might be transformed into protected commercial beaches.

The existing lack of lifeguard protection in some beach areas is nothing less
than a callous disregard for human life. Until that changes, it's down to
ordinary citizens not to assume that they are safe from the forces of the tides.

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A pornographic approach to violence

BYLINE: GIL TROY

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1022 words

HIGHLIGHT: CENTER FIELD. Journalistic narratives overlook what initiating
bloodshed for effect rather than to defend oneself does to a people's collective
soul. The writer, a professor of history at McGill University, is the author of
Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. His
most recent book, Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best
Presidents, has just been published by Basic Books.

'How do you welcome a child murderer as a hero?" I asked in a recent Montreal
Gazette op-ed, responding to Israel's hostage exchange with Hizbullah. I noted
that "depending on the tone, this question becomes an attempt to clarify, or an
expression of outrage. Stated calmly, 'How do you welcome a child murderer as a
hero?' can be a factual question - such as the one that faced Lebanese leaders
this week as they proceeded to celebrate the freeing of Samir Kuntar from an
Israeli prison, where he had been held since 1979 for murdering four-year-old
Einat Haran, her father Danny Haran and a policeman. Stated angrily, 'How do you
welcome a child murderer as a hero?' is the question Israelis are asking - and
the rest of the civilized world should be asking, too."

The article was titled "A moment of moral clarity." I lamented decades of
relativistic and self-flagellating propagandizing blinding Westerners from
distinguishing between civilized and barbaric behavior whenever Westerners were
in the right. Nevertheless, I insisted, the prisoner exchange illuminated the
differences between the Lebanese and Palestinians who celebrated a child killer
and the many Israelis who mourned the deaths of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

I concluded: "We want to side with the country that moves heaven and Earth to
bring its boys home, to protect its citizens; not with the country of
bloodthirsty mobs deifying cowards who smashed the skull of a four-year-old girl
with a rifle butt on a lovely Mediterranean beach. We learn about a people by
observing whom they love and whom they hate. Joy is fleeting and often triggered
by base instincts. Sometimes collective anguish is a sign of moral strength, not
national weakness."

INEVITABLY, THE gravitational physics of the Middle East conflict kicked in and
the article triggered a backlash. Shortly after the article appeared, the
leading headline in the Gazette's "Letters to the Editor" section proclaimed
"Troy overlooked the deaths in Lebanon." The letter-writer said I ignored the
hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian children Israel killed since 2000 "in
contrast to the 123 Israeli children who have died since 2000. Clearly, Israel
does not celebrate life and certainly does not share Canadian values as Troy
would have us believe." Another letter, headlined "Israel is also unjust,"
blasted Israel's "illegal occupation of Palestinian and Lebanese territories."

These reactions proved my point. Rushing to indict Israel, the critics ignored
the obscene spectacle of the Kuntar homecoming. They missed the essential moral
difference illustrated by Israel's heartbreaking "hostage" exchange. Ehud
Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were reluctant citizen-soldiers, compelled to defend
their country. Whatever violence they unleashed while serving - or whatever
violence Israel unleashed after they were ambushed - never triggered any street
festivals. Treating violence as a necessary last resort is very different than
celebrating violence as proof of national self-worth. It would be immoral if
Israelis refused to defend themselves, considering the assaults they endure. It
would also be immoral if Israelis delighted in the deaths of any innocents, be
they children or adults.

Yes, dead is dead. An individual is no better off being killed by an errant
shell than being slaughtered in a targeted terrorist attack. But the rules of
war distinguish between the two incidents, emphasizing not just the killers'
intentions but their reactions to the deaths.

We can and should debate how much Western soldiers, including Israelis, ignore
the consequences of their actions. But there remains a huge moral gap between
the ethical imbroglios of the Israeli soldier forced to fight and the
canonization of violence that has overwhelmed Palestinian culture.

HERE THEN is the Palestinians' great moral blind spot - and the chief sin of
their uncritical fans. The Palestinian approach to violence has become
increasingly pornographic - meaning focused on arousal. Initiating violence for
effect rather than to defend oneself or advance strategic goals, seeking carnage
to stimulate national pride, is a particularly twisted and sterile form of
warfare. We have become too used to terrorism, too inured to its nihilistic
nature. We risk losing our capacity for outrage as we observe and rate the
constant attempts to choreograph just the right dance of death that will destroy
the most, generate maximum news coverage, strike the greatest terror in Israeli
hearts. Terrorists turns cafes into targets, and bulldozers - vehicles for
building - into weapons of destruction not realizing the destructive force such
actions unleash in their own society, and their own souls.

Addicted to the drama, lazily sticking to the established plot lines, reporters
focus on how much these "operations" succeed or fail - the greater the damage
the greater the success. But these journalistic narratives overlook what this
pornographic approach to violence does to a people's collective soul. We are who
we worship. A society that deifies child killers and rampaging bulldozer
operators, a culture of martyrdom that venerates the violent, is a nation
destined to fail, not to build.

This addiction to terrorism has derailed the Palestinian national movement,
poisoning what it touches. The Palestinian soul has been curdled by repeatedly
toasting the brutality of a Samir Kuntar, the thuggishness of the bulldozing
maniacs Husam Taysir Dwayat and Ghassan Abu Tir. The evidence is obvious but
obscured by political correctness. Watching Gaza fritter away the opportunity
the disengagement offered, seeing it develop into a hellacious slum rather than
develop; observing the West Bank's stagnation; witnessing the violence Hamas and
Fatah forces unleash against each other - all illustrate the perils of this kind
of pornography.

Alas, the false prophets of false equivalence, the cheerleaders for the
cheerless, the mass enablers of Palestinian violence, would rather overlook the
evidence. Instead, they do what they do best - bash Israel - targeting those who
dare defend Israel in print and, most important, in uniform.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

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GRAPHIC: Photo: SACKS OF flour supplied by the UN. Few comment on how Gaza is
frittering away the opportunity disengagement offered for development. (Credit:
AP)

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Letters

BYLINE: M.M. Van Zuiden, Ellie Morris, Aaron Swirski, Barry Lynn, Susan
Weinstein, Jerry Glazer, Joachim Malcolm King, Moshe E. Rosenbaum, Iris
Rosenberg, Gloria Mound

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1127 words

HIGHLIGHT: Readers' Letters

Present possessive

Sir, - The more I read of Herb Keinon's "The wife" (July 27), the more I liked
it. I fully agree that "my wife" is disturbingly possessive. I would recommend
"my ex-fiancee."

When people ask about "my kids," I always say: I'm the father, but they're not
mine.

M.M. VAN ZUIDEN

Jerusalem

Sir, - Herb Keinon may think the term "ball and chain" is "very British," but in
the part of Britain where I grew up, the wife was more commonly known as
"trouble and strife." In cockney rhyming slang, "my old man" is "old pot and
pan."

ELLIE MORRIS

Asseret

Obama in Israel

Sir, - Your July 25 banner headline used three words to define Barack Obama's
Middle East policy: "DIPLOMATIC over Iran's nukes, OPTIMISTIC on Syrian change,
and CRITICAL about settlements."

I would support him if he were "CRITICAL over Iran's nukes, OPTIMISTIC on Syrian
change, and DIPLOMATIC about settlements."

AARON SWIRSKI

Netanya

Sir, - Re "Obama's whirlwind visit" (Editorial, July 25): Barack Obama lost my
vote when he framed the issue of whether Israelis can live over the old 1967
armistice line only in terms of a security buffer.

While it is true that the West Bank cities provide a security buffer, they are
also home to half a million Israelis. We live here, and that is reason enough
for us to stay.

BARRY LYNN

Efrat

Sir, - When Barack Obama asks if retaining our security buffer is worth Arab
"antagonism," he clearly sees the antagonism as being due to our reluctance to
cede that territorial "buffer" and return to the '49/'67 borders. By his tidy
formula, our doing so would end Arab antagonism.

But Arab terrorism against the Jews of Palestine/Israel existed long before the
creation of our state. Indefensible borders would heighten the aggression by
bringing closer the goal of wiping Israel off the map.

SUSAN WEINSTEIN

Kfar Adumim

Sir, - At a time when Israel is stressing the importance of returning its own
people home, even at the expense of releasing terrorists who vow to kill more
Israelis, it was distressing that the Post did not bring up the plight of
Jonathan Pollard with Barack Obama. Certainly the Democratic candidate would
have understood that this is an important issue we would like to see resolved
right away, especially since there has never been any good reason given for why
Pollard is still sitting in a US prison when others jailed for more serious
offenses have been released.

JERRY GLAZER

Modi'in

Divine discotheque?

Sir, - While I concur that Ma'ariv was wrong, I agree with the late Yeshayahu
Leibowitz that the Kotel is "God's discotheque" ("'Ma'ariv' blasted for printing
Obama's note in Western Wall," July 27).

Where in Halacha or any tradition is there a basis for writing messages to God?
We know of the ancient sacrifices and the substitution of prayer for them,
but... writing letters to God, and placing them in the cracks of the Kotel's
stones?

And why is the Kotel - a retaining wall of the Temple - a synagogue in the first
place, restricted to Orthodox practice?

The Western Wall is a national treasure, a memorial, to be used by all Jews -
secular, religious, and non- Orthodox. It makes no sense when spurious customs
become sanctified into religious rules.

Should we convert Masada into a shul?

JOACHIM MALCOM KING

Jerusalem

Jewish rescue...

Sir, - I would like to commend Mordechai Paldiel for "Why won't Yad Vashem honor
Jewish rescuers?" (July 24). So many well-documented books describe Jewish men
and women who were involved in rescue operations that one can only wonder why
Yad Vashem decided to be silent on this matter.

As Mr. Paldiel noted, the Zionist underground in Hungary, called Hazalah,
deserves special recognition. Its members were remarkably daring and well
organized, saving thousand of Jews, many from the very hands of the Gestapo. My
late father, Pinhas Rosenbaum, was one of its leading members. More than once
complete strangers have approached me saying they owe their lives to my father.

In Jewish tradition humility is not only admirable, it is also a sign of
strength. Will Yad Vashem show that strength and admit it was wrong to refuse
recognition to our own heroes?

For my late father and most other Jewish rescuers who are no longer with us,
such recognition would come a bit late. However, some might still be alive.
Don't they deserve to live out their remaining years with pride knowing that
their heroic deeds have finally been recognized by the national Jewish memorial
of the Holocaust?

MOSHE E. ROSENBAUM

Jerusalem

...controversy continues

Sir, - Mordechai Paldiel claims Yad Vashem does not accord Jewish rescuers "a
dignified place." Allow me to refresh his memory. The efforts of Jews to rescue
and aid other Jews during the Holocaust has been a fundamental part of our
activities for many years.

In 1974, Yad Vashem held an international conference focusing on rescue,
particularly efforts of Jews to rescue their brethren. Other events have been
held on the issue - most recently this month at a workshop of the International
Institute for Holocaust Research.

Jewish rescue is an integral part of our educational activities: In 2004, we
published a guidebook for educators, I Am My Brother's Rescuer, which is widely
used in our seminars. We have published other books exploring Jewish rescue, and
hundreds of books on the issue are available in our library.

Visitors can see our section dedicated to rescue of all kinds in Europe,
including by Jewish individuals and groups, Jewish partisan groups and
underground movements, as well as by the Righteous Among the Nations. A special
on-line exhibit at www.yadvashem.org was visited by some 7 million people last
year. And more than a dozen Holocaust survivors who engaged in rescue efforts
have been torchlighters at Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony over the years.

Jewish rescue efforts are part and parcel of the Jewish experience during the
Shoah. This is self-evident to all who work at and visit Yad Vashem.

IRIS ROSENBERG

Spokesperson Yad Vashem

Jerusalem

Seeking Julia Monteiro

Sir, - We are engaged in an important genealogical search that will enable a
young woman to regain her Jewish heritage. To do this we need to trace these
persons:

Julia Monteiro, who we have reason to believe left India, possibly from Bombay,
(Mumbai), after 1967 and settled in Israel for a time.

At this period, Julia was friendly with a Milli Ann Sequeira, born in India in
1949, and her brother Lawrence Sequeira, both descended from one of the leading
Anglo- Indian Jewish families that traded from Madras but spent time in Bombay.

Any information appertaining to the above will be gratefully acknowledged.
Kindly call or fax 972-(0)8- 8573150; or e-mail marrano@zahav.net.il

Our Web site is www.casa-shalom.com

GLORIA MOUND

Casa Shalom Institute

For Marrano-Anusim Studies , Gan Yavneh

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Construction, deconstruction and destruction

BYLINE: LIAT COLLINS

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1148 words

HIGHLIGHT: First published in the International Edition of July 25, 2008.

'Here's a song which is not heard enough by a group which might want to change
its name," announced the presenter of a radio show, a week after the July 2
attack in which three people lost their lives in Jerusalem. I don't remember
which particular song he played. I do remember the name of the band: Nikmat
Hatraktor - The Tractor's Revenge. To understand the black humor - a survival
mechanism as valid as any other - you have to realize that a bulldozer in Hebrew
is called a "tractor," while a "bulldozer" is usually used to refer to the sort
of person who gets things done: a human steamroller.

Nothing is like it seems. We've had to get used to terms like "human bomb," and
now the innocent name of a once-popular band has taken on a negative connotation
- doubly negative following last week's copycat bulldozer attack. On July 22,
when for the second time in three weeks an Arab bulldozer driver from east
Jerusalem plowed into cars and a bus - this time on King David Street, not so
far from the July 2 rampage on Jaffa Road - it became even more difficult to
joke about the situation. This time 15 people were wounded before the terrorist
was shot dead by a Druse Border Police officer and a civilian passerby, Yaki
Asa-El. (The 53-year-old grandfather - a former Armored Corps company commander
- is a farmer from the community of Sussiya in the southern Hebron Hills and the
older brother of Post columnist Amotz Asa-El.)

The band "The Tractor's Revenge" took its name in 1988 from a song by musician
Rami Fortis. In an interview with the Post five years ago,
keyboardist/percussionist Ilan Green explained the name by saying: "It means
what it means."

But who knows what anything means anymore?

It's not just the Israeli band which has got a sudden image problem.

When after the first attack I recalled how surreal it was to count police and
ambulance sirens, Life is Beautiful-style, with my young son in the "second
intifada," a neighbor noted she could identify with the problem. Her
four-year-old son is a fan of Bob the Builder and gets excited every time he
sees a bulldozer. Since massive roadwork projects in connection with the light
rail are taking place all over Jerusalem, there are plenty of construction
vehicles for him to see, and plenty for his poor mom to worry about.

One of the worst aspects of these "low-tech" attacks - is this about to become
known as "the third intifada"? - is how it destroys everyone's innocence and
trust. While my neighbor's young son tries to absorb the message of conflict
resolution, cooperation and equal opportunities through small-town construction
contractor Bob the Builder, his workmate Wendy and their gang of
anthropomorphized vehicles, here in the Israeli capital the adults are
increasingly looking at construction equipment - and their operators - as
something menacing.

Unlike the suicide bombers of the first and second intifadas, the perpetrators
of the latest two atrocities - and the former transport company driver who
killed eight students at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in March - did not fit the profile
of fanatical Islamicists. In fact, they didn't fit the profile of most
terrorists. These were not "poor Palestinians" living "under the occupation" in
the territories, as the sympathetic image would have it. They were Arabs who
lived in Jerusalem, benefited from freedom of movement possibly greater than
most Jewish residents, who feel utterly intimidated when passing through Arab
neighborhoods, and turned their jobs into the Devil's work.

While Jewish politicians, at the local and national level, stressed the obvious
- that most of the country's Arab citizens are loyal, hardworking people - the
Arab MKs were so quiet their silence was eerie. The same Arab politicians who
welcome pro-Palestinian moves to divest from the Caterpillar company because its
equipment is used in building the security barrier and demolishing illegally
built homes had nothing to say when bulldozers were so unnaturally used as
weapons.

The latest attack was praised by Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip as "a natural
reaction to the crimes of the occupation." The attacker, who had a criminal
record for drugs and theft, was a relative of imprisoned Hamas leader Muhammad
Abu Tir. Perhaps he was trying to kill some Jews to show he'd repented for his
Allah-less ways. He might have acted alone, but he acted in an environment in
which becoming a martyr is an admirable goal. The ultimate promotion for a
smalltime criminal.

My neighbor's comments about Bob the Builder - or Bob Habanai, as he is known
and loved in Hebrew - reminded me of a far-from-lovable character in the
spotlight last year. Farfur, the Palestinian Mickey Mouse, was exposed by
Palestinian Media Watch, which showed the Hamas TV character preaching that the
"oppressive invading Zionist occupation" must be "resisted" at all costs.

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas's enemy no less than the
Zionists for the moment, at least went through the motions of denouncing the
latest terrorist incident, saying: "I condemn the attack and as always I
wholeheartedly oppose all acts of terror."

But, I smell a rat. On July 20, the Post's Khaled Abu Toameh revealed that the
PA's official news agency Wafa is claiming Israel is using rats to drive Arab
families out of their homes in Jerusalem's Old City. In the past the news
agency, which is controlled and funded by Abbas's office, has accused Israel of
using wild pigs to drive Palestinians from their homes and fields in the West
Bank.

When official Palestinian media run such wild allegations, the results are
obvious. There is a problem with rats in the western part of the city, too. It
has apparently worsened as the massive excavation necessary for the light rail
project has disturbed them, but I wouldn't run a story blaming the Arab
construction workers for deliberately setting them loose.

The increasing radicalism of Israeli Arabs which thrives in this
Jews-are-capable-of-anything climate was evident before the King David Street
attack. On July 18, two students from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem were
indicted for suspected ties to al-Qaida. There are six suspects altogether: four
from east Jerusalem and the other two from Taiba and Nazareth. Among their plans
was a plot to attack George W. Bush's helicopter from the Hebrew University's
Givat Ram campus during the US president's visit in May.

Again, we are not talking about penniless, uneducated Palestinians. Again, the
Israeli Arab leadership was silent.

Bob the Builder's catchphrase is: "Can we fix it?" The other characters always
respond: "Yes we can!"

But it won't be easy to fix the damage caused by the recent attacks in
Jerusalem. Someone in the Israeli Arab leadership has to shout out a
condemnation of terror and make sure Bob the Builder's philosophy of peacefully
building things together is the message which is being heard.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: Jerusalem resident Ghassan Abu Tir used this bulldozer during
the attack on the capital's King David Street on July 22. He was shot and killed
after wounding 15 people. (Credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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998 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

July 27, 2008 Sunday

Save Tel Aviv's Kikar Hamedina

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 723 words

HIGHLIGHT: Editorial

One of north-central Tel Aviv's last remaining open spaces, the sprawling Kikar
Hamedina circle, surrounded by boutique shops and posh apartment buildings, is
under threat. The municipal planning commission has decided to fill the area in
the middle of the loop with three huge apartment towers, each 40-floors and at
least 153 meters tall.

Only the land's owners, their representatives and eager contractors support the
approved blueprints. The residents of the upscale, older edifices enveloping the
lucrative real estate - situated on a ring road around the space - along with
Tel Avivians from nearby neighborhoods and visitors who window-shop in Kikar
Hamedina's chic emporiums, have been unanimously emphatic in their opposition.

But public opinion appears to be of no consequence. The city is intent on
pushing forward, though the project's monster proportions are out of scale with
the pleasant streets that enclose it. If construction goes ahead, it will bar
airflow, mar views, create unprecedented congestion, tie up traffic and
altogether constitute a massive eyesore. It will also add to the overcrowding in
the central Coastal Plain, undesirable from any point of view, not least from
national security considerations.

Veteran Tel Aviv residents complain that the despoliation of Kikar Hamedina
looms as the greatest aesthetic sin since the inconsiderate wall of hotels arose
along the beach in the 1960s. The hotels irremediably cut the city off from its
natural sea view. But at least they helped make Tel Aviv a world-class tourist
destination. The three towers would be imposed incongruously in the midst of
classic mid-20th century architecture.

THAT EVEN the influential and well-connected citizenry of Kikar Hamedina can't
seem to prevent a construction travesty bodes ill for Israelis in other urban
and suburban locations. Their quality of life, evidently, matters little to the
decision-makers.

The unwanted Kikar Hamedina real estate project is all the more noteworthy
because it needn't have turned out this way. The land inside and around the
circle was purchased for peanuts back in the 1940s from the defunct Shikkun
Amami Company. Twenty years later, construction there was approved, but only the
modest-scale buildings in the outer ring were actually erected. And in the
mid-1970s, then- mayor Shlomo Lahat opted to change the inner circle's
designation and turned it into a park.

In 1984, however, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the land's owners who had
accused the city of robbing them. Since then the area has been unoccupied and a
popular site for social protesters. The municipality could have renewed its
struggle for eminent domain. Alternatively, it could have allowed only low-slung
construction, which would make the lots considerably less lucrative but more
compatible with the neighborhood.

Going to the opposite extreme and imposing some of Israel's highest structures
where they don't belong only continues Tel Aviv's sad practice of violating its
own history and damaging its environment.

The shame of it is that, unlike the deteriorating Tel Aviv of three decades ago
that sought green lungs, the city now enjoys a veritable renaissance. The sons
and daughters of baby boomers who escaped en masse to the suburbs are now
returning and making the city of their grandparents Israel's most trendy
location.

The rejuvenation of the "first Hebrew city" is a welcome trend but it can be
thoughtlessly undone by gigantic, pricy blunders, like the one designed for
Kikar Hamedina.

The influx has also made Tel Aviv a city where apartments are mostly rented
rather than purchased (Israelis traditionally own the homes they live in). The
downside to Tel Aviv's real estate boom is that rentals are priced sky-high,
making them unaffordable for post-army young people who want to enjoy the city.

If the Kikar Hamedina plan goes ahead, the Tel Aviv Municipality will have no
one to blame but its official self. Approval to build rests exclusively with the
city and does not require endorsement by regional planning commissions.

Residents and green organizations have vowed to fight city hall and take their
case as high up the ladder of litigation as need be. For the sake of all
Israelis, equally subject to bureaucratic imperiousness and outright greed, we
wish them success in reversing a regrettable decision.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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999 of 2329 DOCUMENTS

The Jerusalem Post

July 27, 2008 Sunday

'The wife'

BYLINE: HERB KEINON

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 813 words

HIGHLIGHT: If I wanted to dis the principal and primary companion in my life, I
could have chosen a number of other expressions. Out There

I'm always a little wary when people come up and ask if they can ask a question,
because this generally foretells, at least during a private conversation, that
something awkward is about to unfold. Otherwise the questioner would simply
blurt out the question.

During my college days in the States, the words "Can I ask you a question?" were
always followed by something kippa-related, such as, "Why are you wearing a
coaster on your head?"

Recently, after a lecture to a group, one listener's "Can I ask you a question?"
was followed by the rather tasteless, "Why do you move around so much when you
talk, do you have a neurological disorder?"

So I knew what was coming the other day when, after having just written a column
referring again to my helpmeet as "the wife," a woman approached and asked if
she could ask me a question. I knew I was in for a shelling.

"She doesn't mind," I said, preempting her. "The wife doesn't mind. Believe me,
if she did, I wouldn't be calling her 'the wife.' We've been married for 22
years, and if this bothered her, or if she found it offensive, I'd long ago have
ditched the term."

But I've found the term does bother people, predominantly women people. And I
simply believe those people should relax, lighten up, sip a Coke and not look
for nefarious meanings where none exists.

I'VE HAD the opportunity over my journalistic career to write hundreds of
thousands of words, and nearly 9,000 articles, and the one term for which I
consistently take the most flack is "the wife." Not the "West Bank," not "Judea
and Samaria," not "settlers," not "terrorists," but "the wife," as if the use of
the definite article here indicated some kind of disrespect.

It doesn't. The use of the definite article designates that my wife is the
principal and primary companion in my life. If I said "a wife," I could
understand the protest. But the term "the wife" sets her apart.

The use of the definite article here also indicates that I grew up in the homey
climes of the American West, and was raised speaking in a folksy manner (when we
were first married, I liked to introduce the wife as the pard'ner, as in, "Hi,
I'm Herb Keinon, and this is my pard'ner").

The use of the definite article indicates that I was influenced heavily by the
writing of fabled Chicago columnist Mike Royko, who used the term without
apology. And it indicates that I took a real liking to the titles of two works
forced down my throat in high school: The Wife's Lament and Chaucer's The Wife
of Bath's Prologue and Tale.

"The wife" does not indicate disrespect. If I wanted to dis the wife, God
forbid, I could have chosen a number of other expressions.

I could have chosen the old fashioned term "squaw," as in "The squaw and I were
discussing the matter the other day." I could have used the very British "ball
and chain," as in "The ball and chain wouldn't let me." The 1940s "little
missus," as in "The little missus answered the boy," would also do the trick, as
would the 1960s-vintage "old lady," as in "Me and the old lady took the VW van
out for a spin." Those terms, in my thinking, have disparaging connotations. But
"the wife?" Please.

NO, "the wife" actually signifies respect. If the prophet Isaiah can refer to
his wife as "the prophetess" (Isaiah 8:3), then I'm on safe ground referring to
my consort as "the wife." But, asked the woman who asked if she could ask a
question, why not just say "my wife?" Interesting idea, that.

I could call the mother of my children "my wife," but I think that sounds too
possessive. It's like saying "my book," "my computer," "my toe." She's not mine.
She's not an object. She's her own being.

I don't use the term "my wife" for the same reason that the wife doesn't, in
Hebrew, refer to me as ba'ali (my husband, literally, "my owner" - talk about
possessive).

So rather than call me ba'ali, the wife calls me ishi, literally "my man." I
actually like being called her man. It makes me feel big, muscle-rippled,
handsome, even fearsome, as in, "Don't mess with me, my man is just around the
corner."

I could call her my soul mate, but that is sickening; or my love muffin, but
that is gooey; or my better half, but that is downright patronizing; or my
significant other, but that would make the wife sound like an alien.

So I chose "the wife," to go along with the other main actors in my life: the
kids, who include the lad, the daughter, Skippy and the boy.

Not "my lad," "my daughter," "Skippy o' mine," or "my boy." Interestingly, no
one has ever objected to my calling the kids "the kids."

Indeed, I think "the wife" should be seen as an honorific. My error, however, is
that I never capitalized the term, which I will do from now on. For if Menachem
Schneerson can be the Rebbe, Bruce Springsteen the Boss, Elvis Presley the King,
and that borough in New York, the Bronx, then Mrs. Keinon can certainly be The
Wife.

No apologies necessary.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The Jerusalem Post

July 27, 2008 Sunday

Saeed Jalili's Pride

BYLINE: MEIR JAVEDANFAR

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 705 words

HIGHLIGHT: Iran's top nuclear negotiator and his boss Ahmadinejad see the
nuclear program as a status symbol. The writer is the coauthor of The Nuclear
Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran. He also runs the
Middle East Economic and Political Analysis Company.

In Iran, much like the rest of the world, possessions are used as status symbols
by the wealthy. Among other things, the rich judge each other by what car the
other person drives, in which neighborhood of Teheran they live, which hotel
they stay during their shopping trips to Dubai and what cellphone they use.

The same applies to politicians, many of whom during the reign of Ali Rafsanjani
and Muhammad Khatami abused their positions to amass huge fortunes. No
government expenses were spared to purchase the latest BMW or Mercedes Benz for
them. Meanwhile, others managed to buy government property in Iran's scenic
Caspian Sea coast for a fraction of the market price. The children of such
politicians, who are sarcastically called agha zadeh (children of nobles), are
known to have benefited handsomely from their fathers' corruption. Their friends
don't seem to mind. The parties thrown by these agha zadehs are famous in
northern Teheran for their abundance of alcoholic drinks, dance music and
beautiful girls.

Such abuse of status has created much animosity in Iran. In a country where the
gap between the rich and poor is widening, some politicians, especially young
conservative war veterans, who include Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have decided to do
the opposite. They live in simple houses and drive bottom-of-the-range cars.
Saeed Jalili, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, is one of them. His status symbol
is his beaten up, Korean-made KIA Pride, which is one of the cheapest cars
assembled and sold in Iran.

JALILI AND Ahmadinejad belong to a generation of conservative war veterans who
see the Iranian nuclear program not only as an important tool to confront the
West, but also as a status symbol to take on their internal rivals from the
reformist and pragmatist camps. In fact, in many cases, their internal goals and
motivations exceed those of their external concerns.

The election of Ahmadinejad in June 2005 was hailed as a victory for the
non-clergy conservatives. For the first time, Iran had a president who unlike
his predecessors had fought in the war, was well educated and had worked his way
up from lowly administrative positions. He was the man who the conservatives
hoped would dismantle Rafsanjani's multimillion dollar empire and would send the
flashy agha zadehs packing. Ahmadinejad was the man they hoped would reverse the
inflation and unemployment problems created by Rafsanjani and made worse during
Khatami's reign.

Three years after entering office, Ahmadinejad has failed to deliver on all of
his promises. The nuclear program is all that he has left. His old friend
Jalili, as the general secretary of the Supreme National Security Council has
the ear of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and is Ahmadinejad's point man in the nuclear
program. Jalili and Ahmadinejad believe that by not negotiating with the West,
they will weaken Iran's pragmatists and reformists, who are concerned about Iran
becoming more isolated. This way Ahmadinejad hopes his chances of reelection
next year will increase.

For now Khamenei, Iran's ultimate decision-maker, seems to back the advice of
Jalili. Judging by reports from the July 22 edition of Jomhuriye Eslami
newspaper, which is considered to be Khamenei's mouthpiece in Iran, Teheran is
going to turn down the EU's recent incentives package.

Iran's nuclear program and Iran's legal right to produce energy, are being
sacrificed by the government's uncompromising stance, and not just by the
actions of the West, as some Iranian officials claim. Khamenei, who is a
pragmatic politician must realize that people like Jalili are only after the
political welfare of conservatives. His advice could have long lasting damaging
impact on the welfare of the regime and Iranians, as refusal to accept the EU
incentives package will make it easier for the West to impose tougher sanctions
or even justify an attack.

Compromise is not a dirty word. The people of Iran have compromised and
sacrificed enough through a bloody revolution, and even a bloodier war against
Saddam Hussein's invading army. Its time for the government to follow suit.
Instead of listening to the advice of inexperienced and belligerent
conservatives such as Jalili, Khamenei should send him home, in his Pride.

LOAD-DATE: October 4, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: Photo: SAEED JALILI. drives a KIA Pride - one of the cheapest cars
assembled and sold in Iran. (Credit: AP)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The Jerusalem Post
All Rights Reserved